Emotion dialogues between mothers and children at 4.5 and 7.5 years: relations with children's attachment at 1 year.
It was examined whether secure infant-mother attachment contributes to emotionally congruent and organized mother-child dialogues about emotions in later years. The attachment of 99 children was assessed using the Strange Situation at the age of 1 year and their emotion dialogues with their mothers were assessed at the ages of 4.5 and 7.5 years. Dialogues were about past emotional events and separation of a child from parents, and were classified into an emotionally matched group or 1 of 3 non-emotionally matched groups. Security in infancy was associated with emotionally matched dialogues at the age of 4.5; there was moderate stability in dialogues between 4.5 and 7.5 years; and infant attachment predicted dialogues at 7.5 beyond the prediction offered by age 4.5 dialogues.
Oppenheim
David
D
Center for the Study of Child Development, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel. oppenhei@psy.haifa.ac.il
Koren-Karie
Nina
N
Sagi-Schwartz
Abraham
A
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D011939:Mental Recall; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014705:Verbal Behavior