Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
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Patterns of Attachments
across the Lifespan
ROBYN FIVUSH and THEODORE E. A. WATERS
Abstract
The attachment relationship is a critical bond between infant and caregiver that,
when secure, facilitates physical and psychological well-being. Cutting-edge
research integrating attachment theory with cognitive theories of event representations indicates that both generalized event representations, or scripts, and
specific autobiographical narratives provide continuity from implicit to explicit
representations of attachment across development. Script-like attachment representations are related to implicit behavioral measures in infancy, as well as to adult
narrative measures of attachment, the emerging life story, and intimate partner
behaviors, providing continuity across development in attachment representations
and behaviors. Explicit attachment representations are at least partly developed
within parentally guided narrative interactions in which mothers help their
preschool children develop coherent and emotionally regulated representations of
their past experiences. These representations are related to developing self-concept
and emotion-regulation. Narrative representations of attachment extend beyond
personal experience to include intergenerational narratives of the familial past,
thus facilitating the intergenerational transmission of attachment. Additional
longitudinal research is needed to flesh out these exciting new integrations of
attachment theory and cognitive psychology.
INTRODUCTION
The attachment relationship is a critical bond between infant and caregiver
that, when secure, facilitates physical and psychological well-beings. It
begins for the infant as an implicit behavioral response system based on
generalized expectations gleaned from parental responsiveness to the
infants’ needs. With development, it expands into an explicit representation, what Bowlby (1969) termed the “internal working model” (IWM),
which provides a framework for understanding self and relationships.
The IWM is postulated to underlie the intergenerational transmission of
attachment, as individuals themselves become parents, thus facilitating
continuity both across individual development and generations. Initially,
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
the IWM was theoretically underspecified. Recent cognitive research on
event representations has provided theoretical fodder for specifying and
testing how attachment is cognitively represented. Specifically, research
examining both generalized event representations (scripts) and specific
event representations (autobiographical narratives) has demonstrated that
implicit attachment representations in infancy are related to the individual’s developing explicit event representations about attachment-related
experiences. These representations include attachment scripts, the life story,
and socially constructed narrative representations of both personal and
intergenerational experiences. Importantly, script and narrative representations of attachment have also been shown to be related to attachment
relevant behaviors, including developing emotion regulation, developing
self-concept, and intimate partner behaviors. Thus, cognitive approaches to
attachment representations have proved to be generative, and have provided
a mechanism for understanding how early implicit experiences develop
into explicit representations that allow for continuity of representations and
behaviors across the lifespan, and, indeed, across generations.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
ATTACHMENT STATUS IN INFANCY
Substantial research has examined the attachment system in infancy (see
Cassidy & Shaver, 1999, for a review), usually through the strange situation
paradigm that assesses infants’ use of their caregiver for comfort/support
upon reunion following separation. Sensitive and responsive caregivers
have securely attached infants, evidenced as seeking and experiencing
comfort from a caregiver following separation, which facilitates a sense of
self as valuable, others as trustworthy and the world as safe. Less-sensitive
and responsive caregivers have infants who display an insecure pattern of
attachment. Insecure attachment can be further characterized as resistant,
avoidant, or disorganized, but generally leads to a sense of self as unworthy,
others as untrustworthy, and the world as a dangerous place where needs
may not be met. Early attachment status is theoretically postulated to set the
stage for attachment relationships and behavior across development. More
securely attached individuals evidence higher sense of self-worth, are better
able to regulate aversive emotional experiences, and display more positive
relationships with others, compared to insecurely attached individuals.
