This monograph examines the interplay between behavioral and cognitive
representations of attachmet during early childhood. We track the
continued development of secure base support and use while assessing
maternal co-construction processes and thier joint impact on children's
secure base behavior and attachment representations. First, our
investigation establishes that smoothly interacting dyads have mothers
who continue to provide secure base support and children who use them as
secure base across early childhood (mother sensitivity-child security
links). Furthermore, the patterning of children's secure base behavior
when interacting with the mother is related to the structure of
children's knowledge about secure base relationships. Second, we
introduce mother co-construction skills and evaluate their impact on the
mother child relationship. Using two different co-construction tasks, we
scored maternal co-construction in terms of skills that promote secure
base script knowledge. Both tasks were related to maternal AAI coherence
and attachment script knowledge. In addition, studies showed that
maternal co-construction skills make unique contributions to both child
secure base behvior and child script knowledge. Findings support the
hypothesis that mothers' cognitive/verbal co-constructive skills during
conversations about attachment and emotion-laden situations play a key
role in organization of children's attachment behavior and
representations. Finally, we demonstrate that maternal script knowledge
not only impacts children's script knowledge (intergenerational
transmission), but guides mothers' expectations and judgements of
mother-child interactions. Throughout this monograph, we stress the
importance of an interpersonal approach when investigating attachment
relationships during early childhood, where mother-child interactions
and communication about attachment-related issues are considered key to
unveil co-constructive processes involved in the child's behavioral and
cognitive organization of attachment relationships.
