Mother-infant interaction and quality of child's attachment: a nonlinear dynamical systems approach.
The traditional classification of infant attachment described three distinct types  (Ainsworth et al. 1978): Secure (B), Insecure-avoidant (A), and Insecure-resistant (C).  Research shows that the quality of infant attachment reflects the child's history of  interaction with their primary caregiver and, therefore, maternal sensitivity and  appropriateness of maternal responses during the first year of life has been found  to predict infant attachment. In this study Nonlinear Dynamic Systems (NDS) approach was  applied to broaden the study of maternal sensitivity into the overall temporal organization  of mother-infant relationship exchanges. The study focuses on understanding the differences  between secure and insecure attached children by applying NDS in two temporal scales: real  time and a developmental scale, with the notions of 'flexibility' and 'self-organization',  respectively. Infants, classified as securely or insecurely attached at 15 months, had free-play  situations with their mothers, at 6 and 12 months of age, videotaped and coded in real time.  Results showed that at 6 months dyads from the B group, compared to the non-B group, showed higher  flexibility through several NDS indices derived from the State-Space Grid method (SSG).  The dyads at 12 months did not show differences in those indices. Moreover, B group showed  self-organization by decreasing the number of attractors, from 6 to 12 months of infant's age,  in contrast with A and C groups that either showed less self-organization, by increasing the  number of attractors, or stayed basically as they were at 6 months. Furthermore, the B group  showed an increase in the proportion of attractors with higher values from time 1 to time 2,  in contrast to the non-B groups. Findings provide some grounds for using a SSG approach to  deepen the construct of maternal sensitivity in dyadic terms.
University of Valencia, Spain. angeles.cerezo@uv.es
M Angeles
MA
Cerezo
Rosa M
RM
Trenado
Gemma
G
Pons-Salvador
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D009769:Object Attachment