[Attachment behavior with respect to mothers and fathers and attachment representations in five and seven-year-old...

During preschool and early school age attachment quality can be assessed by different means: at the behavioral level by the Strange Situation (SS), at the representational level by semiprojective methods using story stems or pictures. Both methods gain access to different levels of a theoretically assumed inner working model of attachment, in which attachment at the behavioral level is supposed to be person specific, attachment at the representational level generalized. This study aimed at analyzing whether attachment behavior to mother and father is associated, and how it is linked to the generalized attachment representation. It was also examined whether in the case of no association between mother and father attachment behavior towards the major attachment figure is linked to the attachment representation. In the Duesseldorf study 67 children aged 5 years were observed in the SS with mother, 31 of them also in the SS with father. At the age of 6.5 years an attachment story completion task was conducted. When person specific attachment to mother and father was congruent (SS secure n=6, or insecure n=8) the attachment representation was consistent as well, when father and mother attachment were discrepant no association with attachment representation could be found. The findings did not confirm a stronger influence of the major attachment figure on the formation of the attachment representation.