ATTACHMENT AND EVENT REPRESENTATIONS
Recent research has expanded attachment representations beyond infancy
and begun to examine how the development of explicit attachment
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
3
representations continues to influence individuals’ perception of their social
worlds. Because recent reviews have focused on the biological bases of
attachment behavior (Feldman, 2012) and the relations between attachment
status and social perception (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011), we do not review that
research here. Rather, we focus on emerging relations between attachment
and representations of past experiences, both generalized script representations and specific autobiographical narrative representations. We show
that scripts and narratives are a central part of explicit attachment representations across development. Indeed, the Adult Attachment Interview
(AAI), a widely used method to assess adult representations of attachment
relationships (Main, Hesse, & Kaplan, 2005), focuses on adults’ abilities
to narrate coherent childhood attachment experiences. Thus, scripts and
narratives provide mechanisms through which early implicit models of
attachment become explicit representations that provide developmental
continuity of attachment behaviors.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
ATTACHMENT SCRIPTS
As behavioral expectations of caregiving become more explicit, they form
accessible generalized representations of attachment referred to as the secure
base script. Scripts are generalized event representations that provide a
schematic representation of what usually happens, including actions, actors
and objects, organized into coherent spatial-temporal frames (Nelson &
Greundel, 1979). Waters and Waters (2006) described the secure base script
as follows: child and mother are constructively engaged in the environment,
something disrupts this engagement, there is a bid for help/support, the
bid is detected, help/support is offered, the help is accepted and effectively
resolves the disruption, and constructive engagement with the environment
returns. A variety of measures have been developed to assess the secure base
script both in the lab (Waters & Waters, 2006) and from the AAI (Waters, in
press). Secure base scripts provide an explicit representation of the world
as safe, caregivers as accessible and trustworthy, and the self as worthy of
care. In this way, scripts form the basis of the child’s emerging IWM of self
in relationships in the world that provides a sense of security and trust,
or lack thereof. As enduring cognitive representations, scripts influence a
wide range of cognitive processes central to attachment behavior including
attention, memory, social cognition, and decision making. Importantly,
recent research has found that script-like attachment representations in
adulthood are related to infant attachment behavior measured twenty years
prior, demonstrating excellent construct validity for the script assessment
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
measure, as well as attesting to the continuity of implicit and explicit
attachment representations across development (Waters, in press).
MATERNAL REMINISCING STYLE
Importantly, children’s developing representations of past experiences are
not constructed in isolation, but are created within narrative social interactions in which parents help children structure their memories in particular
ways (see Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006, for a review). Autobiographical narratives move beyond a simple chronology of events, to include information
about the “internal landscape of consciousness,” the thoughts and feelings,
motivations and intentions, of self and other, to weave a tapestry of human
understanding. Thus, in addition to generalized event representations, the
IWM also includes memories of specific autobiographical events that are, at
least partly, based on explicit socially constructed narratives of the past that
help children organize and understand their experiences. Just as there are
individual differences in maternal caregiving behavior that leads to individual differences in the security of children’s implicit IWMs, there are individual differences in maternal narrative style that lead to individual differences
in children’s developing explicit autobiographical narratives. Some mothers
engage in reminiscing about shared past experiences with their children in
more elaborative ways, providing rich, coherent, and detailed accounts of
what happened, as well as providing more coherent evaluative frames for
understanding these experiences. Especially when discussing negative emotional events, more highly elaborative mothers help their young children to
better understand how and why difficult experiences happen and how best
to resolve these experiences (see Fivush, 2007, for a review).
Bretherton (1990) proposed that sensitive and responsive maternal reminiscing style, which helps the child construct a coherent sense of his or her
past self, is an important mechanism in transitioning from implicit to explicit
working models of attachment. As predicted, more elaborative emotionally
expressive maternal reminiscing style is related to attachment security
(Fivush et al., 2006). Both maternal and infant attachment security is related
to a more elaborative maternal reminiscing style during the preschool years,
and maternal reminiscing style during the preschool years is related to
attachment status as children enter middle childhood. In terms of behaviors,
more elaborative maternal reminiscing style during preschool predicts
children’s more coherent sense of self and better emotion regulation through
middle childhood (see Fivush, 2007, for a review). This pattern supports
the theoretical proposition that attachment representations, which are
related to self-concept and emotion regulation, are partly mediated through
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
5
the explicit narrative representations of past experiences constructed in
mother–child reminiscing.
ATTACHMENT AND THE LIFE STORY
As children develop into adolescents they continue to reflect on their past
experiences and begin to develop a representation of their life known as a
life story (McAdams, 1993). The life story contains individuals’ understanding of who they are, how they came to be that way, and what critical events
shaped their lives. T. Waters (under review) argued that IWMs and script-like
attachment representations continue to influence adolescent representations
of self via the life story. More specifically, because a script-like attachment
representation provides a model of safety, security, and self-worth, individuals with more secure base representations should construct more positive
and emotionally regulated life narratives. In fact, individuals who score high
on a measure of script-like attachment representation told life stories with
more redemption themes (bad things work out in the end), and fewer contamination themes (good things go from bad to worse), than did individuals
with lower scores. This suggests that the form and meaning of our life story
is related to, and may even have its roots in, attachment relationships and
our representations of early attachment experience.
