The development and preliminary psychometric evaluation of an attachment Implicit Association Task

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Attachment Theory
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Attachment insecurity is linked to psychological disorders.
• Attachment can be measured explicitly (self-report) or implicitly (internal working models).
• The Adult Attachment Interview assesses implicit internal working models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a preliminary psychometric evaluation of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) for assessing implicit internal working models of attachment.
• To explore a potentially cost-effective method for measuring implicit attachment.

Main Methods:

• Developed and administered three Internet-based Implicit Association Tests (IATs) assessing views of self, mother, and father.
• Used a sample of 104 racially diverse college females.
• Administered alongside self-report measures of attachment and interpersonal problems.
• Evaluated internal consistency, correlations among tasks, concurrent validity, and convergent validity.

Main Results:

• The developed IATs demonstrated adequate internal consistency.
• Significant correlations were found among the three IAT tasks.
• No significant associations were observed between the implicit IAT measures and explicit self-report attachment measures.

Conclusions:

• The Implicit Association Test (IAT) shows promise as a measure of implicit attachment, with good internal consistency and inter-task correlations.
• Future research should incorporate other implicit attachment measures and re-evaluate IAT stimuli for improved validity.
• The lack of correlation with explicit measures suggests the IAT taps into different aspects of attachment representation.