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LIBRARY
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled
Attachment Security and Peer Acceptance

as Predictors of Internal Working Models
in Middle Childhood

presented by
Michelle Toma—Harrold

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. m¥mem Psychology

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or professor

Date Mm !/ 2000

"(VII-n.1,]? r l ‘ r1 Inr . u . . 0-1 1

 

PLACE IN REIURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
To AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

F

DWIDUE Oi.

DATE DUE

DATE DUE

 

JUN 2 7 2002

 

 

u 13 2004
mitt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11/00 chlRClDateDue.p65—p.14

 

 

ATTACHMENT SECURITY AND PEER ACCEPTANCE AS PREDICTORS OF
INTERNAL WORKING MODELS IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

By

Michelle Toma-Harrold, MA.

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Psychology

2000

ABSTRACT

ATTACHMENT SECURITY AND PEER ACCEPTANCE AS PREDICTORS OF
INTERNAL WORKING MODELS IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

By

Michelle Toma-Harrold

Attachment theorists emphasize the importance of children’s relationships with
their parents, especially mothers, in children’s social development (Bowlby, 1988).
Several theorists have suggested that internal working models integrate information about
other signiﬁcant relationships into existing models which contain information about
parental relationships (Troy & Sroufe, 1987; Cohn, 1990; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994).
The nature of these other social experiences gathered throughout development may be
either consistent or inconsistent with the nature of the information about parental
relationships already contained in the child’s developing internal working model. Many
researchers have referred to these “social experiences gathered throughout development”
and to “model conﬁrming and disconﬁrming social experiences”, yet have not deﬁned the
nature of these social experiences, nor have they investigated the impact of different
social experiences on the ways children think about relationships. One potential naturally
occurring source of model-conﬁrming and disconﬁrming social experiences involves
children’s relationships with peers. The focus of this research study is on the differential
impact of these two types of relationships (attachment to parents and acceptance by peers)

on the ways children interpret the behavior and intentions of others.

The subjects in this study were 126 male and female children, ages 9 - ll,
attending the 4th and 5th grades. Children were asked to complete a series of
questionnaires including peer nomination inventories, a measure of preoccupied and
avoidant coping styles in their relationships with their mothers, a measure of felt security
in their relationships with their mothers, and a hypothetical story measure of intent
attributions.

The results indicated that children’s security of attachment was the largest single
predictor of hostile attributional bias in the parent and peer contexts for the entire sample.
However, in post-hoe analyses, gender differences emerged in the prediction of hostile
attribution bias in the peer context. It was found that boys’ social preference scores
signiﬁcantly predicted hostile attribution bias in the peer context while the effect of
attachment security was marginally signiﬁcant. In contrast, it was found that attachment
security was a signiﬁcant predictor of hostile attribution bias for girls while the effects of
social impact and physical aggression were marginally signiﬁcant in the peer context.
The hypothesis that model-conﬁrming and model-disconﬁrming social experiences
would differentially predict hostile attribution bias in the peer context was not supported.
The results are discussed in terms of their contributions to attachment theory and social

information-processing theory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their part in helping me complete this project, I would like to thank the
following people: The Chair of my Committee, Dr. Alytia Levendosky, for her support
and encouragement, both personally and professionally, and for her conﬁdence in my
tenacity to complete this project (especially during data collection!). Her knowledgeable
guidance and assistance was invaluable throughout all phases of this process and her
feedback on numerous drafts of this manuscript was essential toward creating a polished
product. Dr. Larry Messé, for his statistical guidance and thoughtful advice regarding the
Methods and Results sections in particular. Dr. Gary Stollak for his involvement
throughout my master’s and doctoral education and for his thought-provoking
philosophical and theoretical contemplations. And, Dr. Ellen Strommen for her support
and feedback on this dissertation which facilitated my completion of this project.

I would also like to thank Dr. Gershen Kaufman, whose willingness to supervise
my clinical comprehensive on short notice enabled me to defend my dissertation in a
timely fashion. I am very grateful.

Finally, I would like to give heartfelt appreciation to my parents, Jack and
Dorothy Toma, and to my husband, Phillip Harrold, for their enduring love, support, and
encouragement. A special thank-you to my husband for his incredible patience and
understanding, his unbelievable thoughtfulness, and his willingness to take on more than

his share of the daily responsibilities.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...................................................... vii
Introduction ....................................................... 1
Chapter 1
Literature Review ................................................... 6
Attachment Theory ............................................ 6
The Development of Bowlby’s Attachment Theory .............. 6
Secure Base ............................................. 8
Categorization of Attachment Relationships .................... 9
Correlates of Infant and Toddler Attachment ................... 10
Internal Working Models ................................... 12
Integration of Developmental Relationship Experiences into Existing
Internal Working Models ................................... 14
Attachment and Psychosocial Adjustment ...................... 16
Attachment and Peer Relationships ........................... 18
Attachment and Aggressiveness and Withdrawal ................ 22
Peer Relationships ............................................. 24
Deﬁnitions of Social Status Groups ........................... 24
Behavioral Proﬁles of Social Status Groups .................... 28
Social Status Implications for Psychosocial Adjustment ........... 33
Intent Attributions ............................................. 36
Social Information Processing Theory ......................... 36
Attribution Theory ........................................ 38
Attachment and Intent Attributions ........................... 39
Social Adjustment and Intent Attributions ..................... 42
Chapter 2
Hypotheses ........................................................ 51
Primary Hypotheses ............................................ 51
Secondary Hypotheses .......................................... 56
Chapter 3
Method ........................................................... 60
Participants ................................................... 60
Procedure .................................................... 62
Measures .................................................... 63
Attachment to Mother ..................................... 63
Peer Status .............................................. 67

Intent Attributions ........................................ 7O

Aggression .............................................. 72
Chapter 4
Results ........................................................... 73
Preliminary Analyses ........................................... 73
Tests of Hypotheses ............................................ 75
Hypothesis 1: Prediction of Hostile Attributional Bias in the Parent
Context ................................................. 75
Hypothesis 2: Prediction of Hostile Attributional Bias in the Peer
Context ................................................. 76
Hypothesis 3: Prediction of Hostile Attributional Bias in the Peer
Context by Model-Conﬁrming and Model-Disconﬁrming Social
Experiences ............................................. 77
Secondary Hypotheses 1a - 1e: Gender and Attachment Style
Differences in Physical and Relational Aggression ............... 77
Secondary Hypothesis 2: The Relationship Between Attachment
Security and Social Status .................................. 79
Chapter 5
Discussion ........................................................ 87
Implications of Findings for Attachment Theory ..................... 87
Implications of Findings for Social Inforrnation-Processing Theory ...... 94
Limitations of Study .......... A ...... l ........................... 97
Conclusions .................................................. 99
Appendix A
Coping Strategies Questionnaire .................................. 105
Appendix B
Security Scale ................................................. 114
Appendix C
Peer Nomination Inventory ...................................... 120
Appendix D
Attributional Bias Questionnaire .................................. 125
References ........................................................ l 30

vi

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 - Hypothesized Relationships Between Predictor and Criterion Variables 59
Table 2 - Student Participation by School and Classroom ................... 61
Table 3 - Means and Standard Deviations of Predictor and Criterion Variables . . . 80
Table 4 - Frequencies of Categorical Predictor Variables .................... 81
Table 5 - Correlations Between Main Study Continuous Variables ............ 82

Table 6 - Regression Predicting Children’s Hostile Attributional Bias
In the Parent Context ........................................ 83

Table 7 - Regression Predicting Children’s Hostile Attributional Bias in the
Peer Context ............................................... 84

Table 8 - Hypothesis 3: Cell Means for Hostile Attributional Bias by Attachment
Status and Social Status ...................................... 85

Table 9 - Summary of Chi-Square Analysis: The Relationship Between
Attachment Security and Social Status .......................... 86

vii

INTRODUCTION

Attachment theorists have traditionally emphasized the importance of infants’ and
young children’s relationships with their parents, especially mothers, in children’s social
development (Bowlby, 1988). A child’s attachment to his or her parent is generally
described as being secure or insecure and is said to be reﬂective of the child’s perception
of the parent as available, responsive, and capable of restoring the child’s feelings of
security in potentially threatening circumstances (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969; Ainsworth,
Blehar & Waters, 1978; Bowlby, 1969; Bowlby, 1988). According to Bowlby (1988),
patterns of attachment remain generally stable and become unconscious properties of
individual children. Over time and after repeated experiences with the caregiver, the
child develops an unconscious prototype of the relationship with the parent, labeled an
internal working model, which is hypothesized to inﬂuence later developmental
outcomes, particularly qualities of later social relationships (Bowlby, 1988; Rothbard &
Shaver, 1994; Teti & Nakagawa, 1990; Troy & Sroufe, 1987).

Attachment theorists describe internal working models as by-products of
attachment related experiences that include affective, defensive, and descriptive cognitive
components (Rothbard & Shaver, 1994; Bretherton, 1985; Main, Kaplan & Cassidy,
1985). Internal working models are said to function as heuristics for anticipating and
interpreting the behavior and intentions of others, govern feelings toward parents and
about the self, and aid in planning behavior toward parents and other signiﬁcant ﬁgures
(Berman & Sperling, 1994; Bowlby, 1988; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994). Furthermore, they

1

may inﬂuence future interactions by providing frameworks for interpersonal
understanding and guidelines for responding (Miller, 1993).

Bowlby (1988) theorized that a gradual updating of working models occurs over
time in response to new information. Several theorists have suggested that throughout
development internal working models integrate information about other signiﬁcant
relationships into existing models which contain information about parental relationships
(Troy & Sroufe, 1987; Cohn, 1990; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994). In this way, internal
working models consolidate information about social experiences gathered throughout
development (Rothbard & Shaver, 1994).

The nature of these other social experiences gathered throughout development
may be either consistent or inconsistent with the nature of the information about parental
relationships already contained in the child’s developing internal working model.
Consistencies between a child’s experiences with parents and with others may conﬁrm
expectations about the world (model-conﬁrming social experiences), which in turn may
strengthen internal working models and, thus, the stability of attachment patterns across
the lifespan (Jacobsen & Wille, 1986; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994). On the other hand,
inconsistencies between experiences with parents and others may disconﬁrrn a child’s
expectations for social relationships (model-disconﬁrming social experiences) and may
result in changes to the internal working model (Miller, 1993).

Many researchers have referred to these “social experiences gathered throughout
development” and to “model conﬁrming and disconﬁrming social experiences”, yet we
have little valid information about the nature of these social experiences or the impact of

2

differential social experiences on internal working models or subsequent attachment
patterns. In part, this is due to a lack of reliable and valid measures of attachment during
middle childhood and adolescent developmental periods (Finnegan, Hodges & Perry,
1996). Fortunately, two such measures have recently been developed that, when used in
combination, assess children’s attachment relationships with their parents in middle
childhood (Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996; Kerns, Klepac & Cole, 1996).

In children, one potential naturally occurring source of model-conﬁrming and
disconﬁrming social experiences involves their relationships with peers. Model-
conﬁrming experiences would include children who are securely attached to parents and
who are popular, or at least who are not experiencing peer difﬁculties as well as children
who are insecurely attached who are either rejected or neglected by peers. Model-
disconﬁrming experiences, then, would include children who are securely attached to
their parents who are experiencing either rejecting or neglecting peer difﬁculties as well
as by children who are insecurely attached to their parents who are popular or who are not
experiencing peer problems (i.e. average children). The focus of this proposed research
study will be on investigating the differential impact of these two types of relationships
(variations in attachment to parents and variations in acceptance by peers), particularly in
model-disconﬁrming circumstances, on one aspect of information hypothesized to be
contained in internal working models -- the anticipation and interpretation of the
behavior and intentions of others.

Social-information processing theory has independently focused on the
anticipation and interpretation of the behavior and intentions of others in investigations of

3

children’s attributions of others’ intentions, particularly in the peer context. However,
this research has been less concerned with the developmental bases for social information
processing skills in general and intent attributions in particular. Although recently
researchers have begun to note potential connections between family relationships and
children’s social-information processing skills, potential family contributions to these
skills have not been well studied in this literature (Cassidy, Scolton, Kirsh & Parke, 1996;
Crick & Dodge, 1994; Quiggle, Garber, Panak & Dodge, 1992).

The proposed study attempts to integrate attachment theory and social
information-processing theory, which to date have been relatively separate theoretical
perspectives. This study will add to the attachment literature by beginning to explore
how children’s relationships with their parents combine with later peer experiences to
inﬂuence children’s social knowledge as contained in internal working models. The
aspect of social knowledge thought to be contained in children’s internal working models
that will be the focus of this investigation are children’s intent attributions towards both
parents and peers. This study will augment the social information processing literature
by beginning to explore potential developmental precursors to children’s attributional
tendencies. To date, the social information processing literature has all but ignored
potential familial contributions to children’s social information processing skills,
including attributional styles. Although recently the social information processing
literature has begun to mention possible developmental foundations, such as internal

working models, researchers have lacked a developmental focus in their empirical work.

In the pages that follow, this literature review will discuss the relevant attachment,
peer relationship, and social-information processing literature. A rationale for this
study’s hypotheses will be presented in conjunction with a listing of the hypotheses. The
procedures for selecting and grouping subjects, data collection, and a description of the
measures of the independent and dependent variables will then be discussed in the
Methods section. The statistical analyses which were used to test the hypotheses will be
described in the Results section. Finally, the results are discussed in terms of their impact
on attachment theory and social information-processing theory in the Discussion section.
The clinical implications of the ﬁndings are explored and directions for future research

are suggested.

Chapter 1

LITERATURE REVIEW

Attachmemlhm
DmﬂevelopmenthfﬂowlbylsAttachmetheou. The modern

conceptualization of attachment was developed by Bowlby (1951) as a reaction to Spitz
and Wolf’s (1947) work regarding the effects of maternal deprivation on children raised
in orphanages. Bowlby was asked by the World Health Organization to report on the
mental health aspects of maternal deprivation experienced by orphaned children. His
observations and completed report laid the groundwork for the theory of attachment.
Over a period of several years, Bowlby reﬁned his theory into a form that closely
resembles attachment theory as it is known today (Bowlby, 1969).

Attachment theory developed out of four main theoretical traditions
(psychoanalysis, ethology, control-systems theory, and cognitive theory), each of which
provided an important part of Bowlby’s overall conceptualization of attachment (Bowlby,
1988). Bowlby disagreed with the prevailing psychoanalytic theory of the time which
hypothesized that the relationship between infant and mother developed from the
mother’s role in providing the infant with food. Along with his own observations, he was
inﬂuenced by two important ethological reports which included Lorenz’s (1935; as cited
in Bowlby, 1988) work that showed a strong bond could form between a mother gosling
and her ducklings in the absence of parental feeding behavior and Harlow &
Zimmermann’s (1959; as cited in Bowlby, 1988) report that Rhesus monkeys preferred a

6

soft cloth dummy “mother” to a wire mother that provided food. Thus, from ethology
came the mainstay of Bowlby’s theory of attachment, namely the notion that strong social
bonds develop between adults and young of a species distinct from either feeding
behavior or sex, in order to facilitate the development of reciprocal interaction patterns
over time. The development of object relations theory allowed for the psychoanalytic
emphasis on the special nature of the relationship between a caregiver and infant which is
necessary for the development of attachment. Control-systems theory provided the
foundation for Bowlby’s conceptualization of attachment as a behavioral system which
implies a homeostatic organization as the adaptive regulatory mechanism for maintaining
the infant’s close proximity to the caregiver. Finally, the concept that infants develop
internal working models of their caregiver(s) was supplied by cognitive theory which
then facilitated the development of Ainsworth’s (1978) procedure for assessing infant
attachment and for theoretical extrapolation beyond infancy.