ATTACHMENT AND INTIMATE PARTNER BEHAVIOR
Attachment representations are theoretically related to positive relationships
throughout development. In the first study to directly examine relations
between script-like attachment representations and intimate partner behavior, T. Waters, Brockmeyer, and Crowell (2013) found that individuals who
score high on a measure of script-like attachment representation displayed
more care seeking and caregiving behaviors during lab-based interactions
with their intimate partner, compared to individuals with lower scores.
These findings suggest that explicit attachment representations are related
to, and may underlie, real-world relationship behaviors.
INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF ATTACHMENT
A critical theoretical postulate of attachment theory, which has received some
empirical support, is that attachment behaviors are transmitted intergenerationally through parental behavior (Main et al., 2005). Given the theoretical
framework developed here, we further argue that attachment may be transmitted intergenerationally through narrative representations shared within
parent–child interactions. Research on maternal reminiscing style suggests
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
one avenue by which maternal attachment representations are transmitted
to their children through more elaborated and coherent reminiscing about
the personal past. An intriguing possibility is that attachment representations are also transmitted through intergenerational stories, stories parents
tell their children about their own childhood experiences. Parents who tell
more coherent narratives of their childhood (as is also assessed in the AAI)
would be transmitting more coherent representations of attachment, and this
would be manifested in the child’s intergenerational narratives about the parent. In the first study to examine this, adolescents who told more coherent
and more emotionally expressive stories about their mothers’ (but not their
fathers’) childhood scored higher on a measure of script-like attachment representations (Zaman & Fivush, 2013). This intriguing finding suggests that
IWMs may move beyond personal experiences, to include representations of
intergenerational experiences in ways that influence the individuals’ attachment status, and thus narrative representations may provide a mechanism
for the intergenerational transmission of attachment.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The integration of attachment theory with cognitive psychology has yielded
a generative set of hypotheses and empirical findings, which indicate that:
IWMs of attachment are composed of both generalized script and specific autobiographical narrative representations that provide the lens
through which personal experiences and relationships are understood.
Children’s representations of their past experiences as coherent and emotionally regulated develops within social narrative interactions in which
mothers help children structure more elaborated and coherent personal
narratives.
Explicit representations of attachment, especially attachment scripts,
underlie emergent themes in individuals’ life stories.
Attachment is transmitted intergenerationally, at least partly, through
parental narratives of childhood experiences that provide adolescents
with models and frameworks for understanding their own identity.
Empirical relations between attachment and event representations
characterize a broader impetus in psychology to integrate cognitive and
socioemotional approaches to understanding developmental processes,
and provides a rich ground for generating further research. Among the
most critical research moving forward: More longitudinal research linking
early implicit attachment measures to emerging explicit representations is
critical. Several large-scale longitudinal datasets are becoming available that
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
7
will allow investigation of these issues across development from infancy
through early adulthood. Several of these databases include early childhood
data on maternal reminiscing style, as well as emotional regulation and
self-concept, and thus statistical models will allow sophisticated analysis of
unique variance predicted by theoretically postulated variables.
In order to expand construct validity, and further integrate socioemotional
and cognitive approaches, studies should include multiple measures of both
attachment and event representations. In addition to the strange situation,
which is the gold standard for infant attachment status, new measures
include Q-sorts, as well as attachment scripts as defined here. New coding of
the AAI using cognitive constructs is also critical, as well as developing new
measures for attachment in the transition to adolescence. Autobiographical
representations should be assessed through personal narratives, life stories,
and narrative interactions with attachment figures.
Extending relations between attachment and event representations across
the lifespan is critical, as individuals transition into parenting themselves, as
well as aging into caregivers of their own parents and/or their spouse. Using
an attachment framework opens new ways of understanding issues of aging
and coping with end of life issues (Chen et al., 2013).
