SECURITY OF ATTACHMENT AS A PREDICTOR OF SYMBOLIC AND MENTALISING ABILITIES - A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY

The development of symbolic and mentalising abilities was examined in 33 children whose security of attachment had been assessed in infancy. It was found that securely attached children. (i) were better able to incorporate an experimenter's play suggestions into their sequences o f symbolic play at 31 months, and (ii) performed better on a version o f Wimmer and Perner's (1983) unexpected transfer task at age 4. There was also evidence of superior mentalising abilities among the secure g roup at age 5, despite no group differences being found in general cog nitive ability. We suggest that these security-related differences mig ht be related to mothers' propensity to treat their securely attached children as individuals with minds. In support of this hypothesis, mot hers in the secure group adopted more sensitive tutoring strategies, a nd were more likely to describe their children in terms of their menta l characteristics. Possible developmental pathways linking security of attachment in infancy with subsequent development were investigated u sing path analyses.