title: Attachment-related biases in adolescents' memory.
abstract: Attachment theorists propose that individuals' internal working models influence their social information processing. This study explored links between attachment representations and social information processing by examining adolescents' (n = 189; Mage  = 16.5 years) attachment-related memory biases. Participants completed laboratory tasks assessing memory for (a) emotionally salient childhood events, (b) adjectives describing their parents, and (c) generalized parent-related characteristics not specific to their own parents. As expected, dismissing attachment (assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview) was linked across tasks to a deactivating strategy in which memory for emotional childhood events and attachment-relevant stimuli was reduced. In contrast, evidence that preoccupied attachment was linked to a hyperactivating strategy in which memory was heightened emerged only in relation to emotional childhood events.
authors.affiliation: State University of New York at Oswego.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Dykas
authors.forename: Susan S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Woodhouse
authors.forename: Jason D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Jude
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cassidy
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009769:Object Attachment; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012938:Social Perception