Toddler's attachment security and their conflict regulation during a storycompletion task in their preschool years

Young children's patterns of attachment can be validly assessed with the St range Situation procedure. More recently attempts have been made to infer p reschool children's attachment status from their narratives. In the present study (N = 16) a Story Completion Task was administered to nearly five-yea rs-old children with story stems focussing on mother-child conflicts. The c hildren's solutions were analyzed with respect to content (resulting confli ct solution) and structure (regulation of negative affects and communicativ e openness) of their reactions. These parameters of conflict regulation cou ld be validated against the children's "Strange Situation" classifications, which had been assessed at the children's age of two years according to th e guidelines of Crittenden, The results underline the usefulness of careful ly designed Story Completion Tasks for the assessment of preschool children .