Instead of speaking during English course as initially intended to, here are my notes about the following article :
Huber, A., McMahon, C. A., & Sweller, N. (2015). Efficacy of the 20-week circle of security intervention: changes in caregiver reflective functioning, representations, and child attachment in an Australian clinical sample. Infant Mental Health Journal, 36(6), 556–574. https://doi.org/10.1002/imhj.21540
A reading report by Diane Destré-Couronné
About the authors
The authors are all three professors at Macquarie University in Sydney.
Anna Huber is a psychologist and a practitioner. She is interested in early childhood mental health and she advocates the need of prevention and early intervention, by collaborating with researchers, practitioners and policy makers. In addition, she is particularly committed to fieldwork. So her doctoral research focused on the effectiveness of the circle of security intervention among a clinical population.
Catherine McMahon is a linguistic professor mostly active in the field of hearing loss.
Naomi Sweller is a professor of psychology. She is specialized in cognitive development and in particular early childhood education.
Summarize
This article reports an evaluation of an intervention called « Circle Of Security » (COS) which is based on attachment theory, lasts 20 weeks and aims at promoting secure parent-child attachment relationships.
The study examined 83 clinically caregiver-child dyads in Australia. The children were aged from 13 to 88 months. The caregivers completed the Circle of Security Interview, and the dyads were filmed in the Strange Situation Procedure before and after the intervention. In order to determine whether this intervention provided positive effects or not, four domains were examined : caregiver reflective functioning, caregiver representations of the child and the relationship with the child, child attachment security, and attachment disorganization.
More than five decades ago, Bowlby (1969) and Ainsworth (1979) defined three patterns of organized attachment, one secure and two insecure.
On the one hand, secure attachment refers to the ability of a caregiver to provide whether protection and support to the child when he or she feels threatened or distressed, or support for exploration and learning.
On the other hand, two insecure patterns have been described. Avoidant attachment occurs when the caregiver’s responses to the child’s behavior does not really fit his needs, whereas ambivalent attachment is associated with unpredictable caregiver availability or an inadequate support that does not allow the child to explore safely and autonomously his or her environment.
Main and Salomon (1986) added a disorganized pattern in which the caregiver is showed as frightening or frightened by the child (Main & Hesse, 1990) and then displays maladaptative behavior towards the child.
Moreover, repeated experiences with a caregiver tend to design internal working models that influence the way one behave in new relationships throughout the life. So, internal working models, as they shape representations about attachment, play an important role in caregiving quality, to such an extent that they represent some powerful predictors of the quality of attachment-caregiving relationships with one’s own child.
A core assumption underlying attachment-based interventions consists in considering that these internal working models are dynamic and therefore that they can be improved by later relationships or therapeutic experiences.
In this perspective, the Circle of Security (Powell & al., 2014) aims at improving child attachment security by targeting the parent. Thus the goals of the COS are the following :
- developing awareness, conscious among caregivers about how they interact, behave in response to child’s actions and needs
- increasing the awareness of the parents concerning their representations of caregiving and attachment
- developing capacity of reflective functioning
The study tends to confirm previous evidences (from other researchers) by reporting improving effects on all these domains, especially for those who needed the most. Thus results supported all four hypotheses of the authors : caregiving representations, the level of child attachment security, and caregiver reflective functioning increased after the intervention, and attachment disorganization decreased among those who showed high levels before the intervention.
Vocabulary
Uptake : adoption, assimilation
Prerequisite (p.3) : conditions préalables
Linchpin struggle (p.5) : la lutte pour l’égalité des chances
Mean (p.8) (here) : méchant
Skewed (p.9) : faussé, biaisé
To elicit (p.14) : obtenir
Withholding (p.14) : retenue
Bibliography
Ainsworth, M. (1979). Infant-mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34, 932-937.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1. Attachment (2nd ed.). London : Pimlico (Random House).
Main, M., & Hesse, E.D. (1990). Parents’ unresolved traumatic experiences are related to infant disorganized attachment status : Is frightened and/or frightening parental beahavior the linking mechanism ? In M.T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E.M. Cummings, (Eds.), Attachment in the preschool years : Theory, research, and intervention (pp.161-185). Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
Main, M., & Salomon (1986). Discovery of an insecure-disorganized attachment pattern : procedures, findings, and theoritical implications. In T.B. Brazelton & M. Yogman (Eds.), Affective development in infancy (pp.95-124). Norwood, NJ : Ablex.
Powell, B, Cooper, G., Hoffman, K., & Marvin, B. (2014). The Circle of Security Intervention : Enhancing attachment in early parent-child relationships. New York : Guilford Press.