Predictability of Attachment Behavior and Representational Processes at 1, 6, and 19 Years of Age: The Berkeley Longitudinal Study.

This chapter summarizes the current findings from the Berkeley longitudinal study of attachment. Here we describe what we have learned to date regarding the attachment-related trajectories taken by 42 participants in our sample, and report striking overall predictability of behavioral, representational, and linguistic processes from infancy to 6 years, and then to 19 years of age. We trace these developments separately via initial infant ‘attachment category’ (“secure,” “insecure-avoidant,” or “insecuredisorganized”1; see category descriptors below), and when possible, we refer as well to the continuous scales associated with the Strange Situation and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). At the time of this writing, a handful of cases have yet to be analyzed, and therefore only the simplest of tests have been conducted, and no exact statistics can yet be given. Our longitudinal study began with the assessment of attachment in infancy, utilizing Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure. Although laboratory-based, this procedure had its origins in Ainsworth’s early adherence to the traditions of ethology, which focus upon the behavior of organisms in their natural environments. Thus, well prior to devising the Strange

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