Taken together, the existing theoretical notions described above were woven into
a complex theory of the attachment process (Bowlby, 1988). The attachment process is
best described as “an adaptive behavioral system with limits that concern the infant’s
proximity to signiﬁcant others” (Bowlby, 1988). The major feature of attachment, the
control system, is hypothesized to maintain homeostasis by using increasingly
sophisticated methods of communication for keeping distance from and accessibility to
the attachment ﬁgure within acceptable limits. In an evolutionary sense, then, attachment
behaviors serve the function of bringing the infant and caregiver into some degree of
proximity. Separation of the infant from the caregiver signals to the infant increased risk

7

of danger and activates the behavioral system which brings the infant into closer
proximity to the caregiver, thereby reducing the risk of perceived danger.

As attachment behaviors are conceptualized as reducing perceived increased risk
of danger, they are generally observed when stressful or threatening conditions are
present. It is especially under these circumstances that the adaptive function of
attachment behavior is apparent; closeness to the attachment ﬁgure reduces the threat of
physical and psychological harm and increases the infant’s likelihood of survival.
Ainsworth expanded this notion and added the emphasis that the set goal of the
attachment behavioral system was not the maintenance of proximity, per se, but the
young child’s feelings of security, which interact with the setting to activate or terminate
attachment behavior.

Secureﬂase. The goal of felt security is attained by the infant’s use of the
caregiver as a secure base. Security and exploration needs are balanced through the
attachment behavioral system which regulates the proximity of the infant to the mother
until the infant is developmentally able to recognize danger signals on his/her own.
Attachment behavior, then, succeeds in attaining or maintaining proximity to a caregiver
who is perceived as more capable of coping with the world which results in feelings of
security and a valuing of the relationship with the caregiver. Thus, the infant may wander
away from the caregiver to explore the world for increasingly longer periods of time and
distance, yet returns to the caregiver for reassurance of felt security, particularly when
conditions signal increased risk of danger to the infant. Upon returning to the caregiver
as secure base, the infant’s level of felt security is restored and exploration may begin

8

again in the absence of a real threat. The infant’s use of the caregiver as a secure base
gives the infant the needed autonomy to accomplish developmental tasks within a
comfortable distance from the caregiver who is in reach and able to restore feelings of
security when time and/or distance away from the caregiver or perceived potential
dangers exceeds the set limits of the attachment system. The phenomenon of the secure
base led Ainsworth and her colleagues (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969; Ainsworth, Blehar &
Waters, 1978) to develop the Strange Situation as a means of assessing the quality of
infant-caregiver attachment.

CategorizationofAttachmentRelatinnships. Categorization of infants’
attachment relationships in the Strange Situation is based on observations of the infants’
utilization of their mothers in stressful circumstances and on infants’ use of their mothers
as secure bases for exploration in non-stressful conditions. Ainsworth and her colleagues
described three different attachment types: secure, resistant (anxious-ambivalent), and
avoidant. Secure infants make up approximately 70% of those tested in the Strange
Situation. Securely attached infants exhibit positive reunion behaviors and few
proximity-avoidant, angry, or resistant behaviors when reunited with their mothers after a
brief separation. Resistantly attached infants comprise approximately 10% of those tested
and display both positive reunion behavior and angry and resistant behaviors when
reunited with their mothers. Finally, avoidantly attached infants constitute approximately
20% of those infants tested in the Strange Situation. They tend to ignore and avoid their

mothers upon reunion.

Evidence from longitudinal studies indicates that although there is some
instability across time in the actual attachment behaviors observed in the Strange
Situation, there is substantial stability in the tripartite classiﬁcation of attachment patterns
(Rosenblith, 1992). Stability estimates range from 96% between infants and their
mothers over a six month period (Waters, 1978) to 81% for fathers and 73% for mothers
over a period of several months (Main & Weston, 1981). Longer time periods yield
similar results. For example, Grossman & Grossman (1991) reported 87% convergence
between attachment categories in infancy and at six years old, although continuity in
attachment categorization was stronger with mothers than fathers. When changes in
attachment classiﬁcation did occur, they paralleled changes in life situations. The
occurrence of stressful life events and changes in family circumstances inﬂuences the
stability of the caregiving environment, thus inﬂuencing stability in attachment behavior
(Rothbard & Shaver, 1994).

CorrelatesdlnfantandloddlenAttachmem. Several investigations show that
these attachment categories are related to infants’ and toddlers’ social development in
meaningful ways. For example, in a compilation of ﬁndings from several studies,
Rosenblith (1992) concluded that securely attached children, compared to those who are
insecurely attached, were more friendly and cooperative with both peers and adults and
were less afraid of strangers. Furthermore, infants’ attachment to their mothers was
related to conﬂict behavior with mothers and to infants’ responsiveness to a strange adult
(Main & Weston, 1981). In their study, ﬁfty-seven percent of infants classiﬁed as
insecure with their mothers exhibited conﬂict behavior in a play session with their

10

mothers compared to only 4% of securely attached infants. In the same study, infants
who were securely attached to their parents demonstrated greater relatedness to an adult
stranger than did insecurely attached infants, as judged by trained observers. Matas,
Arend, and Sroufe (1978) reported that children rated as securely attached at 18 months
were more enthusiastic, persistent and compliant, and displayed more positive and less
negative affect, and were less aggressive at 24 months than were toddlers rated as
insecurely attached.

In the preschool setting, toddlers rated as insecurely attached were observed to be
more dependent, requested more physical contact, and received more guidance and
discipline from teachers than did securely attached toddlers (Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake,
1983). Troy & Sroufe (1987) reported that in toddlerhood, avoidant attachment was
associated with victimization while a secure attachment history was associated with
nonvictirnization. In particular, they reported that each dyad in which victimization was
present was composed of a victimizer with an avoidant attachment history and a victim
who was insecurely attached (either avoidant or resistant). No dyads where victimization
occurred included a child with a secure attachment history. These ﬁndings were
supported for girls by a later study in which young girls (4 to 5 years old) who were
classiﬁed as avoidantly attached were rated as more difﬁcult to deal with and as having
more peer problems than were girls classiﬁed as securely attached (Fagot & Kavanagh,
1990)

Not only is attachment predictive of the child’s behaviors; it also predicts others’
perceptions of and reactions to the target child. For example, Waters, Wippman, and

11

Sroufe (1979) reported that securely attached preschoolers were most likely to be leaders
and were sought out as interaction partners. Insecurely attached preschoolers were more
likely to be rated by teachers as highly dependent, noncompliant, and socially
incompetent. It is important to note that in Waters et a1. (1979) sample, mothers were not
present when the behavioral ratings were made. The authors concluded that because
mothers were not present, internal individual factors, not maternal contingencies, were
responsible for the observed behavioral differences between securely and insecurely
attached children.

IntemalﬂorkingModels. It appears to be the internal factors discussed above,
labeled internal working models, that form the link between attachment in infancy and
childhood and attachment in adolescence and adulthood (Bowlby, 1988; Rothbard &
Shaver, 1994; Teti & Nakagawa, 1990). Bowlby (1988) theorizes that internal working
models persist over time, are “taken for granted”, and become unconscious. Over time,
patterns of attachment remain generally stable and become properties of the individual
children, themselves. According to Bowlby, the form of the internal working model is
based on a child’s real life experiences of interaction with parents. Internal working
models have been described as by-products of attachment related experiences that include
affective, defensive, and descriptive cognitive components (Rothbard & Shaver, 1994;
Bretherton, 1985; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). They act as heuristics for
anticipating and interpreting the behavior and intentions of others, govern feelings toward
parents and about the self, and aid in planning behavior toward parents and other
signiﬁcant ﬁgures (Bowlby, 1988; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994; Berman & Sperling, 1994).

12

Thus, prototypes of relationships are developed which are hypothesized to inﬂuence later
developmental outcomes, particularly qualities of social relationships (Troy & Sroufe,
1987).

Each attachment style is hypothesized to be associated with a unique combination
of working models (Bartholomew, 1990). Securely attached children are likely to have
formed working models of their parents as responsive and accessible and of themselves
as being worthy of love. Because of the positive nature of their internal working models,
they may be more likely to engage in peer interactions with a set of optimistic
expectations and to anticipate positive reactions from them. Resistantly attached children
are likely to have formed internal working models of their parents as inconsistently
responsive and available and, therefore, may anticipate unpredictable peer interactions
which they approach with anxiety, hesitancy, and impulsiveness. Finally, avoidantly
attached children may have formed working models of their parents as unresponsive,
rejecting, and unavailable, and may therefore anticipate rejection from peers which may
increase their reliance on hostile and aggressive interactional styles (Cohn, 1990).

In infancy, attachment to a parental ﬁgure is measured by observations of the
infant’s behavior in the Strange Situation. Attachment during toddlerhood and early
childhood may be measured similarly, or with a newer rating technique, the Q-set; the
emphasis in measuring attachment is on the infant or young child’s behavior usually in
the context of a separation or reunion from the primary caregiver. Internal working
models, however, have been conceptualized as the cognitive representation(s) of
information about the attachment relationship(s). Once communication by language

13

(and/or reading skills) have been reasonably well developed, it is possible to assess not
only behavior, but the individual’s own perceptions of a given attachment ﬁgure. Thus,
internal working models are measured differently, through the use of self-report measures
in middle childhood through adulthood which emphasize cognitive perceptions and
expectations which are part of the internal working model. The use of self report
instruments to measure internal working models is indicative of the notion that working
models are representative of the attachment relationship from one individual’s (i.e. the

child’s) perspective (Arrnsden & Greenberg, 1987).

 

WorkingModels. Several theorists have suggested that throughout development internal
working models integrate information about other signiﬁcant relationships with
information about parental relationships (Troy & Sroufe, 1987; Cohn, 1990; Rothbard &
Shaver, 1994). Bowlby (1988) suggested that gradual updating of working models
occurs over time in response to new information. Rothbard & Shaver (1994) concluded
that internal working models appear to mediate the relationship between attachment
history and subsequent personality development by consolidating information about
social experiences gathered throughout development. To the extent that differences in
attachment relationships elicit differential social responsiveness, this differential
treatment may conﬁrm expectations about social interactions, which in turn strengthens
internal working models and, thus, the stability of attachment patterns across the lifespan
(Jacobsen & Wille, 1986; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994). Similarly, internal working models
may change through the experience of model-disconﬁrming social experiences.

14

However, many researchers have referred to these “social experiences gathered
throughout development” and to “model conﬁrming and disconﬁrming social
experiences”, yet we have little valid information about the nature of these social
experiences or the impact of differential social experiences on internal working models or
subsequent attachment patterns. In part, this is due to a lack of reliable and valid
measures of attachment during middle childhood and adolescent developmental periods
(Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996). In children, one potential naturally occurring source
of model-conﬁrming and disconﬁrrning social experiences involves their relationships
with peers. Model-conﬁrming experiences would include children who are securely
attached to parents and who are popular, or at least who are not experiencing peer
difﬁculties as well as by children who are insecurely attached who are either rejected or
neglected by peers. Model-disconﬁrming experiences, then, would include children who
are securely attached to their parents who are experiencing either rejecting or neglecting
peer difﬁculties and as children who are insecurely attached to their parents who are
popular or who are not experiencing peer problems (i.e. average children). The focus of
this project will be on investigating the differential impact of these two types of
relationships, particularly in model-disconﬁrming circumstances, on the contents and
function of one aspect of internal working models, the anticipation and interpretation of
the behavior and intentions toward others (i.e. attributional bias). However, attachment to
parents and peer experiences are related and a bias toward model-conﬁrming peer
experiences is expected (Pettit, Dodge & Brown, 1988;_Cohn, 1990; Downey, Lebolt &
Rincon, 1995).

15

AttachmemranstychosocialAdjustment. Attachment measured both
predictively in infancy or toddlerhood and concurrently in middle childhood or
adolescence has been shown to be related to later psychosocial adjustment and peer
relationships during middle childhood and adolescence. Attachment to parents is related
to school adjustment for both children and adolescents (Cohn, 1990; Hazan & Hunt,
1997). Six year-old boys who were insecurely attached to their mothers were less well-
liked by peers and teachers and were rated by teachers as less competent and as having
more behavior problems than secure boys (Cohn, 1990). Hazan and Hunt (1997)
longitudinally investigated the relationship between attachment and psychosocial
adjustment to the transition to college (across the ﬁrst year) in late adolescents. They
reported that both before and after the freshman year transition to college, subjects who
rated themselves as securely attached were functioning better and had adapted better to
the transition to college than had insecurely attached individuals. Furthermore,
immediately after leaving home securely attached subjects reported feeling worse on
many psychosocial variables (loneliness, depressive symptoms, anxiety, psychosomatic
symptoms) and did not report feeling better on any psychosocial variables. They
(securely attached subjects) also reported the most rapid recovery aﬁer the transition to
college of the three attachment-style groups. Interestingly, insecurely attached
individuals reported initial improvements in functioning immediately after leaving home,
experienced declines in functioning throughout the school year, and functioned more
poorly on a long-term basis (across the ﬁrst year of college) including proportionally
more health clinic visits throughout the school year (88% of the avoidant group vs. 80%

16

ambivalent group vs. 46% secure group) than they had before the transition to college and
compared to the secure group.

Attachment is also related to internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems
in middle childhood and adolescence (Arrnsden & Greenberg, 1987; Cohn, 1990;
Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry, 1996; Hodges & Finnegan, 1990; Kobak & Sceery, 1988).
In general, insecurely attached individuals exhibit higher levels of both internalizing and
externalizing behaviors than did securely attached subjects, as measured by both self- and
teacher-reports. Distinctions between the two insecure groups have been reported, but
with less consistency than the insecure-secure comparisons. In general, however,
resistant attachment styles have been associated with increased internalizing problems,
most notably anxiety and depression, compared to both securely and avoidantly attached
individuals (Hazan & Hunt, 1997; Kobak & Sceery, 1988). Avoidant attachment has
been associated with increased externalizing difﬁculties (Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry,
1996; Kobak & Sceery, 1988), decreased internalizing problems (Finnegan, Hodges, &
Perry, 1996), and overt hostility (Hazan & Hunt, 1997) compared with securely and
avoidantly attached children.

Finally, attachment to parents and to peers is related to overall perceptions of life
satisfaction in adolescence (Arrnsden & Greenberg, 1987; Hazan & Hunt, 1997;
Osbourne, Cooper, & Shaver, 1993). Annsden & Greenberg (1987) reported that
adolescents who were securely attached to their parents had higher self-esteem and
reported greater satisfaction with themselves than did insecurely attached subjects. Those
who were securely attached to their peers also reported higher self-esteem and greater

l7

overall life satisfaction than did those who were insecurely attached to peers. Two later
studies also found that securely attached individuals reported greater life satisfaction
(Hazan & Hunt, 1997; Osbourne, Cooper, & Shaver, 1993).