Individuals who experience inconsistent, rejecting, or neglecting care do
not develop the secure base script. What kinds of scripts take the place of the
secure base script in the IWMs of insecurely attached individuals is an important future direction with tremendous potential for clinical intervention (see
T. Waters, in press, for a discussion). The universality, frequency, and developmental antecedents of these alternate scripts are still largely unknown.
REFERENCES
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss, Vol. 1: Attachment (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
Basic Books.
Bretherton, I. (1990). Open communication and internal working models: Their role
in the development of attachment relationships. In R. A. Thompson (Ed.), Nebraska
symposium on motivation: Vol. 36. Socioemotional development (pp. 59–113). Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.) (1999). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and
clinical applications. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Chen, C. K., Waters, H. S., Hartman, M., Zimmerman, S., Miklowitz, D. J., & Waters,
E. (2013). The secure base script and the task of caring for elderly parents: Implications for attachment theory and clinical practice. Attachment and Human Development, 15(3), 332–348.
Dykas, M. J., & Cassidy, J. (2011). Attachment and the processing of social information across the lifespan: Theory and evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 19–46.
doi:10.1037/a0021367
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Feldman, R. (2012). Oxytocin and social affiliation in humans. Hormones and Behavior,
61, 380–391. doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.01.008
Fivush, R. (2007). Maternal reminiscing style and children’s developing understanding of self and emotion. Clinical Social Work, 35, 37–46. doi:10.1007/s10615006-0065-1
Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elaborating on elaborations: Maternal
reminiscing style and children’s socioemotional outcome. Child Development, 77,
1568–1588. doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(05)80002-4
Main, M., Hesse, E., & Kaplan, N. (2005). Predictability of attachment behavior and
representational processes at 1, 6, and 19 years of age: The Berkeley longitudinal study. In K. E. Grossmann, K. Grossmann & E. Waters (Eds.), Attachment from
infancy to adulthood: The major longitudinal studies (pp. 245–304). New York, NY:
Guilford.
McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self .
New York, NY: Guilford.
Nelson, K., & Greundel, J. (1979). Generalized event representations: Basic building
blocks of cognitive development. In A. L. Brown & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Advances in
developmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 131–158). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Waters, T. E. A. (in press). Secure base content in the Adult Attachment Interview. In
E. Waters, B. Vaughn & H. S. Waters (Eds.), Measuring attachment. New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
Waters, T. E. A. (under review). Relations between attachment representation and
life story themes in late adolescence.
Waters, T. E. A., Brockmeyer, S. L., & Crowell, J. A. (2013). AAI coherence predicts
caregiving and care seeking behavior: Secure base script knowledge helps explain
why. Attachment and Human Development, 15(3), 316–331.
Waters, H., & Waters, E. (2006). The attachment working models concept: Among
other things, we build script-like representations of secure base experiences.
Attachment and Human Development, 8, 185–197. doi:10.1080/14616730600856016
Zaman, W., & Fivush, R. (2013). Stories of parents and self: Relations to adolescent
attachment. Developmental Psychology, 49(11), 2047–2056.
ROBYN FIVUSH SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Robyn Fivush is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Developmental Psychology at Emory University, where she has been on the faculty since 1984.
She received her PhD from the Graduate Center of The City University of
New York in 1983 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Human
Information Processing, University of California at San Diego from 1983 to
1984. She is associated faculty with the Department of Women’s Studies and
a Senior Fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Her research
focuses on early memory with an emphasis on the social construction of autobiographical memory and the relations among memory, narrative, identity,
trauma, and coping. She has published over 150 books, book chapters, and
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
9
articles, including the forthcoming Wiley Handbook of Children’s Memory Development, coedited with Patricia J. Bauer, and Autobiographical memory and the
construction of a narrative self: Developmental and cultural perspectives, coedited
with Catherine A. Haden in 2003.
Web page: http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/fivush/lab/
FivushLabWebsite/index.html
THEODORE E. A. WATERS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Theodore E. A. Waters recently completed his dissertation in psychology
at Emory University studying with Dr. Robyn Fivush. His research interests focus largely on representations of early experience and their influence
on autobiographical memory and behavior. He has developed several coding schemes for narrative data and lab-based procedures to assess script-like
attachment representations and published several articles and chapters discussing these issues including T. Waters (in press) and T. Waters, Brockmeyer,
and Crowell (2013).
