Elsevier

The Arts in Psychotherapy

Volume 67, February 2020, 101612
The Arts in Psychotherapy

Children’s attachment representations: A pilot study comparing family drawing with narrative and behavioral assessments in adopted and community children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2019.101612Get rights and content

Highlights

  • •

    Children’s disorganized classifications assessed by Family Drawings (FD) and the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST) were associated.

  • •

    Correlations among continuous scores on FD and MCAST were found.

  • •

    In adoptees, FD insecurity/disorganization negatively correlated with MCAST mentalizing.

  • •

    Children’s attachments measured by FD and SRP were not correlated.

Abstract

This study compared an attachment-based coding system for family drawings with narrative and observational attachment measures in adopted children and those living with their natural parents (“community-based”) in Italy. Attachment patterns of 41 children (ages 5–8) were assessed by: a graphic measure, the Family Drawing (FD); a narrative measure, the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST); and an observational measure, the Separation-Reunion Procedure (SRP). In the community sample, a significant association emerged between the FD and MCAST disorganized vs. organized classifications, and a number of expected correlations between the FD Global Scales and the MCAST Coherence and Mentalizing continuous scales were found. In the adopted group, some FD Global Scales linked with insecure and disorganized representations revealed negative correlations with the MCAST Mentalizing scale. No correlations were found between the children’s FD and SRP classifications and scales in both groups. The FD attachment-based coding system revealed a particular capacity to assess attachment representations during childhood capturing closely both insecure and disorganized patterns, both in adopted and community children. A special focus was put on the measurement of disorganization, as reflected in one drawing classified as disorganized.

Section snippets

Measuring attachment in childhood

Attachment theory was first developed by John Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) and Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; see Bretherton, 1992) and it focused on the importance of the first experiences within the relationship between child and caregiver, that is, the person who offers care, support and protection, who may not necessarily be the child’s biological mother (Bowlby, 1969). Bowlby suggested a “hierarchy model” implying that only one caregiver, typically the mother, is the

Family drawing and attachment theory

Within attachment theory, Kaplan and Main (1986) were the first to use the FD as a tool for capturing children’s attachment representations. In their pioneering work, these authors developed a coding system for systematically evaluating FD productions with this in mind. The coding system is comprised of a checklist of 24 individual drawing features, such as the child positioned far apart from the mother or crowded or overlapping figures, and leading to four attachment classifications: secure,

Participants

Forty-one children were recruited: 29 children adopted after four years of age (late-adopted) and 12 children being raised by their natural parents (“community children”). Selection criteria were: children aged between 5 and 8 years, without special needs, from middle-class families (to which most of the adoptive families in Italy belong; Commissione per le Adozioni internazionali CAI, 2017), with parents married and living together.

At the time of the assessment, both the adopted and community

Descriptive results and preliminary analyses

Table 1 shows the four-way distribution (A, B, C, and D) based on the children’s FD, MCAST, and SRP, for the separate adopted and community groups.

Since some other studies have found sex differences in distribution of attachment classifications for the MCAST (Del Giudice, 2008) and the FD (Behrens & Kaplan, 2011), we also examined sex differences in both groups. However, a series of chi square tests revealed that children’s gender was not associated either with secure vs. insecure or D vs.

Discussion and conclusions

This study endeavored to deepen understanding of the FD’s attachment-based coding system by comparing the attachment classifications assessed through this tool with those captured by a narrative and an observational attachment-based measure. To do so, we collected data from samples of community-based and children adopted after four years of age (a group considered at risk for insecure and/or disorganized attachment patterns).

Our first hypothesis, that children’s attachment classifications and

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgements

We want to thank all those who have helped in carrying out this research, especially all the families and their children who participated in the project.

References (82)

  • K.Y. Behrens et al.

    Japanese children’s family drawings and their link to attachment

    Attachment & Human Development

    (2011)
  • F. Bellagamba et al.

    Re-enactment of intended acts from a video presentation by 18- and 24-month-old children

    Cognitive Processing

    (2012)
  • D. Benoit

    Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome

    Paediatrics & Child Health

    (2004)
  • G. Bosmans et al.

    Attachment in middle childhood: Progress and prospects

    New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development

    (2015)
  • M.A. Bouchard et al.

    Mentalization in adult attachment narratives: Reflective functioning, mental states, and affect elaboration compared

    Psychoanalytic Psychology

    (2008)
  • J. Bowlby
    (1969)
  • J. Bowlby
    (1973)
  • J. Bowlby
    (1980)
  • I. Bretherton

    The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth

    Developmental Psychology

    (1992)
  • I. Bretherton et al.