Some researchers have hypothesized that differences in social support may
mediate the relationship between attachment style and psychosocial adjustment (Arrnsden
& Greenberg, 1987; Osbourne, Cooper, & Shaver, 1993). This hypothesis has received
some initial support. Arrnsden & Greenberg (198 8) reported that securely attached
subjects were more likely to seek social support and they desired signiﬁcantly more
sharing of important concerns with others than did insecurely attached subjects. Social
network deﬁciencies and decreased likelihood to have a romantic parurer were reported as
correlates of the insecurely attached group in another study (Osbourne, Cooper, &
Shaver, 1993). This study examined the social support mediation hypothesis and found
evidence that secure-insecure differences in psychosocial adjustment were in part
accounted for by differences in social support. There was also preliminary evidence that
network deﬁciencies were more strongly linked to maladjustment among ambivalently
attached adolescents compared to avoidantly attached adolescents.

AttachmentandlleeLRelationships. As early social and emotional experiences
occur within the family context, it is understandable that the quality of the parent-child
relationship would serve as guides or templates for children’s peer relationship
development (Burks & Parke, 1996; Cohn, 1990). In fact, one study reported 72%
agreement between categorical assignment to secure and insecure attachment groups on
parent and peer attachment measures (Arrnsden & Greenberg, 1987). The literature

18

regarding the relationship between parental attachment and subsequent peer relationships
indicates that attachment inﬂuences children’s cognitive perceptions of peer relationships
as worthwhile (Cohn, 1990), children’s social competence and social status (Cohn, 1990;
F agot & Kavanagh, 1990; Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983), and
children’s social problem-solving styles (Burks & Parke, 1996; Parke & Waters, 1989;
Petit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988; Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Petit, 1992).

There have been few studies about the relationship between attachment and
children’s perceptions of relationships as inherently pleasing. Cohn (1990) appears to be
the ﬁrst to attempt to address this interesting issue. Cohn reported that insecurely
attached boys assigned lower liking ratings to classmates and desired less contact with
classmates that did securely attached boys. This ﬁnding is consistent with the literature
on attachment and social support in adolescence discussed earlier which indicated that
securely attached individuals were more likely to seek out social support and desired
signiﬁcantly more sharing of serious concerns with others than did insecurely attached
adolescents (Arrnsden & Greenberg, 1987; Kobak & Sceery, 1988; Osbourne, Cooper, &
Shaver, 1993).

There is much more overwhelming evidence regarding the inﬂuence of
attachment to parents on children’s social status and social competence. There is ample
support for the notion that attachment to parents is moderately predictive of children’s
experience of peer rejection and victimization (Petit, Dodge & Brown, 1988). In general,
secure attachment to parents is associated with peer popularity and non-victimization
(Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983; Troy & Sroufe, 1987) while insecure attachment to

19

parents is consistently associated with peer rejection and victimization (Cohn, 1990;
Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry, 1996; Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983). One study reported
that 67% of rejected boys were insecurely attached compared to only 28% of boys in a
non-rejected group (Cohn, 1990). The emergent pattern of insecure attachment and peer
rejection and/or victimization is dramatically illustrated when children’s relationships are
viewed dyadically (Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983). In their study regarding play dyads
with non-familiar peers, no dyads with at least one securely attached child had
victimization occur while 83.4% of play pairs consisting of two insecurely attached
children evidenced victimization. Furthermore, one hundred percent of play pairings
which included at least one child with avoidant attachment and a second child with either
avoidant or ambivalent attachment exhibited victimization, while no remaining pairs
(including two ambivalently attached or at least one securely attached child) experienced
victimization, indicating a strong relationship between avoidant attachment and
victimization.

Examinations of relationships between attachment and children’s social
competence provides some insight into the established moderate relationship between
attachment and social status. In general, securely attached children are rated as more
socially competent than insecurely attached children (Cohn, 1990; Kobak & Sceery,
1988; Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983). Fagot & Kavanagh (1990) reported that girls
classiﬁed as avoidantly attached were more difficult to deal with and had more difﬁculty
with peers based on teacher reports and in-class observations. Insecure attachment is also
related to increased dependency on teachers, seeking more physical contact with them,

20

and receiving signiﬁcantly more guidance and discipline from them compared with
securely attached children (Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983). It is important to note that in
this study, although all children sought teacher attention, the insecurely attached children
did so in signiﬁcantly more negative and less effective ways and sought more help in self
and social management than did securely attached children. Insecure attachment is also
associated with a hovering peer group entry style (Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry, 1996).
Dyadically, mother-child attachment was related to play behavior of best friend pairs
during free play (Parke & Waters, 1989). In this observational study, best friend dyads
consisting of two securely attached children evidenced more harmonious and responsive
play and fewer controlling behaviors than did dyads including at least one insecurely
attached child. The authors concluded that stylistic aspects of social competence, rather
than content of peer play as had been previously suggested, may be most closely related
to attachment.

One hypothesized link between attachment to parents and social competence with
peers is children’s social problem-solving style (Burks & Parke, 1996; Parke & Waters,
1989; Petit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988; Weiss, Dodge, Bates, & Petit, 1992). Attachment to
parents was related to both the overall number of solutions and the number of prosocial
solutions generated to hypothetical problems situations (Petit, Dodge, & Brown, 1988).
As would be expected, securely attached children generated a signiﬁcantly greater
number, and also more prosocial solutions to the hypothetical situations. In best friend
play dyads, secure-secure dyads did not experience less conﬂict that secure-insecure
dyads, but resolved their conﬂicts using more prosocial and effective conﬂict resolution

21

strategies, such as negotiation (Parke & Waters, 1989). Secure-insecure best friend dyads
used more direct and less effective strategies, such as grabbing toys from one another.
Insecure-insecure dyads were not studied.

Finally, there is some evidence to suggest that attachment-related functions are
transferred from parents to peers during middle childhood to late adolescence (Hazan &
Zeifman, 1994). Hazan & Zeifman identiﬁed four components of attachment
relationships which included proximity seeking, safe haven, separation protest, and
secure base phenomena. They found that attachment functions transfer from parents to
peers, component by component, in the order listed above. They reported that all
children were peer-oriented for proximity seeking behavior. A shift from parents to peers
occurred beginning at age 8 and completed at age 14 in preferring peers as safe-havens,
which they deﬁned as comfort and reassurance seeking. Parents continued to be
preferred as secure bases and targets of separation protests until serious romantic
relationships were developed in late adolescence.

AttachmentandAggressmencssandlbbthdrawal. Another factor inﬂuencing the
relationship between attachment to parents and social status is the relationship between
attachment and aggression and attachment and social withdrawal. Consistent ﬁndings
indicate that insecurely attached children tend to be more aggressive or more anxious and
withdrawn than securely attached children (Cohn, 1990; Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry,
1996; Lyons-Ruth, 1996; Lyons-Ruth, Alpem, & Repacholi, 1993). Although these
results may seem contradictory, the picture becomes clearer when insecure attachment is
divided into its three general categories (avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized). In

22

general, avoidant attachment to parents is consistently positively associated with
increased externalizing problems (Hodges & Finnegan, 1995) and with aggressiveness,
dishonesty, disruption, and immaturity and negatively associated with internalizing
problems (Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry, 1996). Ambivalent attachment to parents is
generally associated with the absence of aggression (Hodges & Finnegan, 1995) and with
increased anxiety and withdrawal (Hazan & Hunt, 1997). This ﬁnding is not always the
case as one study reported that ambivalently attached boys were perceived as markedly
more aggressive than secure boys while avoidantly attached boys were only marginally
signiﬁcantly more aggressive than securely attached boys (Cohn, 1990). Nonetheless, the
prevailing notion in the bulk of the literature is that avoidant attachment is associated
with aggression while ambivalent attachment is associated with anxiety and withdrawal.
There is new interest in the third insecure attachment category, disorganized
attachment. This fairly new attachment category was created based on researchers’
observations that some children did not clearly ﬁt into avoidant or ambivalent attachment
categories, yet seemed to begin to evidence avoidant or ambivalent attachment behaviors
which were halted mid-stream (Bowlby, 198 8). Thus far, the two studies that examined
the relationship between disorganized attachment to parents and aggression or withdrawal
have been promising. The ﬁrst study in the series reported that disorganized infant
attachment was the strongest single predictor of hostile behavior towards peers (Lyons-
Ruth, Alpem, & Repacholi, 1993). In this study, 71% of preschoolers rated as hostile
were classiﬁed as having a disorganized attachment toward parents. Furthermore, hostile
preschoolers were six times more likely to be classiﬁed as disorganized than as securely

23

attached. This study received later support in a sample of school-aged children (Lyons-
Ruth, 1996). The robust results of these two studies may provide clues to the somewhat
inconsistent results found regarding avoidantly and ambivalently attached children,
although more studies than not result in similar conclusions that avoidantly attached
children display more hostile and aggressive behaviors than do securely attached or
preoccupied children.

Although attachment to parents and peer experiences are signiﬁcantly related, the
relationship is by no means a perfect association. Subsequent peer experiences may tend
to be similar to children’s experiences with their parents; however, the possibility exists
that they may also be very different from experiences with parents. It is with these
continuities and discontinuities in mind that I now turn to a discussion of children’s peer
experiences. The majority of literature in this area conceptualizes peer experiences in
categorical terms of children’s acceptance or non-acceptance by peers, termed social
status. Examining children’s social status in comparison to children’s attachment to their
parents will provide information regarding potential sources of model-conﬁrming and
model-disconfuming social experiences which are likely to inﬂuence the development of
internal working models.

PeerReIationships

DeﬁnrtronsnﬂSocraLStatrrLGmups. When discussing children’s social status
(acceptance or non-acceptance by peers) a distinction must ﬁrst be made between a
child’s level of acceptance in the peer group (“Is the child liked”?) and the child’s
behavior which may be related to his/her acceptance by the group (“What is the child

24

like”?; Parker & Asher, 1987). In the context of deﬁning social status groups, the focus
is on whether or not the child is liked by peers rather than on child behavior
characteristics related to placement in social status categories.

Determining the level of a child’s peer acceptance depends on the use of
acceptance-related and/or rejection-related peer ratings or nominations. In general,
examining both acceptance-related and rej ection-related peer perceptions is preferable to
acceptance-related perceptions alone as the combination is more descriptive and allows
for ﬁner distinctions between social status groups to be made (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli,
1982; Asher & Dodge, 1986; French, Waas & Tarver-Behring, 1986).

In deﬁning social status groups, two dimensions of a child’s effect on the peer
group are important to consider: social preference and social impact (Coie, Dodge, &
Coppotelli, 1982). Social preference is deﬁned as how much a child is generally liked or
preferred as a play partner by the peer group. It is measured as the child’s level of
acceptance (liking) minus the child’s level of non-acceptance (disliking). It is positively
predicted by positive constructs including being supportive of peers and being physically
attractive and negatively predicted by peers’ perceptions of a child as disruptive,
unattractive, and, for eighth graders only, by not ﬁtting in with peers. Coie & Dodge
(1983) reported that social preference remained stable across a 5-year period.

Social impact is the level of the child’s inﬂuence on the peer group, either positive
or negative (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982). That is, social impact represents the
extent to which the child is “visible” to the peer group in terms of his or her positive or
negative effect on peers. It is measured by summing the child’s liking (acceptance) and

2S

disliking (non-acceptance) scores. In contrast to social preference, social impact is
positively predicted by peers’ perceptions of both positive and negative indicators
including being supportive of peers and being a leader, disrupting the group, starting
ﬁghts, getting into trouble with the teacher, and, for eighth graders only, being picked on
by peers. Coie & Dodge (1983) reported that social impact was somewhat less stable
than social preference; social impact remained stable across time periods of three years or
less.

When social preference and social impact are considered together, ﬁve social
status groups emerge labeled popular, rejected, controversial, average, and neglected
(Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982). Children in the popular social status group have high
social preference scores and average social impact scores. That is, popular children are
well-liked by peers, tend to be named as preferred play partners, and have a moderate
impact on their social group (due to high liking ratings added to low disliking ratings).
At the opposite end, rejected children have low social preference scores and average
social impact scores. Children in the rejected group tend to be actively disliked by peers,
rejected as play partners, and have an average social impact on other children (due to low
liking ratings added to high disliking ratings). Children in the controversial group appear
to combine aspects of both popular and rejected children, although they clearly do not
belong to either group. Controversial children have high social impact scores (many
liking and disliking nominations) and average social preference scores (Coie, Dodge &
Coppotelli, 1982) as they tend to receive mixed evaluations from classmates (Coie &
Dodge, 1988). Thus, controversial children are at the same time liked and disliked by

26

classmates and have a substantial inﬂuence on peer group interactions (due to the effects
of both positive and negative interactional inﬂuences). Children in the average group are
aptly labeled. Average children have intermediate social preference scores and
intermediate social impact scores. Although they receive average ratings and some
nominations from peers, they are not actively liked nor are they actively disliked and they
tend to have an average level of social impact on peers. Finally, children in the neglected
social status group have intermediate social preference scores and low social impact
scores. Neglected children, as with average children, are not actively liked or disliked by
peers. In contrast to average children, neglected children tend to be less “visible” to the
peer group and have little inﬂuence on other children (few liking and few disliking
ratings).

Coie & Dodge (1983) conducted a ﬁve-year longitudinal study of the stability of
social status categories. Overall, they concluded that although variability existed, social
status in year ﬁve was signiﬁcantly positively related to social status in year one. The
rejected subgroup was the most stable; 45% of children classiﬁed as rejected in year one
were so classiﬁed in year ﬁve. The neglected subgroup was the least stable with only
25% of children being classiﬁed as neglected alter a one year period.

Coie & Dodge (1983) also reported the patterns in direction of status changes for
each of the social status categories. Children who were popular in year 1 were most
likely to either remain popular or change to average status in year 5. Popular children in
year 1 were less likely than chance to become rejected in year 5 (only 5% did so).
Rejected children tended to shiﬁ their social status in one of three ways over the ﬁve year

27

period: 30% remained rejected, 30% became neglected, and 36% became average. Given
this data, it appears that majority (30% + 30% = 60%) of rejected children continued to
experience some type of peer difﬁculty over a ﬁve year period. Children who were
rejected in year 1 were less likely than chance to be popular in year 5 (3%). Of the
children who were neglected in year 1, 24% remained neglected ﬁve years later, 45%
became average, and 24% became popular. Children in the controversial status group at
year 1 were most likely to become either popular or rejected in year 5. Finally, average
children at year 1 were most likely to remain average or to become popular ﬁve years
later.

BehavroralProﬁlesnfSocraLStatusﬁmups. The weight of the literature suggests
that distinctive patterns of behavior exist for each of the status groups and that these
patterns are consistent over several age groups (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982; Coie &
Dodge, 1983; Coie & Dodge, 1988; Dodge, 1983; French, 1988; French & Waas, 1985).
These behavioral patterns are concurrently related to children’s social status and are
predictive of children’s social status one and ﬁve years later, particularly for aggressive
behaviors (Coie & Dodge, 1983). To date, it appears that there are no long—term
longitudinal studies which have examined how the stability of children’s social status is
related to or predictive of subsequent behavioral characteristics. In general, as would be
expected, popular children tend to be more prosocial than children in the other social
status groups as rated by peers and are rated by teachers as the most prosocial group
(Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982; Coie & Dodge, 1988; Cantrell & Prinz, 1985).
Compared to other groups they are viewed as cooperative and as leaders (Coie, Dodge &

28

Coppotelli, 1982), are described by peers as nice and liked by everyone (Cantrell & Prinz,
1985), have a greater likelihood of having friends and best ﬁiends, and have the highest
number of friendships (Parker & Asher, 1993).

