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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 13, 2025

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure

Published on: September 19, 2019

Maternal secure base scripts predict child attachment security in an at-risk sample.

Alissa C Huth-Bocks¹, Nabiha Zakir², Katherine Guyon-Harris³

¹Department of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, United States.

Infant Behavior & Development

|November 12, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Maternal secure base scripts, representing early experiences, predict child attachment security. The Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) effectively measures these scripts in at-risk populations.

Keywords:

Attachment Attachment script Low-income Secure base script

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Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Attachment Theory
Clinical Psychology

Background:

Attachment scripts, derived from early experiences with caregivers, influence later life outcomes including caregiving and social-emotional adjustment.
Research has primarily focused on typical samples, with less understanding of secure base scripts in at-risk populations prone to attachment insecurity.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the association between maternal secure base script representations and child attachment security within an at-risk sample.
To validate the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) for use with at-risk caregivers.

Main Methods:

The study utilized the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) to evaluate maternal secure base script representations in 100 mother-child pairs from a low-income, at-risk sample.
Maternal ASA scores were compared with normative data from middle-class samples to establish cross-sample comparability.
Child attachment security was assessed using the Attachment Q-Set (AQS) at ages 1 and 2 years, with dependency scores also analyzed for discriminant validity.

Main Results:

The ASA demonstrated comparable scores and statistical patterns across at-risk and middle-class samples, confirming its utility in diverse populations.
Maternal secure base script knowledge significantly predicted child attachment security at ages 1 and 2.
No significant relationship was found between maternal script knowledge and child dependency scores, supporting the discriminant validity of the ASA.

Conclusions:

The Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) is a viable and effective tool for assessing maternal attachment representations in at-risk populations.
Maternal secure base scripts are important predictors of child attachment security, even in samples facing psychosocial risks.
Findings highlight the potential of the ASA in identifying and supporting caregivers at risk for insecure attachment patterns with their children.