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Patterns of Attachments
across the Lifespan
ROBYN FIVUSH and THEODORE E. A. WATERS
Abstract
The attachment relationship is a critical bond between infant and caregiver that,
when secure, facilitates physical and psychological well-being. Cutting-edge
research integrating attachment theory with cognitive theories of event representations indicates that both generalized event representations, or scripts, and
specific autobiographical narratives provide continuity from implicit to explicit
representations of attachment across development. Script-like attachment representations are related to implicit behavioral measures in infancy, as well as to adult
narrative measures of attachment, the emerging life story, and intimate partner
behaviors, providing continuity across development in attachment representations
and behaviors. Explicit attachment representations are at least partly developed
within parentally guided narrative interactions in which mothers help their
preschool children develop coherent and emotionally regulated representations of
their past experiences. These representations are related to developing self-concept
and emotion-regulation. Narrative representations of attachment extend beyond
personal experience to include intergenerational narratives of the familial past,
thus facilitating the intergenerational transmission of attachment. Additional
longitudinal research is needed to flesh out these exciting new integrations of
attachment theory and cognitive psychology.
INTRODUCTION
The attachment relationship is a critical bond between infant and caregiver
that, when secure, facilitates physical and psychological well-beings. It
begins for the infant as an implicit behavioral response system based on
generalized expectations gleaned from parental responsiveness to the
infants’ needs. With development, it expands into an explicit representation, what Bowlby (1969) termed the “internal working model” (IWM),
which provides a framework for understanding self and relationships.
The IWM is postulated to underlie the intergenerational transmission of
attachment, as individuals themselves become parents, thus facilitating
continuity both across individual development and generations. Initially,
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
the IWM was theoretically underspecified. Recent cognitive research on
event representations has provided theoretical fodder for specifying and
testing how attachment is cognitively represented. Specifically, research
examining both generalized event representations (scripts) and specific
event representations (autobiographical narratives) has demonstrated that
implicit attachment representations in infancy are related to the individual’s developing explicit event representations about attachment-related
experiences. These representations include attachment scripts, the life story,
and socially constructed narrative representations of both personal and
intergenerational experiences. Importantly, script and narrative representations of attachment have also been shown to be related to attachment
relevant behaviors, including developing emotion regulation, developing
self-concept, and intimate partner behaviors. Thus, cognitive approaches to
attachment representations have proved to be generative, and have provided
a mechanism for understanding how early implicit experiences develop
into explicit representations that allow for continuity of representations and
behaviors across the lifespan, and, indeed, across generations.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
ATTACHMENT STATUS IN INFANCY
Substantial research has examined the attachment system in infancy (see
Cassidy & Shaver, 1999, for a review), usually through the strange situation
paradigm that assesses infants’ use of their caregiver for comfort/support
upon reunion following separation. Sensitive and responsive caregivers
have securely attached infants, evidenced as seeking and experiencing
comfort from a caregiver following separation, which facilitates a sense of
self as valuable, others as trustworthy and the world as safe. Less-sensitive
and responsive caregivers have infants who display an insecure pattern of
attachment. Insecure attachment can be further characterized as resistant,
avoidant, or disorganized, but generally leads to a sense of self as unworthy,
others as untrustworthy, and the world as a dangerous place where needs
may not be met. Early attachment status is theoretically postulated to set the
stage for attachment relationships and behavior across development. More
securely attached individuals evidence higher sense of self-worth, are better
able to regulate aversive emotional experiences, and display more positive
relationships with others, compared to insecurely attached individuals.