Children in the rejected social status group are the most well-studied because of
concern about their “at risk” status (Parker & Asher, 1987). Children in this group appear
to be the least well-adjusted compared to the other social status groups and tend to
display many different problem behaviors at home and in school (French & Waas, 1985;
Vosk, Forehand, Parker & Rickard, 1982). French & Waas (1985) reported that on the
Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), rejected children on average scored greater than the
90th percentile (the clinical range) on three subscales including Social Withdrawal,
Hyperactivity, and Delinquency. As a group, their average scores on the other clinical
subscales ranged ﬁom the 78th to ”the 88th percentiles, in the borderline clinical range.
Compared to children in the other social status groups, rejected children had the highest
number of total behavior problems, were the most aggressive, and the most hostily
isolative. According to peers and teachers, rejected children are viewed as signiﬁcantly
more aggressive, disruptive, bossy, immature, and restless than other social status groups
except for the controversial children, signiﬁcantly less prosocial than other groups except
for neglected children, and are rated'by teachers as having greater academic difﬁculties
and more isolative behavior than other groups (Coie & Dodge, 1988; Cantrell & Prinz,
1985; Dodge, Coie & Brakke, 1982; Dodge, 1983). They are less likely to report having
friends and best friends, they have the fewest number of friends, report less validation and
caring within their friendships, have more difficulty resolving conﬂicts with friends, and

29

report more conﬂict and betrayal in friendships than do well-accepted children (Parker &
Asher, 1993).

The increased aggressiveness of children in the rejected social status group
relative to the other groups has also recently been supported for girls (Crick & Grotpeter,
1995). Crick & Grotpeter theorized that the type of aggression displayed is consistent
with a person’s (in this context, a child’s) salient goals. A consistent ﬁnding in the
literature is that boys are more overtly physically and verbally aggressive than girls.
Crick & Grotpeter theorize that this ﬁnding is consistent with salient goals for boys
which tend to include physical dominance and instrumentality and suggests that forms of
aggression relevant to girls have not been accurately conceptualized and assessed. In
contrast, salient goals for girls include the development of close, intimate relationships.
Therefore, these researchers theorized that girls’ aggressive behavior would be directed
toward these relational issues (i.e. relational aggression) including excluding peers from
groups, withdrawing friendship in order to hurt or control others, and spreading rumors,
with the overarching goal of damaging peer relationships. The authors found that the
concept of relational aggression was relatively distinct from overt aggression and was
related in the theorized ways to gender (signiﬁcantly more girls than boys were classiﬁed
as being relationally aggressive). Furthermore, they found that rejected and controversial
status girls exhibited the highest levels of relational aggression, similar to the pattern
French & Waas (1985) and Coie & Dodge (1988) have reported for verbal and physical
aggression in rejected boys. This study highlights the importance of considering
relational aggression when assessing children’s, particularly girls’, peer relationships.

30

French (1988), has challenged the prevailing notion that the majority of rejected
boys are aggressive. Using cluster analysis, he identiﬁed two clusters of rejected boys
which he described as aggressive and non-aggressive subtypes. One cluster, the
aggressive subtype of rejected boys, shares the behavioral proﬁle discussed above for
children in the rejected social status group. They tend to be perceived as having more
overall behavior problems, more aggressive and solitary, exhibit higher rates of negative
behaviors and lower rates of positive behaviors, and have less self control than do
children in the other social status groups. The second cluster, labeled the non-aggressive
subtype, experienced peer rejection, but were not signiﬁcantly more aggressive than peers
in the other social status groups. Similar to the aggressive subtype of rejected boys, the
non-aggressive subtype received low teacher ratings of positive behavior and were
withdrawn and involved more often in solitary activity. In contrast to the aggressive
subtype, however, they did not exhibit signiﬁcant behavioral problems or aggression. On
the basis of this data, French (1988) concluded that only approximately ﬁfty percent of
rejected boys exhibited multiple behavior problems and an aggressive behavior proﬁle.
This challenge has received additional support ﬁom a recent study by Parkhurst & Asher
(1992) who also identiﬁed aggressive and non-aggressive subtypes of rejected children.

Parkhurst & Asher (1992) also provided initial support for the existence of a
submissive subtype of socially rejected children. Three subtypes of socially rejected
children were identiﬁed in this study: one subtype characterized by the “usual” aggressive
behaviors, a second subtype characterized by submissive behavior, and a third type which
included children who did not ﬁt into the aggressive or submissive subtypes. Both the

31

rejected-aggressive children and the submissive-rejected children were perceived by their
peers as less cooperative and trustworthy and less able to handle teasing. However, in
contrast to their rej ected-aggressive peers, submissive-rej ected children did not exhibit
high levels of aggressive or disruptive behavior and were not judged to be less kind by
their peers. Furthermore, compared to rej ected-aggressive and average status peers, only
the rej ected-submissive subtype reported feeling lonely and concerned about the
possibility of being humiliated or rejected by peers during after lunch times and between
classes. This classiﬁcation system is further supported by a cluster analysis which
revealed internalizing and externalizing subtypes of rejected children similar to the
submissive and aggressive subtypes proposed by Parkhurst & Asher (1992) (Pope, Silva
& Reda, 1991).

As previously stated, children in the controversial social status group tend to
possess combined features of the popular and rejected groups and this combination is
carried through into their characteristic behavior proﬁle. Similar to popular children, they
are identiﬁed as group leaders, described as cooperative, funny, and good at sports, and
fall between popular and average children on measures of prosocial behavior (Coie,
Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982; Coie & Dodge, 1983; Coie & Dodge, 1988). However, they
have also been described as similar to rejected children in that they are seen as disruptive,
aggressive, prone to anger, active, and are frequently off-task in the classroom (Coie,
Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982; Coie & Dodge, 1988; Dodge, 1983). Controversial children

are also the only group to score below the mean on shyness, leading researchers to

32

conclude that they are “visible, active, and assertive” children (Coie, Dodge &
Coppotelli, 1982).

Children in the neglected group have been described as the “polar opposites” of
children in the controversial group with the exception of similar levels of cooperative
behavior (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982) and are sometimes difﬁcult to distinguish
from the average group except that they receive fewer peer nominations for being helpful
and nice (although they are not perceived as lacking these attributes; Cantrell & Prinz,
1985). They are oﬁen perceived as shy (Coie & Dodge, 1983), are less likely to clown
around and get others to laugh (Cantrell & Prinz, 1985), and engage in more task-
appropriate solitary activity than children in the other social status groups (Coie &
Dodge, 1988; Dodge, Coie & Brakke, 1982). They are perceived as avoidant of
aggression and seem to be generally peaceable, reserved, and less likely to offend peers
than other children (Coie & Dodge, 1988; Dodge, 1983). Because they are less
interactive with peers overall (including both prosocial and aggressive behavior), they
have been described as a “low visibility group” (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982; Coie &
Dodge, 1988). There is some evidence that neglected children do not start out being less
interactive, but become so over time as they experience social rebuffs from peers (Asher,
1983; Dodge, 1983).

SociaLStatusImplicationsforPsychosociaLAdjustmem. In a review of the
literature, Parker & Asher (1987) concluded that children with poor peer adjustment were
at risk for later psychosocial difficulties. Speciﬁcally, Parker & Asher reported three
general conclusions from their review. First, they concluded that, retrospectively,

33

between 28 and 70 percent of adults with psychological disorders have histories of poor
peer relationships. Second, prospectively, they concluded that two variables, low peer
acceptance and aggressiveness, were more consistent predictors of later negative
outcomes than were shyness or withdrawal. Finally, on closer examination of the
predictive pattern for low acceptance and aggressiveness, they reported that low peer
acceptance appeared to be a better predictor than aggression for dropping out of school
before high school graduation while aggressive behavior appeared to be a better predictor
than low peer acceptance for criminal behavior.

Parker & Asher’s (1987) conclusions suggest that children who are both rejected
and aggressive may be at the greatest risk for later maladjustment. Although few studies
have empirically studied this possibility, one study, in particular, lends support to the at-
risk status of rejected-aggressive children (Bierman, n.d.). Bierman followed four
subtypes of children (aggressive and rejected, rejected but not aggressive, aggressive but
not rejected, and neither rejected or aggressive) over a two year period and assessed their
adjustment difﬁculties. She reported that “rejected-aggressive boys fared the worst”.
They were comparable to the aggressive not rejected group in levels of physical
aggression and prosocial behavior, but in contrast boys who were both rejected and
aggressive exhibited addtional conduct problems including being argumentative,
disruptive, and inattentive. Furthermore, Bierman concluded that rejected boys who were
not aggressive appeared to be at low risk for the development of additional conduct

problems, although they remained at moderate risk for continued peer rejection over the

34

two year period. Boys who were both rejected and aggressive were at “considerable risk
for continuing social adjustment difﬁculties”.

Not only do rejected children, particularly rejected-aggressive children, appear to
be at risk for conduct problems (Bierman, n.d.) and dropping out of school (Parker &
Asher, 1987), they also appear to hold inaccurate views of themselves (Asarnow &
Callan, 1985; Patterson, Kupersmidt & Griesler, 1990). Asarnow & Callan (1985)
reported that although rejected children experienced the highest degree of peer problems
compared to the other social status groups, they endorsed equal numbers of positive
statements about themselves as did children from the other social status groups. The
authors suggested that the lack of a difference between rejected children and those from
other social status groups in the valence of their self-statements might be reﬂective of
increased use of denial and decreased willingness by rejected children to acknowledge
and consider negative information about themselves.

Patterson, Kupersmidt & Griesler (1990) examined children’s self-perceptions
compared to teacher reports of their behavior. They reported that rejected children often
overestimated their competence in several important areas whereas none of the children
in the other sociometric groups did. In fact, in this study, children from the other
sociometric groups tended to underestimate themselves including underestimates of their
actual level of acceptance by peers and underestimates of their self-perceived behavioral
competence. In contrast, although rejected children did report overall lower levels of

behavioral and social competence (consistent with teacher reports) they nonetheless

35

reported overestimates of their level of acceptance by peers and of their behavioral
competence (especially rejected-aggressive children).

Evidence also exists that, in addition to holding inaccurate views of themselves,
rejected children also hold distorted views of others and may experience deﬁcits in social
information— processing skills (Asarnow & Callan, 1985; Asher, 1983; Crick & Ladd,
1990; Parker & Asher, 1993). It is possible that the inaccuracies of children experiencing
peer difﬁculties reﬂect an internal working model of the world and other people as hostile
and threatening. This possibility was recently proposed by Dodge & Crick (1994) in a
review of the social information processing literature. One aspect of internal working
models which is likely to be related to both attachment styles and peer experiences is the
models’ function as an heuristic for anticipating and interpreting the behavior and
intentions of others (Berman & Sperling, 1994; Bowlby, 1988; Rothbard & Shaver,
1994). This function, labeled an intent attribution, has been well studied in a relatively
independent avenue of research using social information-processing theory. The
following is a brief review of social information- processing theory, particularly as it
relates to intent attributions. In addition, I will argue that the construct of intent
attributions and attributional biases closely approximates one of the functions of internal
working models, i.e. that they act as heuristics for anticipating and interpreting the
behavior and intentions of others.

IntentAttribmions

SocraLInfonnatranPmcessmgTheory. Social information-processing theory has

its roots in attribution theory and cognitive theory and proposes a series of steps which

36

individuals move through when attempting to understand and react to social situations
(Crick & Dodge, 1994). An earlier version of the social information-processing model
proposed that children (and adults) move through a series of ﬁve steps in a linear and
rigid fashion when attempting to understand and make decisions about social situations
(Dodge, 1986). However, a recent reformulation of the model (Crick & Dodge, 1994)
emphasizes the cyclical nature of social information-processing which acknowledges the
probable non-linearity of processing steps as well as the likelihood that individuals
process information in several domains simultaneously. In addition, the reformulated
model emphasizes the transactional nature of social information-processing including
interactions between existing knowledge and processing at each step as well as
reciprocity between processing and social adjustment.

The reformulated social information-processing model includes six steps
conceptualized to occur both simultaneously and following a logical path from being
presented with a social stimulus through enactment of a behavioral response (Crick &
Dodge, 1994). The ﬁrst step in the reformulated model is the encoding of the internal and
external cues of a given situation. Step two involves the interpretation of those cues
including both causal and intent attributions. After the situation is interpreted, step three
represents the clariﬁcation or selection of a desired goal or outcome for that situation. In
step four, different responses to the situation are either accessed from memory or
constructed (if the situation is novel). Step ﬁve involves making a response decision. In
this step, the potential responses are evaluated in terms of self-efﬁcacy and possible
outcomes and the best one is selected for enactment. Finally, the last step, step six,

37

involves the behavioral enactment of the selected response. The pr0posed study will
focus on step two of the social information-processing model, the interpretation and
representation of situational cues.

AttributionIheory. In step two of the social information-processing model,
situational cues are interpreted and represented in memory (Crick & Dodge, 1994). The
interpretation which takes place represents the individual’s search for the causes of
another’s behavior, labeled an attribution (Dodge & Crick, 1990). Attributions may be
causal, reﬂecting internal/extemal, stable/unstable, or global/speciﬁc interpretations or
they may involve interpretations of the other person’s intentions. According to Aydin &
Markova (1979), the attributional process is generally not engaged when the outcome of
another person’s actions are positive and when that person’s actions are similar to an
average person’s actions in a similar situation because the actions are consistent with
general social expectations. However, when another person’s actions are negative, they
are usually unexpected and therefore attempts are made to explain the “dispositional
qualities of the actor”. In addition, in situations in which information about the cause of
another’s action is unavailable or ambiguous, general assumptions and expectations about
people and their actions are likely to play an important role in the way causal attributions
and inferences about others’ intentions are made. Biases in judging other people’s
intentions as positive or negative probably reﬂect an individual’s previous experiences
with other people (Aydin & Markova, 1979; Crick & Dodge, 1994). However, reliance
on past social knowledge and experiences may lead to ignoring relevant social cues and
contextual factors (called fundamental attributional error), which is likely to result in

38

maladaptive behavioral responses (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge & Crick, 1990). For the
context of the proposed study, attributions are deﬁned as inferences made of another
person’s intent in an interaction. Following Aydin & Markova (1979) and Crick &
Dodge (1994), biases in judging others’ intentions are viewed as reﬂective of
generalizations ﬁ'om previous social knowledge and experience, just the kind of
information that is likely to be contained in internal working models.

AttachmenLandlntentAttrihutions. In general, family contributions to any of the
social information-processing skills have not been well studied. To date, only three
recent studies have investigated the relationship between family variables and children’s
intent attributions. Two of the three studies were based on attachment theory, although
rejecting parental behavior, not attachment, was measured for the period of middle
childhood (Burks & Parke, 1996; Cassidy, Scolton, Kirsh & Parke, 1996; Downey,
Lebolt & Rincon, 1995). Burks & Parke (1996) studied the relationship between
children’s intent attributions toward parents and separately toward peers. The
relationship between children’s attributions of parents’ and peers’ intent was related, but
depended on the type of situation presented. Children’s intent attributions toward their
fathers (but not toward their mothers) and toward their peers during an ambiguous
provocation situation were related to each other. In a mild rejection situation, however,
children’s intent attributions of their mothers (but not fathers) and attributions of their
peers were related. Based on the pattern of ﬁndings, the authors concluded that children
develop representations of family relationships which are used as guides for later
relationships with peers.

