About this session

Friday, 1:20 PM - 2:50 PM

Preschoolers’ Attachment Security and Socio-Emotional Outcomes in Different Countries and Settings: Are They Related?

Attachment theory hypothesizes that child-parent relationships are implicated in the ways children relate to others. By participating in relationships with parents, children learn valuable lessons about how social interactions transpire, form expectations of others in relationships, and learn patterns of interactive behavior that they use to navigate social exchanges in contexts outside the family. Specifically, when participating in relationships with parents who are attentive and appropriately responsive to their communications and signals, children not only form a secure attachment with their parents, but also, develop positive expectations about others in social interactions and use their relational experience in other social settings in competent ways. Conversely, children whose relationships with parents are less secure may develop expectations and behavioral strategies that hinder their ability to successfully handle social interactions outside the family. According to attachment theory, this is likely to be demonstrated across different settings and contexts (the security-social competence hypothesis).

In this symposium, we test the security–social competence hypothesis in four samples of preschoolers from three countries: Colombia (Study 1), Peru (Study 2), and the US (two regions, Northeast [Study 3] and Midwest [Study 4]). Across studies, trained observers reported on child-mother attachment security in naturalistic contexts (i.e., homes, playgrounds, at a children’s museum) using the Attachment Q-Set. Information about different socio-emotional outcomes (e.g., prosocial behavior, aggression, and emotion regulation) was provided by parents and teachers. While using varied methodology, paper findings highlight security as a contributing factor to children’s social-emotional outcomes across different cultures and settings.

Paper #1
Title	Attachment Security and Social Competence in a Sample of Colombian Preschoolers
Presenting author	Sandra J. Plata, Pontifica Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Paper #2
Title	Child Attachment Security and Associations with Emotion Regulation and Social Development: An Exploratory Longitudinal Study
Presenting author	Magaly Noblega, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Peru, Peru

Paper #3
Title	Preschoolers’ Secure Base Behavior During Child-Parent Interactions in a Children’s Museum: Links to Social-Emotional Development
Presenting author	Dr. Jill M. Trumbell, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire, United States

Paper #4
Title	The Correspondence of Preschoolers’ Attachment Behavior, Secure Base Scripts, and Social Competence at School
Presenting author	Muqing Liu, Purdue University, China

View all paper details

Session chair
German E. Posada, Ph.D., Purdue University, United States

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