Security of Attachment as a Predictor of Symbolic and Mentalising Abilities: A Longitudinal Study

By E. Meins, Charles Fernyhough, James Russell, D. Clark-Carter. 2001

444 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The development of symbolic and mentalising abilities was examined in 33 children whose security of attachment had been assessed in infancy. It was found that securely attached children: (i) were better able to incorporate an experimenter’s play suggestions into their sequences of symbolic play at 31 months; and (ii) performed better on a version of Wimmer and Perner’s (1983) unexpected transfer task at age 4. There was also evidence of superior mentalising abilities among the secure group at age 5, despite no group differences being found in general cognitive ability. We suggest that these security-related differences might be related to mothers’ propensity to treat their securely attached children as individuals with minds. In support of this hypothesis, mothers in the secure group adopted more sensitive tutoring strategies, and were more likely to describe their children in terms of their mental characteristics. Possible developmental pathways linking security of attachment in infancy with subsequent development were investigated using path analyses.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a11389a454d60f2035de2ea6b9a95073b382942

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. Peter Fonagy
2. Carla Sharp
3. Charles Fernyhough
4. E. Meins
5. Linda C. Mayes
6. Annie Bernier
7. Ross A Thompson
8. C. Hughes

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Charles Fernyhough
2. T. Ruffman
3. Ross A Thompson
4. E. Meins
5. J. Lidstone
6. Peter Fonagy
7. L. Slade
8. C. Hughes

In Social Psychology

1. Peter Fonagy
2. Charles Fernyhough
3. Ross A Thompson
4. Carla Sharp
5. T. Ruffman
6. E. Meins
7. Annie Bernier
8. Linda C. Mayes

Citations in the corpus

• Mind-Mindedness, Parenting Stress, and Emotional Availability in Mothers of Preschoolers. (2012, background): “…(Demers, Bernier, Tarabulsy, & Provost, 2010a; Laranjo, Bernier, & Meins, 2008; Lundy, 2003; Meins, Fernyhough, Arnott, Leekam, & Turner, 2011; Meins et al., 2001), there is as yet limited evidence that mothers’ mind-minded descriptions of their children relate to observed parenting behavior.”
• The Parent's Capacity to Treat the Child as a Psychological Agent: Constructs, Measures and Implications for Developmental Psychopathology (2008, methodology): “A measure of MMM repeatedly used in Meins’s studies was developed based on the question ‘Can you describe [child’s name] for me?’ (Meins & Fernyhough, 1999; Meins et al., 1998).”
• Bridging the attachment transmission gap: The role of maternal mind-mindedness (2003, background): “This score is aimed at controlling for different levels of verbosity in mothers (Meins et al., 1998).”
• Relationships among Parenting Practices, Parental Stress, Child Behaviour, and Children's Social-Cognitive Development. (2009, background): “18: 37–60 (2009) DOI: 10.1002/icd modifying instructions in reaction to child behaviour (Meins et al., 1998) and reflecting on a child’s motives and mental states (Symons & Clark, 2000).”