39

 

Downey, Lebolt & Rincon (1995) examined the relationship between rejecting
parent behavior (which they deﬁned as hostile and not focused on the child’s needs) and
children’s social information processing. They hypothesized that rejecting parenting
would cause children to be rejection sensitive, which in turn would be related to
children’s expectations of rejection from others, hostile attributions, aggressive behavior,
and interpersonal difﬁculties. The results were consistent with their predictions and they
reported that children who experienced parental rejection expected more rejection by
peers and teachers. The authors concluded that children’s relationships with their parents
have implications for children’s expectations in social situations outside of the home.

Finally, Cassidy, Scolton, Kirsh & Parke (1996) explored the connection between
children’s attachment representations and peer-related representations in three age
groups. They reported that attachment was signiﬁcantly related to preschoolers’ reports
of their behavioral responses following an ambiguous peer provocation story, their
opinion on whether or not the actor should be punished, and their expectations of their
mothers’ responses to the hypothetical story. However, attachment was unrelated to
intent attributions for preschoolers. Thus, for preschoolers in this study, attachment was
only found to be related to their responses to a hypothetical negative event, but not to
what they thought about that event. For kindergartners and ﬁrst graders, they reported
that securely attached children attributed more positive intent to the peer in the story than
did insecurely attached children. They also reported that attachment signiﬁcantly
predicted children’s peer representations and reciprocal ﬁiendships and that the
relationship between attachment and peer representations was not mediated by reciprocal

4O

friendships. It is important to note that the sample size in this study was small (N = 33
including both boys and girls), reciprocal ﬁiendships were studied, not social status, and
levels of aggression were not considered. For the fourth and ﬁfth graders, parental
rejection, rather than attachment was measured. In this age group, perceived parental
rejection was related to children’s attributions of hostile intent to familiar and unfamiliar
peers. Children’s sociometric status and levels of aggression were not taken into account
in this study.

Taken together, these three studies provide initial support for the idea that
children apply knowledge that they learn from their relationships with their parents to
other social relationships, including relationships with other adults (teachers) and other
children (peer relationships). However, none of the studies measured attachment to
parents in the fourth/ﬁfth grade age group, nor did they examine whether children’s
relationships with their parents continue to predict children’s attributions of a peer’s
intent when the quality of the peer relationship is taken into account. They also neglected
to control for the effects of displayed aggression. This study will add to the literature and
improve on these limitations by directly measuring the attachment relationship, by
accounting for the quality of the peer relationships, and by controlling for the effects of
relational and physical aggression. Therefore, this study will be able to determine
whether children’s attachment to their parents is predictive of their attributions of peers’
intentions over and above what is predicted by the quality of the peer relationship. The
proposed study will also extend this research by examining the relationship between
attachment and children’s intent attributions within the family context. Finally, many

41

researchers have noted the lack of attachment research conducted on children in middle
childhood (Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996). This proposed study will enhance the
attachment literature by investigating the relationship between attachment, children’s peer
experiences, and internal working models as measured by children’s attributional errors
in the period of middle childhood.

SociaLAdjnstrnenLandlntemAttdbutions. The relationship between children’s
social adjustment and their intent attributions has been comparatively well studied. In
this literature, children’s social adjustment has been conceptualized and measured as
sociometric status, aggressiveness, or a combination of both (Crick & Dodge, 1994).
Most of the research attention in this area has focused on rejected, aggressive, and
rejected-aggressive boys, although research on gender differences and girls’ attributional
styles has gained recent attention and indicate that neglected girls may be at risk for
aggressive behavior and hostile attributional biases (Cirino & Beck, 1991; Dodge &
Feldman, 1990; Feldman & Dodge, 1986; Perry, Perry & Rasmussen, 1986). In general,
it is consistently found that aggressive and/or low status children (children who are either
rejected or neglected) demonstrate a hostile attributional bias compared to non-aggressive
and/or high status children (children who are average or popular; Cirino & Beck, 1991;
Crick & Dodge, 1994; Quiggle, Garber, Panak & Dodge, 1992). That is, aggressive
and/or low status children tend to make inferences that an actor is behaving with hostile
intent when the actual intentions of the actor are either positive, ambiguous, or accidental.
One recent study has extended these ﬁndings to depressed children as well (Quiggle,
Garber, Panak & Dodge, 1992). Studies of children’s intent attributions have identiﬁed

42

several factors including qualities of the actor as well as the receiver of the directed action
(Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge & Frame, 1982; Hughes, Robinson & Moore, 1991),
the type of intention (Dodge & Coie, 1987; Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge, Murphy &
Buchsbaum, 1984; Hughes, Robinson & Moore, 1991), the type of situation (Dodge &
F eldman, 1990; Dodge, McClaskey & Feldman, 1985; Feldman & Dodge, 1986; Hughes,
Robinson & Moore, 1991; Waas, 1988), and the situational context (i.e. peers, teacher,
family; Dodge & Price, 1994) as important inﬂuences in children’s intent attributions.
Studies of children’s social status groups as well as studies of aggressive children
repeatedly demonstrate that the target of the directed action is an important determinant
of children’s attributions (Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge & Frame, 1982; Hughes,
Robinson & Moore, 1991). These studies consistently show that children have a greater
bias toward presumed hostility when they are the recipient of the directed action rather
than when they observe an action directed at a peer. Speciﬁcally, aggressive and low
status children (rejected and neglected) presumed greater hostile intent when the intent of
the actor was actually positive or ambiguous when a peer’s behavior was targeted directly
at them. When asked to infer intent from a peer’s behavior directed at another peer,
aggressive and non-aggressive children and low and high status children did not differ in
their attributional tendencies. Dodge & Frame (1982) suggested two possible
explanations for these ﬁndings. They suggested that these ﬁndings may reﬂect either
aggressive and low status children’s expectancies that peers will behave in hostile ways
towards them and not towards other peers or that being involved in an interaction
interferes with aggressive and low status children’s ability to make accurate intent

43

attributions. In the same article, Dodge & Frame (1982) reported ﬁndings consistent with
the ﬁrst hypothesis that low status and aggressive children’s tendency toward a hostile
attributional bias is a reﬂection of their expectancies for peer’s behavior towards them.
They reported that aggressive boys both initiated and received more verbally and
physically aggressive behaviors than did average and non-aggressive children, although
aggressive children initiated more aggressive acts than they received. From these
ﬁndings, it appears that rejected and aggressive children actually experience greater
levels of hostile behavior from others and may thereby come to expect more hostile
behavior from others based on their experience. However, in developmental terms, it still
remains to be determined whether aggressive and rejected children’s attributional biases
precede or result from their experience of receiving greater aggressive behavior from
peers.

In addition to the inﬂuence of whether or not the subject was the target of the
directed action, Dodge & Frame (1982) reported that boys’ perceptions of the actor as
aggressive or non-aggressive also inﬂuenced their intent attributions. In this study, in
situations in which the action was directed at the subject, all boys (regardless of their
aggressiveness or social status) were more likely to make hostile intent attributions if the
actor was perceived as aggressive than if he was perceived as non-aggressive. In part,
this appeared to result from boys’ tendencies to recall intent cues consistent with the label
of the actor as aggressive or non-aggressive.

The type of intention portrayed by the actor is also an important determinant of
the hostility of aggressive and low status children’s attributions (Dodge & Coie, 1987;

44

Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge, Murphy & Buchsbaum, 1984; Hughes, Robinson &
Moore, 1991). It is consistently found that aggressive and/or low status children do not
differ ﬁ'om non-aggressive and/or high status children in their accuracy in recognizing an
actor’s hostile intentions. All children tended to be relatively accurate at identifying a
peer’s actual hostile intent (Dodge & Coie, 1987; Dodge, Murphy & Buchsbaum, 1984).
However, when the peer’s actual intent was either accidental or prosocial, aggressive
and/or low status children made more attributional errors than did non-aggressive and/or
high status children. In addition, the errors made by aggressive and/or low status children
were in the direction of presumed hostility (when the actual intent was obviously
accidental or prosocial). The study by Hughes, Robinson & Moore (1991) illustrates this
point nicely. At the end of their experiment, these authors told participating boys that
another boy had left a coupon for two free movie rentals for them. The experimenter then
asked the participating boys for their attributions of the other child’s intent (why he had
left the coupon). In this real-life situation, boys who were both aggressive and rejected
attributed fewer prosocial intentions and more hostile intentions to the actor than did non-
aggressive-rejected boys, non-aggressive boys, and non-rejected boys. In fact, 74% of
boys in the non-aggressive, non-rejected group attributed positive intention to the actor
whereas only 37% of the rejected-aggressive group attributed positive intentions. The
authors concluded that the tendency of rej ected-aggressive boys to under perceive
prosocial intent may account for differences in prosocial behavior between rejected and

non-rejected boys by causing them to miss opportunities to respond prosocially to peers.

45

The nature of the situation as well as the type of conﬂict portrayed has an impact
on children’s attributional errors (Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge, McClaskey &

F eldman, 1985; Dodge, Murphy & Buchsbaum, 1984; Feldman & Dodge, 1986; Waas,
1988). A consistent ﬁnding in the literature is that, consistent with theoretical predictions
from attribution theory, rejected and/or aggressive boys make more hostile attributions
than high status and/or non-aggressive boys when the peer actor’s intent is ambiguous.
When boys are provided with sufﬁcient social information, all boys regardless of social
status or aggressiveness made similar (accurate) attributions (Waas, 1988). Thus, it
appears that rejected and aggressive children have a tendency toward a hostile
attributional bias; and high status, non-aggressive children have a bias towards inferring
positive or prosocial intentions in ambiguous situations.

Researchers have also noted that low status children do not behave equally
ineﬁ'ectively in all situations (Dodge, Coie & Brakke, 1982). As a result, researchers
have attempted to specify which types of situations result in the greatest social
information-processing differences between high and low status children (Dodge &
Feldman, 1990). Dodge & Feldman (1990) suggested that the greatest differences in
children’s social information-processing skills should occur in potentially stressful or
threatening situations which are crucial for a particular age and gender peer group. They
identiﬁed seven types of situations which are likely to elicit social information-processing
differences between high and low status children in middle childhood. The seven types
of situations they identiﬁed include (1) exclusion by peers, (2) conﬂict resolution, (3)
acquisition of a peer’s object, (4) persuasion and peer manipulations, (5) social

46

comparisons, (6) ﬁiendship initiations, and (7) maintaining and enhancing relationships.
Of these seven situations, peer group entry (friendship initiations and exclusions by
peers) and ambiguous provocations by peers (conﬂict resolutions) have been the most
frequently studied in the intent attribution literature (Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge,
McClaskey & Feldman, 1985; Dodge & Price, 1994; Feldman & Dodge, 1986).

These studies of children’s intent attributions have consistently found the
strongest differences between high and low status children in the ambiguous peer
provocation situation, especially when the experienced provocation is teasing from peers
(Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge, McClaskey & F eldman, 1985; Feldman & Dodge,
1986). Three studies found that in an ambiguous peer provocation situation, low status
children were two times more likely than high status children to make hostile intent
attributions (Feldman & Dodge, 1986; Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Dodge, McClaskey &
Feldman, 1985). These ﬁndings were particularly pronounced in provocations involving
teasing. Studies using peer group entry situations have not reported differences between
attributions made by high and low status children, although other social information-
processing differences are found in this situation with low status children reacting less
competently than high status children on most measures (Dodge & Feldman, 1990;
Dodge, McClaskey & Feldman, 1985; Feldman & Dodge, 1986).

Finally, few studies have been conducted which look at contextual inﬂuences on
the relationship between children’s social status and social information processing
(Dodge, McClaskey & Feldman, 1985; Dodge & Price, 1994). Both studies compared
high and low status children’s social information-processing skills in peer and teacher

47

contexts. However, only one study (Dodge &Price, 1994) examined children’s intent
attributions in these two contexts. Dodge & Price (1994) found age differences, but not
social status differences, in children’s attributions in the teacher context which used
authority demands (staying in at recess, cleaning, etc.) as the hypothetical situation in the
teacher context. Speciﬁcally, they reported that older children were less accurate at
interpreting teachers’ intentions than were younger children because older children
incorrectly assumed that the teachers’ actions were benign. One possible explanation for
the absence of differences between high and low status children in the teacher context is
that the situations involving teachers (authority demands) were different than the
situations involving peers (peer provocation and peer group entry). Perhaps if the
situations in both contexts were analogous, social status differences in intent attributions
toward teachers would have emerged. Interestingly, Dodge & Price (1994) also found
context speciﬁcity for the relationship between peer and teacher contexts. In particular,
they reported that although in the two peer situations (peer provocation and peer group
entry) social information-processing variables predicted behavioral competence cross-
situationally (peer provocation predicted competence at peer group entry and vice versa),
peer group variables and teacher processing variables did not predict across contexts
(peer group variables predicted competence in the peer group context, but not in the
teacher context and vice versa). The researchers concluded that although there appears to
be situational coherence within a context, there appears to be domain speciﬁcity between

contexts, at least as far as peers and teachers are concerned.

48

Taken together, these ﬁndings suggest that high and low status children differ in
their intent attributions particularly in peer situations which are ambiguous, involve
potentially accidental or prosocial intentions, and which are targeted directly at them. In
general, low status and/or aggressive children have demonstrated a hostile attributional
bias in these situations.

Although researchers are now beginning to investigate children’s attributional
biases in other contexts (such as with teachers), research in this area has largely ignored
potential biases in children’s intent attributions within the family context. The proposed
study will improve upon this limitation by including the family context in the assessment
of children’s attributional biases. In addition, several researchers have noted the lack of
research on family contributions to children’s social information-processing skills in the
general literature as well as speciﬁcally regarding family contributions to children’s
attributional biases (Burks & Parke, 1996; Crick & Dodge, 1994; Quiggle, Garber, Panak
& Dodge, 1992). Researchers are just beginning to propose contextual questions such as
efforts at identifying which previous socialization experiences may contribute to the
development of children’s social information-processing patterns. The proposed study
represents an initial attempt to ﬁll the gap in this literature by assessing familial
(attachment) variables in addition to peer adjustment (peer acceptance/social status)
variables which will add to our knowledge about which types of social experiences are
related to children’s attributional biases in two contexts.

Finally, until recently, much of the work on children’s social inforrnation-
processing abilities has focused on boys and, as such, has focused on the relationship

49

between overt physical and verbal aggression, social adjustment, and social inforrnation-
processing abilities. However, with the development of new measures of aggression
which are more sensitive to the types of aggression girls display (Crick & Grotpeter,
1995), it is possible to more accurately examine the role of relational aggression in girls’
information-processing skills. To date, although studies have examined the relationship
between girls’ social status and relational aggression (Crick, Casas & Mosher, 1997;
Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Tomada & Schneider, 1997), no study has investigated the
relationship between relational aggression and girls’ intent attributions. This study
improves upon this limitation in two ways: by including girls in the sample and by
assessing relational aggression, in addition to the more traditional overt aggression
measures. In this way, this study will be able to examine the relationship between

gender, relational aggression, and attributional bias.