ATTACHMENT AND EVENT REPRESENTATIONS
Recent research has expanded attachment representations beyond infancy
and begun to examine how the development of explicit attachment
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
3
representations continues to influence individuals’ perception of their social
worlds. Because recent reviews have focused on the biological bases of
attachment behavior (Feldman, 2012) and the relations between attachment
status and social perception (Dykas & Cassidy, 2011), we do not review that
research here. Rather, we focus on emerging relations between attachment
and representations of past experiences, both generalized script representations and specific autobiographical narrative representations. We show
that scripts and narratives are a central part of explicit attachment representations across development. Indeed, the Adult Attachment Interview
(AAI), a widely used method to assess adult representations of attachment
relationships (Main, Hesse, & Kaplan, 2005), focuses on adults’ abilities
to narrate coherent childhood attachment experiences. Thus, scripts and
narratives provide mechanisms through which early implicit models of
attachment become explicit representations that provide developmental
continuity of attachment behaviors.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
ATTACHMENT SCRIPTS
As behavioral expectations of caregiving become more explicit, they form
accessible generalized representations of attachment referred to as the secure
base script. Scripts are generalized event representations that provide a
schematic representation of what usually happens, including actions, actors
and objects, organized into coherent spatial-temporal frames (Nelson &
Greundel, 1979). Waters and Waters (2006) described the secure base script
as follows: child and mother are constructively engaged in the environment,
something disrupts this engagement, there is a bid for help/support, the
bid is detected, help/support is offered, the help is accepted and effectively
resolves the disruption, and constructive engagement with the environment
returns. A variety of measures have been developed to assess the secure base
script both in the lab (Waters & Waters, 2006) and from the AAI (Waters, in
press). Secure base scripts provide an explicit representation of the world
as safe, caregivers as accessible and trustworthy, and the self as worthy of
care. In this way, scripts form the basis of the child’s emerging IWM of self
in relationships in the world that provides a sense of security and trust,
or lack thereof. As enduring cognitive representations, scripts influence a
wide range of cognitive processes central to attachment behavior including
attention, memory, social cognition, and decision making. Importantly,
recent research has found that script-like attachment representations in
adulthood are related to infant attachment behavior measured twenty years
prior, demonstrating excellent construct validity for the script assessment
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
measure, as well as attesting to the continuity of implicit and explicit
attachment representations across development (Waters, in press).
MATERNAL REMINISCING STYLE
Importantly, children’s developing representations of past experiences are
not constructed in isolation, but are created within narrative social interactions in which parents help children structure their memories in particular
ways (see Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006, for a review). Autobiographical narratives move beyond a simple chronology of events, to include information
about the “internal landscape of consciousness,” the thoughts and feelings,
motivations and intentions, of self and other, to weave a tapestry of human
understanding. Thus, in addition to generalized event representations, the
IWM also includes memories of specific autobiographical events that are, at
least partly, based on explicit socially constructed narratives of the past that
help children organize and understand their experiences. Just as there are
individual differences in maternal caregiving behavior that leads to individual differences in the security of children’s implicit IWMs, there are individual differences in maternal narrative style that lead to individual differences
in children’s developing explicit autobiographical narratives. Some mothers
engage in reminiscing about shared past experiences with their children in
more elaborative ways, providing rich, coherent, and detailed accounts of
what happened, as well as providing more coherent evaluative frames for
understanding these experiences. Especially when discussing negative emotional events, more highly elaborative mothers help their young children to
better understand how and why difficult experiences happen and how best
to resolve these experiences (see Fivush, 2007, for a review).
Bretherton (1990) proposed that sensitive and responsive maternal reminiscing style, which helps the child construct a coherent sense of his or her
past self, is an important mechanism in transitioning from implicit to explicit
working models of attachment. As predicted, more elaborative emotionally
expressive maternal reminiscing style is related to attachment security
(Fivush et al., 2006). Both maternal and infant attachment security is related
to a more elaborative maternal reminiscing style during the preschool years,
and maternal reminiscing style during the preschool years is related to
attachment status as children enter middle childhood. In terms of behaviors,
more elaborative maternal reminiscing style during preschool predicts
children’s more coherent sense of self and better emotion regulation through
middle childhood (see Fivush, 2007, for a review). This pattern supports
the theoretical proposition that attachment representations, which are
related to self-concept and emotion regulation, are partly mediated through
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
5
the explicit narrative representations of past experiences constructed in
mother–child reminiscing.
ATTACHMENT AND THE LIFE STORY
As children develop into adolescents they continue to reflect on their past
experiences and begin to develop a representation of their life known as a
life story (McAdams, 1993). The life story contains individuals’ understanding of who they are, how they came to be that way, and what critical events
shaped their lives. T. Waters (under review) argued that IWMs and script-like
attachment representations continue to influence adolescent representations
of self via the life story. More specifically, because a script-like attachment
representation provides a model of safety, security, and self-worth, individuals with more secure base representations should construct more positive
and emotionally regulated life narratives. In fact, individuals who score high
on a measure of script-like attachment representation told life stories with
more redemption themes (bad things work out in the end), and fewer contamination themes (good things go from bad to worse), than did individuals
with lower scores. This suggests that the form and meaning of our life story
is related to, and may even have its roots in, attachment relationships and
our representations of early attachment experience.
