The significance of attachment security for children's social competence with peers: a meta-analytic study
Groh and colleagues pooled eighty samples, covering more than four thousand children, to ask how much early attachment predicts how well a child gets on with other children later. Security was associated with better peer competence, at a small to moderate size, and, importantly, the association did not weaken depending on how much later competence was assessed. Each of the insecure classifications was associated with lower peer competence, with the resistant and disorganised patterns showing somewhat stronger associations than the avoidant one. The comparison the paper was designed to make is the useful part: attachment security predicted peer competence more strongly than it predicted internalising problems such as anxiety and depression, though not more strongly than it predicted externalising problems. That pattern suggests early attachment is more informative about the social skills a child brings to other relationships than about their later symptoms, which is a narrower and better supported claim than attachment is often used to make.
Groh and colleagues pooled eighty samples, covering more than four thousand children, to ask how much early attachment predicts how well a child gets on with other children later. Security was associated with better peer competence, at a small to moderate size, and, importantly, the association did not weaken depending on how much later competence was assessed. Each of the insecure classifications was associated with lower peer competence, with the resistant and disorganised patterns showing somewhat stronger associations than the avoidant one. The comparison the paper was designed to make is the useful part: attachment security predicted peer competence more strongly than it predicted internalising problems such as anxiety and depression, though not more strongly than it predicted externalising problems. That pattern suggests early attachment is more informative about the social skills a child brings to other relationships than about their later symptoms, which is a narrower and better supported claim than attachment is often used to make.
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Groh, A. M., Fearon, R. P., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., Steele, R. D., & Roisman, G. I. (2014). Attachment and Human Development, 16(2), 103-136. 80 samples, N = 4,441, security and peer competence d = 0.39. And Fearon, R. P., et al. (2010), Child Development, 81(2), 435-456, 69 samples, N = 5,947, externalising d = 0.31.
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2014.883636
DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2014.883636