50

Chapter 2

HYPOTHESES

This study is an evaluation of attachment theory’s assumption that children’s
relationships with their parents provide frameworks for interpersonal understanding in
part because of the potential for these early relationship experiences to create
expectancies about the nature of future social relationships (Miller, 1990). Following
this, if early attachment relationships do inﬂuence children’s thinking in later social
relationships, then they should be predictive of children’s expectations of other’s
intentions in later social relationships after the quality of those later social relationships is
taken into account. One such type of later social relationship is children’s relationships
with their peers. Children’s relationships with peers may be either consistent with the
internal working models that they have developed through their attachment relationships
to their parents or they may be inconsistent with those internal working models (Jacobsen
& Wille, 1986; Miller, 1993; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994).

PrimarxHprtheses (Please refer to Table 1)
HypothesmLﬂosnleAttrrbrrtronaLBrasmtheEamrlyLontext. Children’s attachment to
parents will be predictive of children’s hostile attributional bias in the family context.
Speciﬁcally, it is hypothesized that children who are less securely attached to their
parents will demonstrate a greater hostile attributional bias in the family context than will

children who are more securely attached. Children’s social status will not add to the

51

prediction of children’s attributional bias in the family context after attachment is
considered.

Rationale. Attachment theorists have suggested that each attachment style is
associated with a unique combination of internal working models (Bartholomew, 1990).
Cohn (1990) theorized that securely attached children are likely to have formed positive
working models of their parents as responsive and accessible and of themselves of being
worthy of love. In contrast, Cohn theorized that insecurely attached children are likely to
have formed generally negative internal working models of their parents as either
inconsistently responsive and available or unresponsive, rejecting, and unavailable.
Therefore, based on theoretical predictions from attachment theory, it is hypothesized that
less securely attached children will infer more hostile intentions in the family context
than will more securely attached children.

In addition, it is hypothesized that children’s peer experiences will not inﬂuence
their hostile attributional biases in the family context after attachment is considered. This
hypothesis is based on the developmental primacy and primary importance placed on
children’s relationships with their parents by attachment theory. Children’s spend
cumulatively more time in their families than with peers and internal working models
ﬁrst develop out of children’s experiences with their parents. To date, no studies have
been conducted with respect to this issue and there is no theoretical basis in attachment
theory to expect that children’s current peer relationships will be predictive of how they

think about their families.

52

".A. u‘ . ' It‘ i‘ .H to g'h‘w "‘ .-l $1.. tu‘u .to no .

AttributionalBiasinjhePeerCnntext. Children’s social status and attachment security
will be predictive of hostile attributional bias in the peer context. Speciﬁcally, it is
hypothesized that children’s attachment security will add to the prediction of hostile
attribution bias in the peer context aﬁer social status is considered.

Rationale. It has been consistently reported in the social information-processing
literature that low status children (neglected and/or rejected) compared to high status
children (popular or average) demonstrate a hostile attributional bias toward peers’
behavior in ambiguous situations (Cirino & Beck, 1991; Crick & Dodge, 1994; Dodge &
Feldman, 1990; Feldman & Dodge, 1986; Perry, Perry & Rasmussen, 1986).
Furthermore, attachment theory hypothesizes that internal working models, as developed
through experiences with parents, provide a foundation for subsequent interpersonal
understanding (Bowlby, 1988; Cohn, 1990; Miller, 1993; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994; Troy
& Sroufe, 1987). If these suppositions are correct, then attachment security should add to
the prediction of interpersonal understanding, in this case as measured by attributional
bias in the peer context, after the quality of existing relationships with peers is taken into
account.

. m a" ' i- : n u. rm“. u- can‘t I": ..| n ..1 .u .o'
AttnbmionalBiasjntheBeerﬁnmm. Children’s relative degree of hostile attributional
bias is hypothesized as follows: children who are securely attached to their parents and
who are popular or average in social status will have the lowest hostile attributional bias
in the peer context, children who are insecurely attached and who are popular or average

53

will have a greater hostile attributional bias in the peer context, children who are securely
attached and who are neglected or rejected will have the next greatest hostile attributional
bias in the peer context, and children who are insecurely attached and who are neglected
or rejected will have the highest hostile attributional bias in the peer context (Please refer
to Table 2). Thus the pattern is as follows: S,P/A < I,P/A < S,N/R < I,N/R.

Rationale. Attachment theory hypothesizes that children’s internal working
models, as developed through experiences with parents, provide frameworks for later
interpersonal understanding which subsequently integrate information about other
signiﬁcant relationships into the existing model (Bowlby, 1988; Cohn, 1990; Miller,
1993; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994; Troy & Sroufe, 1987). In model-conﬁrnring situations,
theorists have posited that children’s internal working models are strengthened and that
information is assimilated into the existing model (Jacobsen & Wille, 1986; Miller, 1993;
Rothbard & Shaver, 1994).

Cohn (1990) has theorized that securely attached children are likely to have
formed working models of others which include a set of optimistic expectations and
expectations of positive reactions from others. In model-conﬁrming situations involving
securely attached children who are not experiencing peer difﬁculties, these positive
models would be strengthened. Thus, securely attached children who are popular or
average are expected to demonstrate the lowest hostile attributional bias in the peer
context because, theoretically, they hold the most positive internal working models for

relationships.

54

Insecurely attached children, on the other hand, are theorized to have formed
working models of others as unpredictable and/or rejecting. Attachment theory predicts
that model-conﬁrming circumstances involving insecurely attached children who are
experiencing peer difﬁculties should result in a strengthened negative working model.
Thus, it is hypothesized that these children will demonstrate the greatest hostile
attributional bias in the peer context since, theoretically, they hold the most negative
internal working models of relationships.

In model-disconﬁrming situations, children experience peer relationships which
are inconsistent with their existing working models of relationships. Under these
conditions, attachment theory predicts that children’s existing internal working models
will be modiﬁed in order to accommodate the new social information. When insecurely
attached children experience model-disconﬁrming peer relationships, attachment theory
suggests that their negative internal working models are likely to be positively modiﬁed.
However, because of the primacy afforded to attachment relationships by attachment
theory, it is thought that the internal working models of these children, although
positively modiﬁed, may continue to contain some negative expectations of others based
on their negative experiences with their parents. In comparison, the originally positive
internal working models of securely attached children are likely to be negatively modiﬁed
when these children experience peer rejection and neglect. In this situation, children may
update their internal working models with the information that although parents do not
behave in an unpredictable or rejecting fashion, other children do. These children may
develop hostile expectations of their peers, although their expectations of their parents

55

would remain unchanged (and positive). Based on these theoretical predictions, it is
hypothesized that insecurely attached children who are popular or average will
demonstrate a smaller hostile attributional bias compared to children who are securely

attached and neglected or rejected.

Seconrhmﬂypotheses

1a. Girls will be perceived as more relationally aggressive than boys while boys
will be perceived as more overtly aggressive than girls.

Rationale. This hypothesis follows directly from recent research ﬁndings on overt
and relational aggression that girls are perceived as more relationally aggressive than
boys and that boys are perceived as more overtly aggressive than girls (Crick &
Grotpeter, 1995; Crick, Cass & Mosher, 1997). This hypothesis is a replication of Crick
& Grotpeter’s (1995) original thesis.

lb. Insecurely attached girls will be perceived as being more relationally
aggressive than securely attached girls.

Rationale. Although relational aggression has not been studied in the attachment
literature, other forms of aggression have been studied with respect to attachment.
Consistent ﬁndings indicate that insecurely attached children tend to be more aggressive
(deﬁned as physically and verbally aggressive) than securely attached children (Cohn,
1990; Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996; Lyons-Ruth, 1996; Lyons-Ruth, Alpern &

Repacholi, 1993).

56

lc. Avoidantly attached girls will be perceived by peers as being more
relationally aggressive than either securely or resistantly attached girls.

Rationale. In addition to the ﬁndings regarding the relationship between security
of attachment and aggression as reported in 1b above, avoidant attachment, compared to
secure and preoccupied attachments, has been associated with increased externalizing
problems (Hodges & Finnegan, 1995) including overt aggression (Finnegan, Hodges &
Perry, 1996). Because of the hypothesized relationship between gender and relational
aggression, girls are the focus of this hypothesis.

1d. Insecurely attached boys will be more overtly aggressive than securely
attached boys.

Rationale. The rationale for this hypothesis is similar to that outlined in
secondary hypothesis 1b above. Consistent ﬁndings in the attachment literature indicate
that insecurely attached children tend to be more aggressive (deﬁned as physically and
verbally aggressive) than securely attached children (Cohn, 1990; Finnegan, Hodges &
Perry, 1996; Lyons-Ruth, 1996; Lyons-Ruth, Alpem & Repacholi, 1993). Consistent
with these ﬁndings, it is hypothesized that insecurely attached boys will be more overtly
aggressive than securely attached boys. Because of the hypothesized relationship
between overt aggression and gender, boys are the focus of this hypothesis.

1e. Avoidantly attached boys will be more overtly aggressive than either securely
or resistantly attached boys.

Rationale. In addition to the relationship between security of attachment and
overt aggression reported in 1d above, avoidant attachment has been associated with

57

increased externalizing problems (Hodges & Finnegan, 1995) including overt aggression
(Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996). Consistent with these ﬁndings, it is hypothesized that
avoidantly attached boys will be more overtly aggressive than either securely attached or
preoccupied boys.

WWW. It is hypothesized
that insecurely attached children will experience greater peer difﬁculties (will be
classiﬁed more often as either neglected or rejected and less often as popular or average)
than securely attached children.

Rationale. There is ample support in the attachment literature for the notion that
attachment to parents is moderately predictive of children’s social status and
victimization (Petit, Dodge & Brown, 1988). In general, secure attachment to parents is
associated with peer popularity and non-victimization (Sroufe, Fox, & Pancake, 1983;
Troy & Sroufe, 1987) while insecure attachment to parents is consistently associated with
peer rejection and victimization (Cohn, 1990; Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry, 1996; Sroufe,
Fox, & Pancake, 1983). In fact, one study reported that 67% of rejected boys were
insecurely attached compared to only 28% of boys in a non-rejected group (Cohn, 1990).

On the basis of these empirical ﬁndings, this hypothesis was made.

58

Table 1

II 1.131.].13 eePl' lC"II'lls

 

 

Model Circumstance Predictor Variables Criterion Variable .
Attachment Peer Status Hostile Attributional Bias
Conﬁrming Secure Popular or Family Context - None
Average Peer Context - None
(Least Hostile)
Insecure Neglected or Family Context - Hostile
Rejected Peer Context - Hostile
(Most Hostile)
Disconﬁrrning Secure Neglected or Family Context - None
Rejected Peer Context - Hostile
(More hostile than (S,
P/A) and (I, P/A) but
less hostile than
(I, N/R))
Insecure Popular or Family Context - Hostile
Average Peer Context - Hostile

 

(More hostile than (S,
P/A) but less hostile
than (S, N/R) and
(I,N/R))

 

59

 

Chapter 3

METHOD

Participants

The participants in this study were 126 male and female children, average age 10
years (range 9 - 11), attending the 4th and 5th grades in three school districts in Michigan
and Georgia (Please refer to Table 2 for a summary of student participation by
classroom). This age group was chosen because previous studies have singled out the
period from age 8 to age 14 as important in the transition from parents to peers as
important attachment ﬁgures (Hazan & Zeifman, 1994). In addition, consistent ﬁndings
in the social information-processing literature have not been reported until aﬁer 3rd grade
(Cirino & Beck, 1991; Dodge & Price, 1994). Finally, children 12 and older were not
studied in order to reduce the potential confounds of puberty and adolescence.

The participants were 52% =65) female and 48% =61) male. Although an
attempt was made to include children from a range of socioeconomic and ethnic
backgrounds, the children were all Caucasian from middle class school districts.
Participants were recruited from classrooms in their school districts, parental consent was
obtained, and measures were administered by this author in classroom groups (see
Procedure). No children who had parental permission refused to participate. However, at
one school a few children did not complete the protocols because the recess bell rang
prior to the end of the testing session. There were no differences on any of the
independent or dependent variables by school afﬁliation.

60

Table 2

SnidentParticipationBLSehooLandﬁlassroom

 

 

School Number of Students Percent
Participation Participating Participation
Bath Elementary 40 66%
Classroom 1 15 75%
Classroom 2 12 60%
Classroom 3 13 65%
Union Street Elementary (1998) 15 50%
Atlanta Speech School 4th Grade 18 66%
Classroom 1 9 100%
Classroom 2 9 100%
Classroom 3 0 0%
Atlanta Speech School 5th Grade 12 80%
Union Street Elementary (1999) 41 67%
Classroom 1 16 53%
Classroom 2 25 82%

61

 

Procedure

Consent letters were distributed by classroom teachers to parents whose children
were attending the 4th or 5th grades in the participating schools. Parents were asked to
sign and return the consent form to allow their children to participate in the study.

An assent form was read aloud to the children and they were asked to give their
assent to participate prior to beginning the study. The importance of the conﬁdentiality
of children’s responses both during and after completion of the questionnaires was
emphasized. Next, the children were asked to complete a series of questionnaires
beginning with a measure of felt security in their relationships with their mothers,
followed by peer nomination inventories, a measure of preoccupied and avoidant coping
styles in their relationships with their mothers, and a hypothetical-story measure of intent
attributions. The measures were presented consistently in this order at the expense of
counterbalancing in order to address some of the schools’ concerns about children’s
anxiety about and discussion of the peer nomination measure if it was presented ﬁrst or
last in the packet. The questionnaires were administered in group format in classrooms
and were read aloud to the children by this author while they followed along and marked
their answers. Total administration time was approximately one hour. Small, school-
related tokens of appreciation, such as pencils and erasers, were given to the students

aﬁer data collection was completed for the day as a thank-you for their participation.

62

Measures

AttachmenttoMother. Two self-report questionnaires were used to assess
children’s attachments to their mothers: the Coping Strategies Questionnaire and the
Security Scale.

The Coping Strategies Questionnaire (Finnegan, Hodges, & Perry, 1996) is a 36-
item self-report questionnaire designed for use with children in middle childhood. The
questionnaire was intended to measure children’s preoccupied and avoidant styles of
relating to their mothers during daily stressful situations. It consists of two 18-item
scales measuring preoccupied and avoidant coping styles. For each item, children are
asked to imagine that they are experiencing the described situation with their mothers and
then to indicate their likely response.

The questionnaire is designed in the Harter-type format (Harter, 1982, as cited
from Finnegan et al., 1996) in which children are presented with two possible responses
to each hypothetical situation. First, children are asked to choose which response they
would be most likely to make. Next, they are asked to determine whether the response
chosen was “really true” or “sort of true” for them. Response choices on the Preoccupied
scale reﬂect a preoccupied choice and a non-preoccupied choice while the response
choices on the Avoidant scale reﬂect avoidant and non-avoidant choices. The non-
preoccupied and non-avoidant choices described children behaving in a more-adaptive
(i.e. securely attached) fashion.

Children’s responses to each item are scored by assigning one of three values (0,
l, or 2) to the response. A value of 0 indicates that the child chose the non-preoccupied

63

or non-avoidant response (indicating that the more adaptive response was either “sort of
true” or “really true” for him/her). A value of 1 indicates that the chosen response was
classiﬁed as preoccupied or avoidant and was “sort of true” for the child. A value of 2
indicates that the chosen response was classiﬁed as preoccupied or avoidant and was
rated as “really true” by the child. Two scale scores are calculated by summing the scores
for the avoidant items and by summing the scores for the preoccupied items. High scores
on either scale reﬂect a greater use of that coping strategy by the child with the mother
during stressful situations.

