Attachment Stability From Infancy to Adulthood: Meta-Analysis and Dynamic Modeling of Developmental Mechanisms
Fraley tested the two competing accounts of how early attachment relates to later attachment. The prototype account holds that early representations persist and continue to influence behaviour throughout life. The revisionist account holds that they are updated by new experience, so that the early pattern may or may not survive. He built mathematical models of each process and tested them against longitudinal data assembled by meta-analysis. Two findings follow. Attachment security is moderately stable across the first nineteen years of life, neither fixed nor freely revisable. And the shape of that stability over time fits the prototype model better, meaning early representations appear to keep exerting influence rather than being progressively overwritten. The distinction matters because the two accounts predict the same correlation over short intervals and different patterns over long ones, which is what the modelling exploits. This vault cites it whenever the question is how much of infant attachment survives into adult life.
Fraley tested the two competing accounts of how early attachment relates to later attachment. The prototype account holds that early representations persist and continue to influence behaviour throughout life. The revisionist account holds that they are updated by new experience, so that the early pattern may or may not survive. He built mathematical models of each process and tested them against longitudinal data assembled by meta-analysis. Two findings follow. Attachment security is moderately stable across the first nineteen years of life, neither fixed nor freely revisable. And the shape of that stability over time fits the prototype model better, meaning early representations appear to keep exerting influence rather than being progressively overwritten. The distinction matters because the two accounts predict the same correlation over short intervals and different patterns over long ones, which is what the modelling exploits. This vault cites it whenever the question is how much of infant attachment survives into adult life.
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Fraley, R. C. (2002). 'Attachment stability from infancy to adulthood: meta-analysis and dynamic modeling of developmental mechanisms.' Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6(2), 123-151. Observed stability age 1 to age 1.5: r = .32 across 896 infants, which is about a tenth of the variance. Observed stability age 1 to age 19: r = .27 across 218 people in total, with individual studies ranging from r = .10 to r = .50. The frequently quoted r = .39 is a model-estimated asymptote rather than an observed correlation.
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0602_03
DOI: 10.1207/S15327957PSPR0602_03