Attachment and emotional understanding in preschool children

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 28, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

D J Laible1, R A Thompson

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 68588, USA. dlaible@unlgrad1.unl.edu

Developmental Psychology
|October 21, 1998
PubMed

Insights

Secure attachment in early childhood is linked to better emotional understanding, especially for negative emotions. This finding highlights the importance of caregiver relationships for children

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Child Psychology
  • Attachment Theory

Background:

  • Attachment security is crucial for social-emotional development.
  • Preschoolers' emotional understanding is a key area of cognitive growth.
  • Early caregiver-child relationships significantly shape emotional processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between attachment security and emotional understanding in preschool children.
  • To determine if attachment influences the understanding of both positive and negative emotions.
  • To identify predictors of emotional understanding in early childhood.

Main Methods:

  • Forty preschool children (ages 2.5-6 years) and their mothers participated.
  • Mothers completed the Attachment Q-set.
  • Children underwent affective perspective-taking tasks and emotion-related interviews.

Main Results:

  • Both age and attachment security predicted overall emotional understanding scores.
  • Attachment security and age specifically predicted understanding of negative emotions (e.g., sadness).
  • No significant prediction was found for understanding positive emotions (e.g., happiness).

Conclusions:

  • Secure attachment relationships foster preschool children's emotional understanding.
  • The impact of attachment is more pronounced for understanding negative emotional states.
  • Findings underscore the role of secure attachment in developing emotional competence.

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