The Coping Strategies Questionnaire has been shown to possess good reliability.
The Alpha coefﬁcient for the Preoccupied scale was .86 and for the Avoidant scale the
Alpha coefﬁcient was .84. Two week test-retest correlations for the Preoccupied and
Avoidant scales were .83 and .76, respectively. Finally, the two scales were moderately
negatively correlated, r = -.47. In this study, the Alpha coefﬁcients were considerably
lower than expected; the Alpha coefﬁcient for the Preoccupied scale was .56 while the
Alpha coefﬁcient for the Avoidant scale was .68.

The authors of the Coping Strategies Questionnaire cautioned researchers against
the use of this questionnaire alone for measuring attachment categories in middle
childhood (Finnegan et al, 1996). The authors noted that although the development of
their scales was boume out of attachment theory, the presence of preoccupied and/or
avoidant coping styles does not in and of itself necessarily indicate the presence of
insecure attachment. Therefore, the authors suggest that combining the Coping Strategies
Questionnaire with a measure of felt security would allow researchers to assess and

64

identify both security/insecurity of attachment as well as the preoccupied and avoidant
subgroups of insecure attachment.

The Security Scale (Kems, Klepac & Cole, 1996) was used to measure felt
security in the mother-child relationship. The Security Scale is a 15-item, self-report
questionnaire designed to assess children’s perceptions of felt security in parent-child
relationships in middle childhood and early adolescence. The Security Scale assesses
three aspects of felt security with respect to a particular attachment ﬁgure: (1) the child’s
perceptions of the responsiveness and availability of the caregiver, (2) the child’s reliance
on the caregiver in stressful situations, and (3) the child’s perceptions of the ease of
communication with the caregiver.

The 15 items on this questionnaire are presented to children in Harter-type format
(Harter, 1982, cited from Finnegan et al, 1996) in which children are ﬁrst asked to choose
between two response choices and then secondly are asked to choose whether the
response they chose is “sort of true” or “really true” for them. Each item is scored on a 4
point scale with higher scores reﬂective of secure attachment. A total security score is
computed by summing the child’s response scores across the 15 items.

The Security Scale has been shown to have good reliability and validity (Kems,
Klepac & Cole, 1996). In studies on three samples by the same authors, the alpha
coefﬁcient for internal consistency ranged from .81 to .93. In this study, the alpha
coefﬁcient was .81. Test-retest reliabilities over 8 to 28 day periods averaged to .75,
indicating stability in children’s reports of felt security over a short period of time. In
addition, 71 children participated in a discriminant validity study which indicated that, as

65

consistent with predictions from attachment theory, children’s reports of felt security
were signiﬁcantly positively correlated with self-esteem, peer acceptance, behavioral
conduct, scholastic competence, and physical appearance and were not signiﬁcantly
correlated with athletic competence or IQ. Furthermore, moderate positive correlations
were obtained between children’s perceptions of felt security in the mother-child
relationship and other measures of mother-child relationship quality including
companionship, intimacy, and affection and moderate negative correlations were obtained
with conﬂict and antagonism. These patterns of ﬁndings between the felt security
measure and other qualities of the mother-child relationship indicate that this measure of
security is related to, but not redundant with, these other qualities of parental
relationships.

AssignmenttoAttachmentﬁroups. According to the method suggested by Kems,
Klepac & Cole (1996), children’s scores on the Security Scale and the Coping Strategies
Questionnaire were converted to z-scores within each measure. For analyses that
required a continuous measure of attachment security, z-scores on the Coping Strategies
Questionnaire were subtracted from the z-score on the Security Scale. The highest 2-
score above 0 on the Coping Strategies Questionnaire Preoccupied or Avoidant scale was
subtracted from the z-score of the Security Scale, resulting in an overall attachment 2-
score based on attachment security and the most apparent insecure coping style. In cases
in which neither Preoccupied or Avoidant coping z-scores were above 0, the lowest 2-
score below 0 was subtracted from the Security Scale z-score, also resulting in an overall
attachment z-score based on attachment security and the coping style that showed the

66

least insecurity. The resulting z-score was used as a continuous measure of attachment
security for the regression analyses in Hypotheses 1 and 2.

For the analyses that required a categorical attachment variable, the children with
the top third positive attachment z-scores were labeled as securely attached. The
remaining children with z-scores below the top third were labeled as insecurely attached.
This resulting attachment grouping variable was used to assign children to the secure or
insecure attachment group for testing Hypothesis 3. This method of assigning children to
the secure and insecure groups was used because it allowed a sufﬁcient number of
children to be represented in each security type, especially for the breakdown of the
insecure group into preoccupied and avoidant types for the secondary hypotheses.

For several of the secondary hypotheses, children in the insecurely attached group
were divided into Preoccupied and Avoidant subgroups on the basis of their highest
positive z-score on the Coping Strategies Questionnaire. Thus, children were placed in
the Preoccupied insecure group if their z-score on the Preoccupied scale was higher than
their Avoidant scale z-score. Children were placed in the Avoidant insecure group if their
Avoidant coping z-score was greater than their Preoccupied coping z-score. If the
positive z-scores of the Preoccupied and Avoidant coping scales were equal or if both 2-
scores were in the negative direction, the children were not assigned to an attachment
category.

ReeLStams. A peer nomination method was used to classify children into social
status groups. In peer nomination methods, children are provided with class rosters and
are asked to identify the three children who they like most and the three children on the

67

list who they like the least (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982). There are two main
disadvantages to the peer nomination method for assessing peer status. One disadvantage
is that children are usually restricted in the number of nominations that they can make for
a given dimension (generally to three choices) which leaves open the possibility that
some children who are liked but who are not liked best do not receive nominations (or
who are disliked, but are not disliked the most). Alternatively, this may be an important
limitation which causes children to careﬁrlly consider which children they most like or
dislike. A second disadvantage is that children are asked to explicitly express dislike for
some of their peers. However, despite concern about the impact of expressing dislike for
peers, there is both formal and anecdotal evidence that asking children for negative peer
nominations does not change children’s interactions or conversations (Asher & Dodge,
1986; Bell-Dolan, Foster & Sikora, 1989; Cirino & Beck, 1991; Coie, Dodge &
Coppotelli, 1982; Hayvren & Hymel, 1984). In fact, in the study by Hayvren & Hymel
(1984) the children did not discuss the peer evaluation procedure with each other at all.
The peer nomination measure was presented second in order to further reduce the
potential for children to remember and discuss their negative nomination responses with
each other. In addition, the conﬁdentiality of the children’s responses was emphasized.
The traditional peer nomination procedure was used (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982).
Children were provided with a class roster with classmates’ names including only those
classmates whose parents signed consent forms. Each name was followed on the roster
by a three-digit number. The children were told to record their responses with the child’s
number only. Children were then asked to write the numbers corresponding to the names

68

of three children whom they like most and to write the numbers corresponding to the
names of the three children who they like least.

Scores for the “liked most” and “liked least” dimensions were calculated
separately by summing the number of nominations a child receives on each dimension.
These scores were then standardized within classrooms. Two scores were calculated
from the peer nomination information according to the procedure developed by Coie,
Dodge & Coppotelli (1982): a social preference score and a social impact score. The
social preference score was calculated by subtracting a child’s “liked least” score from his
or her “liked most” score (social preference = LM - LL). The social impact score was
calculated by summing a child’s “liked most” and “liked least” scores (social impact =
LM + LL).

A child’s social impact and social preference scores were combined and used to
place children into social status categories following the procedures used by Coie &
Dodge (1983) and Coie & Dodge (1988). Children were assigned to the popular status
group if their social preference standard score is greater than 1.0, their liked most
nominations standard score is greater than zero, and their liked least standard score is less
than zero. Children were assigned to the rejected social status group if their social
preference standard score is less than -1 .0, their liked most standard score is less than
zero, and their liked least standard score is greater than zero. Children assigned to the
neglected social status group had social impact standard scores that are less than -1.0,
liked most standard scores below zero, and liked least standard scores that are below zero.
Children classiﬁed as controversial had social impact scores that are greater than 1.0,

69

liked most standard scores which are greater than zero, and liked least standard scores
greater than zero. The remaining children were referred to as average. (Please refer to
Table 8 for a frequency table for the attachment and social status categories).

In a ﬁve-year longitudinal study, children’s social preference and social impact
scores were found to be stable (Coie & Dodge, 1983). In addition, although some
variability in the ﬁve social status categories occurred over the ﬁve year period, these
categories demonstrated some stability over time, particularly with respect to
categorization into high and low status groups.

IntentAttributions. Children’s intent attributions were measured by presenting
them with 6 hypothetical stories (3 peer situations and 3 family situations) and then
asking them to decide (in Harter-type format) whether or not the character in the story
was intentionally trying to be mean. This method for assessing children’s intent
attributions has been used oﬁen in the social information-processing literature (Cirino &
Beck, 1991; Dodge & Price, 1994; Quiggle, Garber, Panak &Dodge, 1992).

The three peer stories consisted of one peer group entry story in which a child
approaches another child and is rebuffed (the peer has ambiguous intent) and two peer
provocation stories in which a child is provoked by a peer with ambiguous intentions
(such as teasing). These two types of situations were chosen because they are studied
most frequently and have been found to have the greatest potential for detecting
attributional biases in children (Cirino & Beck, 1991; Dodge, Petit, McClaskey & Brown,
1986; Dodge & Price, 1994; Quiggle, Garber, Panak & Dodge, 1992; Volling,
Mackinnon-Lewis, Rabiner & Baradaran, 1993).

70

For this study, three hypothetical stories depicting mothers acting with ambiguous
intent towards their child were also used. One of the stories consisted of an authority
demand, one of the stories consisted of parent provocations (with ambiguous intent), and
one consisted of family group entry with mild rejection in order to reﬂect the types of
situations currently under investigation in the teacher and peer contexts.

The children were instructed to imagine that each situation described in the stories
is happening to them. This instruction was given because it has been consistently
reported that attributional biases are generally found only when the subject child is the
“receiver” of the action
but are not found when other peers receive the action (Dodge & Frame, 1982; Hughes,
Robinson & Moore, 1991). Each story was read aloud to the children who then answered
the forced-choice question.

Two attributional bias scores were calculated. The forced-choice question was
scored by assigning a value of 0 to the two non-hostile choices, a value of 1 to the “sort
of” hostile choice, and a value of 2 to the “very” hostile choice. The child’s score on the
forced-choice component is the sum of his or her choices, calculated separately for each
context (parent and peer). This format has been demonstrated to possess good reliability
and to have good predictive validity in that hostile attributional biases have been shown
to predict generation of hostile responses to peer provocations (Waas, 1988) and later
aggressive behavior (Dodge & Coie, 1987; Dodge, Murphy, & Buchsbaum, 1984). The
scale reliabilities for this study were .54 for bias in the classmate context and .51 for bias
in the parent context.

7]

Aggression. Both overt and relational aggression were assessed by the peer
nomination method following Crick & Grotpeter’s (1995) procedure. Children were
asked to refer to their classroom rosters which they used in the preceding peer nomination
procedure. They were then asked to nominate the three classmates who they feel best ﬁt
each behavioral description. Overt aggression was assessed by two items including: (1)
someone who hits, kicks, or pushes others, (2) starts ﬁghts. Relational aggression was
assessed by three items including: (1) someone who tries to make other kids not like a
certain person by spreading rumors about them or talking behind their backs, (2) someone
who gets even when they are mad by keeping people from being in their group of friends,
(3) someone who tells ﬁiends that they will stop liking them unless they do what he/she
said.

Scores for overt and relational aggression were calculated separately by summing
the number of nominations a child received from peers for each item. The number of
nominations per item was then added together to arrive at overt and relational aggression
scores. These scores were standardized within each classroom.

Crick and Grotpeter (1995) performed a principal components factor analysis on
these two measures of aggression as well as two other behavioral dimensions that are not
relevant to this proposal. In their factor analysis, overt and relational aggression emerged
as separate factors. Factor loadings on these two subscales ranged from .73 to .90. In
addition, Cronbach’s alpha indicated that both scales were highly reliable (.94 for overt
aggression and .83 for relational aggression). The reliabilities for the aggression scales in
the present study were .90 for physical aggression and .69 for relational aggression.

72

Chapter 4

RESULTS

The means and standard deviations of the predictor and criterion variables are
presented in Table 3. Table 4 presents the frequencies of the categorical variables. The
ﬁrst section presents the correlational relationships between the demographic and
predictor and criterion variables and between the predictor variables. The following
sections present results from the primary and secondary hypotheses.
PreliminanLAnalyscs

Correlational analyses were used to examine the relationships between the
continuous demographic and study variables (see Table 5). Age was signiﬁcantly
correlated with class size and with children’s use of dependent coping strategies. One-
way Analyses of Variance were conducted in order to explore the relationships between
the demographic variables and the categorical predictor variables. These ANOVA
analyses also revealed a signiﬁcant main effect for age on children’s model group
afﬁliation, F (3,104) = 3.21, p = .03, with children in the insecure attachment/ peer
problems model group being approximately 10 months younger, on average, than
children in the secure attachment/no peer problems model group. T-tests were computed
in order to determine the effect of gender on the predictor and criterion variables. The
results revealed a signiﬁcant difference between boys and girls on age, I (120) = 2.10, p =
.04, with boys tending to be approximately 6 months older than the girls, on average.

73

There was also a signiﬁcant difference between boys and girls on the use of dependent
coping, t (118) = -2.88, p = .005, and avoidant coping, t (117) = 2.44, p = .02, with girls
endorsing more items related to dependent coping than did boys while boys endorsed
more items related to avoidant coping than did girls. Finally, there was a gender
difference for physical aggression, t (124) = 4.37, p = .000, with boys demonstrating
signiﬁcantly more physical aggression than girls.

Correlational analyses were conducted to explore the relationships between the
continuous predictor variables (see Table 5). Children’s attachment security was
signiﬁcantly related to avoidant c0ping. Children’s social preference standard scores
were signﬁcantly related to social impact, physical aggression, and relational aggression,
such that as children were nominated more frequently as preferred play partners, social
impact and physcial and relational aggression decreased. Social impact standard scores
were also signiﬁcantly related to physical and relational aggression, such that as children
received more total (positive and negative) nominations, so too were they viewed as
exhibiting more physical and relational aggression. Physical and relational aggression
standard scores were signiﬁcantly related to each other.

AN OVAs were conducted to examine the relationships between continuous and
categorical predictor variables. There was a signiﬁcant main effect for children’s social
status on physical aggression, E(4,l 17) = 8.95, p = .000 and relational aggression,

E(4,l 17) = 6.38, p = .000. Post-hoe analyses using Tukey’s Honestly Signiﬁcant
Difference Test revealed that children in the rejected and controversial social status

74

groups demonstrated signiﬁcantly more physical aggression than did children in the
neglected and average social status groups and signiﬁcantly more relational aggression
than children in the neglected status group, p < .05. Children in the rejected social status
group also demonstrated signiﬁcantly more relational aggression than children in the
average social status group, p < .05. There was also a trend for the effect of children’s
model group affiliation (model conﬁrming/model disconﬁrrrring group) on physical
aggression, E(3,75) = 2.63, p = .056. A post-hoe analysis using Tukey’s Honestly
Signiﬁcant Difference Test revealed that children in the insecurely attached/no peer
problem group demonstrated signiﬁcantly more physical aggression than children in the
securely attached/no peer problem group, p < .05. The relationship between model group
and relational aggression was not signiﬁcant, F(3,75) = 1.82, p = .15.