    Children’s attachment-related self-worth: A multi-method investigation of post-divorce preschoolers’ relationships with their mothers and peers

    Attachment & Human Development

    (2013)
  • I. Bretherton et al.

    Assessing internal working models of the attachment relationship

    Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research, and Intervention

    (1990)
  • E.A. Carlson et al.

    The construction of experience: A longitudinal study of representation and behavior

    Child Development

    (2004)
  • R. Carr-Hopkins et al.

    Assessing attachment in school-aged children: Do the School-Age Assessment of Attachment and Family Drawings work together as complementary tools?

    Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry

    (2017)
  • J. Cassidy

    Child-mother attachment and the self in six-year-olds

    Child Development

    (1988)
  • J. Cassidy et al.

    Handbook of Attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications

    (2016)
  • L. Clarke et al.

    Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is associated with attachment insecurity

    Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry

    (2002)
  • Commissione per le Adozioni internazionali CAI

    Dati e prospettive nelle Adozioni Internazionali. Rapporto sui fascicoli dal 1° gennaio al 31 dicembre 2017

    (2017)
  • L. Corman

    Le Test dudessin de familledans la pratiquemèdico-pèdagogique

    (1967)
  • P.A. Cowan et al.

    Attachment theory: Seven unresolved issues and questions for future research

    Research in Human Development

    (2007)
  • P.M. Crittenden

    School-age assessment of attachment coding manual

    (2005)
  • P.M. Crittenden et al.

    Administering the school-age assessment of attachment

    (1999)
  • C. Cyr et al.

    Attachment security and disorganization in maltreating and high-risk families: A series of meta-analyses

    Development and Psychopathology

    (2010)
  • D.H. Dallaire et al.

    The family drawings of at-risk children: Concurrent relations with contact with incarcerated parents, caregiver behavior, and stress

    Attachment & Human Development

    (2012)
  • M. Del Giudice

    Sex-biased ratio of avoidant/ambivalent attachment in middle childhood

    British Journal of Developmental Psychology

    (2008)
  • L.M. Dunn et al.

    Peabody picture vocabulary test - revised

    (1981)
  • I. Fihrer et al.

    Maternal state of mind regarding attachment. Maternal depression and children’s family drawings in the early school years

    Attachment & Human Development

    (2009)
  • G. Fury

    The relation between infant attachment history and representations of relationships in school-aged family drawings

    (1996)
  • G. Fury et al.

    Children’s representations of attachment relationships in family drawings

    Child Development

    (1997)
  • A. Gernhardt et al.

    Children’s family drawings as expressions of attachment representations across cultures: Possibilities and limitations

    Child Development

    (2016)
  • A. Gnazzo et al.

    The intergenerational impact of trauma: Individual, family and community implications

  • L. Goldner et al.

    Children’s family drawings: A study of attachment, personality, and adjustment

    Art Therapy

    (2011)

    • Cited by (11)

    • Ecological momentary assessment of parent-child attachment via technological devices: A systematic methodological review

      2023, Infant Behavior and Development

    • Drawings from a play-based intervention: Windows to the soul of rural Ugandan preschool children's artistic development

      2022, Arts in Psychotherapy
      Citation Excerpt :

      Behrens and Kaplan (2011) examined Japanese children’s drawings; Gernhardt et al. (2016) assessed children’s family drawings in both Cameroon and Germany; and Jin, Chung, and Hazen (2018) focused on Korean children’s drawings. These studies demonstrated unique cultural and gender differences among their samples and further validated family drawings as a useful and culturally sensitive method for understanding children’s attachment representations (Pace et al., 2020). Of course, some authors (e.g., Packer, 2017) have identified Western cultural assumptions pervading the attachment construct, making children’s drawing coding systems based on the assessment of attachment quality problematic for some, especially when used in non-Western contexts.

    • Attachment theory: Definition of constructs and clinical use of tools in the field of child protection

      2023, Psicologia Clinica dello Sviluppo

    • Uncovering the Mental World of Children: Attachment Quality, Mental State Talk, and Children’s Drawings

      2023, Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy

    • Family drawing for assessing attachment in children: Weaknesses and strengths

      2022, Frontiers in Psychology

    • Representation of Friendship and Aggressive Behavior in Primary School Children

      2022, Frontiers in Psychology
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text
    © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.