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Predicting children's anxiety from early attachment relationships

Yair Bar-Haim1, Orrie Dan, Yohanan Eshel

  • 1The Adler Center for Research in Child Development and Psychopathology, Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. yair1@post.tau.ac.il

Journal of Anxiety Disorders
|February 6, 2007
PubMed

Insights

Infants with anxious-ambivalent attachment showed higher school and social phobia in childhood. However, this attachment style did not predict clinically significant anxiety levels in a general population sample.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Child Psychiatry

Background:

  • Attachment theory posits early relationships influence later emotional development.
  • Anxious-ambivalent attachment is characterized by distress and insecurity in infant-caregiver interactions.
  • Previous research suggests a link between insecure attachment and later anxiety symptoms.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if anxious-ambivalent infant attachment predicts higher childhood anxiety.
  • To examine specific anxiety subtypes, including school and social phobia, in relation to attachment style.

Main Methods:

  • Longitudinal study assessing 136 infants using Ainsworth's Strange Situation Procedure at 12 months.
  • Children and mothers completed the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) at 11 years of age.

Main Results:

  • Children with anxious-ambivalent attachment exhibited increased school phobia compared to securely attached peers.
  • Ambivalently attached boys showed higher social phobia levels than securely attached boys at age 11.
  • No significant association was found between anxious-ambivalent attachment and clinically significant anxiety levels in this normative sample.

Conclusions:

  • Infant anxious-ambivalent attachment is associated with specific childhood anxiety symptoms like school and social phobia.
  • These findings suggest a nuanced relationship between early attachment and later anxiety development.
  • Further research is needed to understand the clinical significance of these associations in normative populations.

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