Transmission of attachment across the generations - The contribution of the adult attachment interview

A new domain has been established within attachment research that deals wit h mental representations of attachment in adults, particularly in parents. This contribution describes the procedure of the Adult Attachment interview (AAl) developed by GEORGE it al. (1996) and the scoring and classification system by MAIN and GOLDWYN (1994). This method allow trained coders a reli able classification of different states of mind with respect to attachment based on a content and discourse analysis of the interview transcripts. By means of observational procedure of the Strange Situation for infants and t he AAl for the adults several studies support the assumption of a transmiss ion of attachment relationships from one generation to the next one. These findings reveal that parents with secure autonomous attachment representati ons predominantly have infants with secure attachment patterns, parents wit h insecure-dismissing attachment representations mostly have children with an avoidant attachment and parents with insecure-preoccupied representation s often have children with an insecure-ambivalent attachment. Less consiste nt results have been found for the correspondence between parents unresolve d attachment status with respect to traumatic experiences and their infants ' disoriented/disorganized attachment patterns. A recent study assessing at tachment in six year olds revealed as well the transmission from mothers' a ttachment representations to those of their children for this older age. Si nce many studies have confirmed the correspondence of parents' and infants' attachment classifications, research interests are now directed towards th e mediating processes of transmission.