Assessing children's representational attachment models: Links to mother-child attachment quality in infancy and childhood

The authors examined whether the finding of a correspondence between specif ic behavioral patterns of attachment in infancy and childhood and specific representational patterns in childhood could be replicated using children's responses to a story depicting an imagined parent-child separation experie nce. The participants were 33 German mothers and their children (16 girls, 17 boys). Attachment quality was assessed via standard and exploratory atta chment observations at ages 12 months, 18 months, and 6 years. Chi-square a nalyses indicated that there was a good level of concordance between the be havioral and representation attachment patterns in infancy and childhood.