Measures of mental representation: clinical and theoretical considerations

The authors explored the strengths and limitations of measures of mental representation from attachment theory and object relations theory. Using a study of adolescent mothers' mental representations while pregnant and their association to later mother-infant attachment (Levine, Tuber, Slade, & Ward, 1991), they compared the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985) and the Krohn Object Representation Scale (KORS) (Krohn & Mayman, 1974) in terms of their clinical and theoretical utility. The authors argue that the AAI does not sufficiently explicate less adaptive object-representations, and that attachment research must address a broader clinical population to have a greater heuristic impact on clinical theory and practice. The AAI relies less on clinical inference than the KORS, however, thus providing a more viable mechanism for predicting parent-child relationship patterns. Clinical examples are provided to illustrate the process and content of the two scoring systems.