Mothers' empathic understanding of their preschoolers' internal experience: Relations with early attachment

This study examined the links between mothers' empathic understanding of th eir preschoolers' internal experience and early infant-mother attachment. T he empathic understanding of 118 mothers of 4.5-year-olds was assessed by s howing them three videotaped segments of observations of their children and themselves and interviewing them regarding their children's and their own thoughts and feelings. Interviews were rated and then classified into one e mpathic and three nonempathic categories, and mothers' misperceptions of th e observations were coded as well. Infant-mother attachment classifications obtained using the Strange Situation when infants were 12 months old were also available. Results showed associations between mothers' empathic under standing classifications and children's attachment classifications as well as differences between mothers of secure and insecure children on one of th e two interview composite scores. Also, mothers of insecurely attached chil dren had more misperceptions than those of securely attached children. The contributions of this study to the work on mothers' representations of thei r children are discussed.