ATTACHMENT AND INTIMATE PARTNER BEHAVIOR
Attachment representations are theoretically related to positive relationships
throughout development. In the first study to directly examine relations
between script-like attachment representations and intimate partner behavior, T. Waters, Brockmeyer, and Crowell (2013) found that individuals who
score high on a measure of script-like attachment representation displayed
more care seeking and caregiving behaviors during lab-based interactions
with their intimate partner, compared to individuals with lower scores.
These findings suggest that explicit attachment representations are related
to, and may underlie, real-world relationship behaviors.
INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF ATTACHMENT
A critical theoretical postulate of attachment theory, which has received some
empirical support, is that attachment behaviors are transmitted intergenerationally through parental behavior (Main et al., 2005). Given the theoretical
framework developed here, we further argue that attachment may be transmitted intergenerationally through narrative representations shared within
parent–child interactions. Research on maternal reminiscing style suggests
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
one avenue by which maternal attachment representations are transmitted
to their children through more elaborated and coherent reminiscing about
the personal past. An intriguing possibility is that attachment representations are also transmitted through intergenerational stories, stories parents
tell their children about their own childhood experiences. Parents who tell
more coherent narratives of their childhood (as is also assessed in the AAI)
would be transmitting more coherent representations of attachment, and this
would be manifested in the child’s intergenerational narratives about the parent. In the first study to examine this, adolescents who told more coherent
and more emotionally expressive stories about their mothers’ (but not their
fathers’) childhood scored higher on a measure of script-like attachment representations (Zaman & Fivush, 2013). This intriguing finding suggests that
IWMs may move beyond personal experiences, to include representations of
intergenerational experiences in ways that influence the individuals’ attachment status, and thus narrative representations may provide a mechanism
for the intergenerational transmission of attachment.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The integration of attachment theory with cognitive psychology has yielded
a generative set of hypotheses and empirical findings, which indicate that:
IWMs of attachment are composed of both generalized script and specific autobiographical narrative representations that provide the lens
through which personal experiences and relationships are understood.
Children’s representations of their past experiences as coherent and emotionally regulated develops within social narrative interactions in which
mothers help children structure more elaborated and coherent personal
narratives.
Explicit representations of attachment, especially attachment scripts,
underlie emergent themes in individuals’ life stories.
Attachment is transmitted intergenerationally, at least partly, through
parental narratives of childhood experiences that provide adolescents
with models and frameworks for understanding their own identity.
Empirical relations between attachment and event representations
characterize a broader impetus in psychology to integrate cognitive and
socioemotional approaches to understanding developmental processes,
and provides a rich ground for generating further research. Among the
most critical research moving forward: More longitudinal research linking
early implicit attachment measures to emerging explicit representations is
critical. Several large-scale longitudinal datasets are becoming available that
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
7
will allow investigation of these issues across development from infancy
through early adulthood. Several of these databases include early childhood
data on maternal reminiscing style, as well as emotional regulation and
self-concept, and thus statistical models will allow sophisticated analysis of
unique variance predicted by theoretically postulated variables.
In order to expand construct validity, and further integrate socioemotional
and cognitive approaches, studies should include multiple measures of both
attachment and event representations. In addition to the strange situation,
which is the gold standard for infant attachment status, new measures
include Q-sorts, as well as attachment scripts as defined here. New coding of
the AAI using cognitive constructs is also critical, as well as developing new
measures for attachment in the transition to adolescence. Autobiographical
representations should be assessed through personal narratives, life stories,
and narrative interactions with attachment figures.
Extending relations between attachment and event representations across
the lifespan is critical, as individuals transition into parenting themselves, as
well as aging into caregivers of their own parents and/or their spouse. Using
an attachment framework opens new ways of understanding issues of aging
and coping with end of life issues (Chen et al., 2013).
