The Development and Impact of Attachment in Middle Childhood: A Cognitive Script and Learning Theory Approach.

Middle childhood is increasingly recognized as a relevant developmental period for attachment. Although research on attachment in middle childhood has increased, several gaps remain in our understanding of attachment development and its impact. Research points to substantial changes in attachment during middle childhood. However, it is unclear which mechanism can explain these developmental changes. In view of the developmental changes in attachment during the middle childhood period, it is important to investigate the impact on children’s development. The current project further investigates the development and impact of attachment in middle childhood. For this purpose, we approach attachment as  caregiving experiences (i.e., the secure base script) that develops through conditioning processes that are under the control of neurobiological processes. Building on script theory that posits that cognitive scripts first learned in a rudimentary form and with more experiences become more elaborated, research objective 1 investigates changes in the cognitive organization of secure base scripts. Results showed a shift in the organization of secure base script knowledge that indicates that secure base script knowledge becomes increasingly nuanced and elaborated. To help explain changes and stability in attachment, we conducted a learning experiment to investigate whether initially learned can be updated in response to changes in supportive parenting and subsequently reactivated by changes in the context (research objective 2). Results suggested that trust could be updated and subsequently reactivated by changes in physical or temporal context. To help individual differences in attachment development, we examined whether variations in the neurobiological responses implicated in attachment modulate the impact of supportive parenting on children’s attachment development (research objective 3). We found that children that were more responsive to reward updated their trust faster in response to increase in supportive caregiving experiences and slower in response to decreases in supportive caregiving experiences (research objective 3a). Results also indicated that a stronger cortisol stress response attenuated the association between anxious attachment and supportive parenting (research objective 3b). Overall, these findings suggest that variations in the neurobiological substrates of attachment learning could affect children’s susceptibility to supportive parenting on their attachment development. To better understand the impact of attachment in middle childhood, we examined protective effects of secure base script knowledge against the impact of a stressful family environment on externalizing problems (research objective 4). Results suggest that secure base script knowledge can mitigate the impact of the accumulation of family stressors on children’s externalizing problems.