Individuals who experience inconsistent, rejecting, or neglecting care do
not develop the secure base script. What kinds of scripts take the place of the
secure base script in the IWMs of insecurely attached individuals is an important future direction with tremendous potential for clinical intervention (see
T. Waters, in press, for a discussion). The universality, frequency, and developmental antecedents of these alternate scripts are still largely unknown.
REFERENCES
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss, Vol. 1: Attachment (2nd ed.). New York, NY:
Basic Books.
Bretherton, I. (1990). Open communication and internal working models: Their role
in the development of attachment relationships. In R. A. Thompson (Ed.), Nebraska
symposium on motivation: Vol. 36. Socioemotional development (pp. 59–113). Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.) (1999). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and
clinical applications. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Chen, C. K., Waters, H. S., Hartman, M., Zimmerman, S., Miklowitz, D. J., & Waters,
E. (2013). The secure base script and the task of caring for elderly parents: Implications for attachment theory and clinical practice. Attachment and Human Development, 15(3), 332–348.
Dykas, M. J., & Cassidy, J. (2011). Attachment and the processing of social information across the lifespan: Theory and evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 19–46.
doi:10.1037/a0021367
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Feldman, R. (2012). Oxytocin and social affiliation in humans. Hormones and Behavior,
61, 380–391. doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.01.008
Fivush, R. (2007). Maternal reminiscing style and children’s developing understanding of self and emotion. Clinical Social Work, 35, 37–46. doi:10.1007/s10615006-0065-1
Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elaborating on elaborations: Maternal
reminiscing style and children’s socioemotional outcome. Child Development, 77,
1568–1588. doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(05)80002-4
Main, M., Hesse, E., & Kaplan, N. (2005). Predictability of attachment behavior and
representational processes at 1, 6, and 19 years of age: The Berkeley longitudinal study. In K. E. Grossmann, K. Grossmann & E. Waters (Eds.), Attachment from
infancy to adulthood: The major longitudinal studies (pp. 245–304). New York, NY:
Guilford.
McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self .
New York, NY: Guilford.
Nelson, K., & Greundel, J. (1979). Generalized event representations: Basic building
blocks of cognitive development. In A. L. Brown & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Advances in
developmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 131–158). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Waters, T. E. A. (in press). Secure base content in the Adult Attachment Interview. In
E. Waters, B. Vaughn & H. S. Waters (Eds.), Measuring attachment. New York, NY:
Guilford Press.
Waters, T. E. A. (under review). Relations between attachment representation and
life story themes in late adolescence.
Waters, T. E. A., Brockmeyer, S. L., & Crowell, J. A. (2013). AAI coherence predicts
caregiving and care seeking behavior: Secure base script knowledge helps explain
why. Attachment and Human Development, 15(3), 316–331.
Waters, H., & Waters, E. (2006). The attachment working models concept: Among
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Attachment and Human Development, 8, 185–197. doi:10.1080/14616730600856016
Zaman, W., & Fivush, R. (2013). Stories of parents and self: Relations to adolescent
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ROBYN FIVUSH SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Robyn Fivush is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Developmental Psychology at Emory University, where she has been on the faculty since 1984.
She received her PhD from the Graduate Center of The City University of
New York in 1983 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Human
Information Processing, University of California at San Diego from 1983 to
1984. She is associated faculty with the Department of Women’s Studies and
a Senior Fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Her research
focuses on early memory with an emphasis on the social construction of autobiographical memory and the relations among memory, narrative, identity,
trauma, and coping. She has published over 150 books, book chapters, and
Patterns of Attachments across the Lifespan
9
articles, including the forthcoming Wiley Handbook of Children’s Memory Development, coedited with Patricia J. Bauer, and Autobiographical memory and the
construction of a narrative self: Developmental and cultural perspectives, coedited
with Catherine A. Haden in 2003.
Web page: http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/fivush/lab/
FivushLabWebsite/index.html
THEODORE E. A. WATERS SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Theodore E. A. Waters recently completed his dissertation in psychology
at Emory University studying with Dr. Robyn Fivush. His research interests focus largely on representations of early experience and their influence
on autobiographical memory and behavior. He has developed several coding schemes for narrative data and lab-based procedures to assess script-like
attachment representations and published several articles and chapters discussing these issues including T. Waters (in press) and T. Waters, Brockmeyer,
and Crowell (2013).
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