Finally, chi-square analyses were conducted in order to exarrrine the relationships
between the categorical predictor variables including the three attachment groups, ﬁve
social status groups, and four model-conﬁrming and -disconﬁrming groups. No
signiﬁcant relationships emerged.

Iestsofﬂypotheses

. m .-' - -. .. . ..~. - “... ... r. '. .- -. .. 0:31.11
was hypothesized that children’s hostile attributional bias in the parent context would be
predicted by attachment security and that children’s social status would not add to the
prediction of hostile attributional bias in the parent context over attachment security.
This hypothesis was tested using hierarchical multiple regression. Children’s hostile
attributional bias total score in the family context was used as the criterion variable. In

75

the ﬁrst step, physical and relational aggression were entered simultaneously as control
variables. Children’s attachment security was entered in the second step followed by
children’s social impact and social preference standard scores (social status) in the third
step. The results of the multiple regression analysis supported the hypothesis. As
expected, children’s attachment security signiﬁcantly predicted children’s hostile
attributional bias in the parent context. Furthermore, there was a trend for relational
aggression to predict hostile attributional bias in the parent context. Children’s hostile
attribution bias in the parent context was not signiﬁcantly predicted by physical
aggression, nor by children’s social status, although the overall regression equation was
signiﬁcant. Table 6 presents the summary of the regression analysis for this hypothesis.

. m r' ° ro u . u "am- on: :. ' r‘ n -. . Itwas
hypothesized that children’s hostile attributional bias in the peer context would be
signiﬁcantly predicted by children’s social status and that children’s attachment security
would add to the prediction of bias in the peer context. This hypothesis was tested using
hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Physical and relational aggression were entered
simultaneously in the ﬁrst step as control variables. Children’s social impact and social
preference standard scores were entered simultaneously in the second step followed by
attachment security, which was entered into the regression on the last step. The results
partially supported the hypothesis. Children’s attachment security signiﬁcantly predicted
children’s hostile attributional bias scores in the peer context. However, children’s social
status, as well as physical and relational aggression, did not signiﬁcantly predict
children’s attributional bias in the peer context. The overall equation regressing all ﬁve

76

predictor variables on children’s hostile attributional bias in the peer context approached
signiﬁcance. Table 7 presents the summary of the regression analysis for this hypothesis.
'7‘” ._. .. -,.° .H . H ._“".. .... :'. . ._ H W .7
Model-£onﬁrmingandModelzDisconﬁnningﬁociaLExpedences. It was hypothesized
that the attachment security/peer status model-conﬁrming and -disconﬁrming comparison
would predict children’s hostile attributional bias in the peer context. Speciﬁcally, it was
predicted that children in the securely attached/no peer problem group would demonstrate
less hostile attributional bias in the peer context than would children in the insecurely
attached/no peer problem group, followed by children in the securely attached/peer
problem group, followed lastly by children in the insecurely attached/peer problem group
(hypothesized to demonstrate the most bias). This hypothesis was tested using a 2X2
AN OVA. This hypothesis was not supported. The main effect for social status
approached signiﬁcance, F(4,110) = 2.10, p = .09. There was no main effect for

attachment group, F(2,112) = 1.01, p = .37 or for the attachment by social status
interaction, E(8,106) = 1.0, p = .44. Please refer to Table 8 for a summary of the group
means.

PhysieaLandRelationaLAggression. It was hypothesized that gender differences would
exist in the expression of physical and relational aggression with boys demonstrating
more physical aggression than girls and girls demonstrating more relational aggression
than boys. These hypotheses were tested using t-tests. The results of the t-tests
suggested that there was a signiﬁcant gender difference between boys and girls in the

77

expression of physical aggression with boys exhibiting more physical aggression than
girls, t(120) = 4.44, p = .000. However, the effect of gender on relational aggression was
nonsigniﬁcant, 1020) = .66, p = .51. Because of this nonsigniﬁcant ﬁnding, subsequent
analyses pertaining to relational aggression were conducted on the entire sample rather
than only on girls. However, the analyses pertaining to physical aggression were
conducted only on the boys, as hypothesized.

It was predicted that children’s attachment security would be signiﬁcantly related
to their expression of physical and relational aggression. Speciﬁcally, it was
hypothesized that insecurely attached children would demonstrate greater levels of
physical and relational aggression than would securely attached children. These
hypotheses were tested using t-tests. The t-test for the effect of security of attachment on
physical aggression was signiﬁcant for the entire sample, t(117) = 2.10, p = .04 and for
boys, t(54) = 2.34, p = .02, but was not signiﬁcant for girls, t(57) = -.57, p = .57.
However, the effect was not in the predicted direction. In fact, inspection of the means
revealed that securely attached boys exhibited signiﬁcantly more physical aggression
(mean = .80, SD = 1.5) than insecurely attached boys (mean = .07, SD = .85). This
ﬁnding also held true for the entire sample (mean = .21 , SD = 1.2 for secure; mean = -.l7,
SD = .72 for insecure). It was also hypothesized that boys in the avoidant attachment
group would exhibit signiﬁcantly more physical aggression than boys in either the
dependent or secure attachment groups. This hypothesis was tested using planned
comparisons within the framework of Analysis of Variance. The planned comparison
was not signiﬁcant, t(53) = .249, p = .80. A post-hoe ANOVA for the effect of

78

attachment category on physical aggression was signiﬁcant for boys, E(2,53) = 4.11, p =
.02. Post-hoe analysis using Tukey’s Honestly Signiﬁcant Difference Test revealed that
boys in the secure attachment group exhibited signiﬁcantly more physical aggression than
boys in the dependent attachment group, p < .05.

With respect to relational aggression, no signiﬁcant differences were found
between securely and insecurely attached children, t(l 16) = .65, p = .51. Planned
comparisons were used to test whether children in the avoidantly attached group
demonstrated more relational aggression than children in the other two attachment
groups. The planned comparison was not signiﬁcant, t(116) = -.132, p = .89. A post-hoe
AN OVA for the effect of attachment category on relational aggression was also not
signiﬁcant, E(2,116) = .23, p = .79.

SooialStatus. It was hypothesized that insecurely attached children would be classiﬁed
more often as neglected or rejected and less often as popular or average compared to
securely attached children. This hypothesis was testing using a chi-square analysis
comparing the two attachment security groups (securely and insecurely attached) with the
ﬁve social status groups (popular, average, controversial, neglected, and rejected). This
analysis was not signiﬁcant indicating that there was not a clear relationship between
security of attachment and children’s social status, x2(4,115) = 5.60, p = .22 (Please refer

to Table 9).

79

Table 3

 

 

 

Mean SD

Control Variables

Agec 9.83 .90

Class size 32.62 9.39
Attachment Variables

Security Scale Total 20.74 5.89

Dependent Copingb 6.31 3.26

Avoidant Coping‘ 2.37 2.71
Social Status Variables

Positive Nominations 2.21 1.67

Negative Nominations 2.39 2.24

Social Preference -0.18 2.96

Social Impact 4.60 2.62
Physical Aggression Variables

Kicks/Hits Others 1.79 3.02

Starts Fights 1.91 3.25

Total Physical Aggression 3.70 6.07
Relational Aggression Variables

Stops Liking Others .98 1.19

Isolates Others 1.29 1.50

Spreads Rumors 1.32 1.63

Total Relational Aggression 3.59 3.54
Criterion Variables

Hostile Attributional Bias Parent Contextd 1.10 1.22

Hostile Attributional Bias Peer Context 2.37 1.63
Note: N=126 except where noted. ‘ N=119 b N=120 ° N=122 ‘ N=124

80

Table 4

E . EC 'lE 1' Il‘ll

 

 

 

Variable Label Frequency Percent
Attachment Group
Secure 43 34.1
Dependent 43 34.1
Avoidant 33 26.2
Social Status
Popular 10 7.9
Average 76 60.3
Neglected 12 9.5
Rejected 16 12.7
Controversial 12 9.5
Model Group
Secure Attachment/Popular or Average 27 21.4
Secure Attachment/Neglected or Rejected 9 7.1
Insecure Attachment/Popular or Average 54 42.9
Insecure Attachment/Neglected or Rejected 18 14.3

 

81

 

 

 

:8qu Eva: 8.1a... 2.1:.
.i axons—Co “com .:
+2. -- 3838 Evan— d—
85 388932
8. 8. -- 3:233 .8
8. 8.- ti. -- names .8
“mo—pegs, commmewwa»
E. 8.- ......8. ...-am. -- nonmemasom s
z.- 8. .3- :2.- :_._m.. -- 85528 38m .8
sang/v.33 38m
2. .2. :. 8m. 2. .5.- -- waaoﬁﬁaoi .m
S.- :. 8.- .2.- ~_.- 2. tan.- -- 838.5288 .4
*2...- ......_..~..... 8.- 8. 8.- 8. ...-8.- :.- -- eﬁoaaosﬁéa‘ .m
magnum-ax? «cogogdx
2.- 2. 8. 8. 8. 8. 2. 3.- 8.- -- 8530 .m
8. 8. 8. 2. 8. 8.- 2. am.- 8. ...-Ln. -- owe. ._
m03~ﬂd> 65:00
: 2 a w a o m a m N a 032.5
§-§§2§§a§o

m 2an

82

Table 6

I O
‘ 5|".

 

 

 

 

_ o I : I I - I‘ I I I
Beta AR AF Adjusted R2
Step One (Control)
Physical aggression --166
Relational aggression 3071 ~031 1.78
Step Two
Attachment status -.395“* .155 20.83“...
Step Three
Social impact -. 1 55
Social preference . 103 .034 2.47'1'
Entire Model 613*" .186
j'p<.10 "*p<.001 -

83

Table 7

 

 

 

Beta AR AF Adjusted R2

Step One (Control)

Physical aggression --010

Relational aggression -125 -014 ~81
Step Two

Social impact . 127

Social preference -.1 15 .033 l .90
Step Three

Attachment status -.2 l 3* .044 5.36*
Entire Model 2201' .050
‘l‘p < .10 * p < .05

84

Table 8

 

 

 

......- - - u-.. . .. "-;... '... ’ . “...-q .. ... .'
Status
Attachment Status m Social Status

Popular Average Rejected Neglected Controversial
Secure 2.0 1.9 3.0 1.3 2.1
Insecure 1.2 2.5 3.0 1.9 3.8

 

85

Table 9

 

 

Neglected

4!-

0..

 

Rejected Controversial Totals

 

IIII.aI I.- I :- ."l‘
SociaLStatus
Variable Label Popular Average
Attachment
Secure 2 23
Insecure 6 46
Totals 8 69

11

12

16

11

42

73

115

 

86

Chapter 5

DISCUSSION

The following section evaluates the implications of the study’s ﬁndings for
attachment theory and social information-processing theory, organized by hypothesis for
each topic. Next, the study’s methodological limitations are evaluated. Finally, the
clinical implications of the study are discussed, including suggested directions for future
research.

I l' . [F 1' E g l 1]

Attachment theorists have suggested that internal working models function, in
part, as heuristics for anticipating and interpreting the behavior and intentions of others
(Berman & Sperling, 1994; Bowlby, 1988; Rothbard & Shaver, 1994) and have also
suggested that internal working models may inﬂuence future interactions by providing
frameworks for interpersonal understanding and guidelines for responding (Troy &
Sroufe, 1987; Miller, 1993; Downey, Lebolt & Rincbn, 1995; Burks & Park, 1996;). The
results from this study support these two assertions and are consistent with previous
ﬁndings demonstrating a relationship between parental rejection and children’s
expectations of rejection from peers and teachers (Downey, Lebolt & Rincon, 1995) and
hostile attributions toward familiar and unfamiliar peers (Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, &
Parke, 1996). The results of the present study improved upon these earlier studies by

investigating the effects of attachment, per se, not limited to rejecting parenting behavior,

87

and included controls for social status, rather than friendship pairs, and physical and
relational aggressive behavior.

In this study, as expected, it was found that children’s attachment security
signiﬁcantly predicted hostile attributional bias in the parent context after controlling for
the potential effects of aggression. As security of attachment decreased, children’s
hostile attributional errors increased. An examination of group means revealed that
insecurely attached children demonstrated signiﬁcantly greater hostile attributional bias
than securely attached children. Furthermore, children with a dependent attachment style
made signiﬁcantly more hostile attributional errors in the parent context than did securely
attached children. This trend also held true with avoidantly attached children
demonstrating greater hostile attributional bias compared with securely attached children,
but was not signiﬁcant.

These ﬁndings provide support for the notion that internal working models
function as heuristics for anticipating and interpreting the behavior and intentions of
parents and supports the inclusion of the construct of attributional bias as a feature of
internal working models. The ﬁnding that insecurely attached children demonstrated
greater hostile attributional bias towards parents than securely attached children also
provides evidence in support of Bartholomew (1 990) and Cohn’s (1990) hypothesis that
securely attached children develop working models of their parents as responsive and
accessible while insecurely attached children develop working models of their parents as

inconsistent, unresponsive, or rejecting.

88

Furthermore, when children’s hostile attribution biases were examined in the peer
context, the results of this study were also strongly supportive of attachment’s role in
predicting children’s hostile attribution bias in the peer context. It was found that
children’s security of attachment was the only signiﬁcant individual predictor of hostile
attributional bias in the peer context after levels of physical and relational aggression and
social status were taken into account. As attachment security decreased, the number of
hostile attributional errors children made increased. Social status, physical aggression,
and relational aggression were not signiﬁcant predictors of attributional bias in the peer
context, although the overall equation approached signiﬁcance.

In interpreting this ﬁnding, it is important to remember that the actor’s intent in
the attribution stories was actually ambiguous. Social information-processing theorists
believe that in ambiguous situations general assumptions and expectations about people
and their actions are likely to play a role in the way causal attributions about others’
intentions are made (Aydin & Markova, 1979). They further believe that biases in
judging other people’s intentions as positive or negative probably reﬂect an individual’s
previous experiences with other people (Aydin & Markova, 1979; Crick & Dodge, 1994).

The ﬁndings from this study indicate that, not only are children’s experiences with each
other important in making inferences about a peer’s actions, children’s experiences with
their parents are also important for children’s expectations of non-family members, and
according to this study, even more of a driving force in guiding young children’s
inferences than are their actual experiences with their peers. This study supports the
notion that, as Miller (1990) suggested, attachment may inﬂuence future relationships by

89

providing frameworks for interpersonal understanding and guidelines for responding. It
also provides support for Bartholomew (1990) and Cohn’s (1990) predictions that
securely attached children are likely to have formed working models of their parents as
responsive and accessible and may be more likely to anticipate positive reactions from
their peers while insecurely attached children are likely to have formed working models
of their parents as inconsistent, unavailable, and rejecting and may be more likely to
anticipate unpredictable behavior or rejection from peers. The results are consistent with
previous studies which have demonstrated a relationship between rejecting parenting and
children’s intent attributions (Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton & Parke, 1996) and expectations of
rejection from teachers and peers (Downey, Lebolt & Rincén, 1995) and supplement
these previous studies by controlling for the effects of aggression and social status.
When attachment and social status were combined to form model-conﬁrming and
model-disconﬁrming social experience groups, the model group variable did not
signiﬁcantly predict hostile attributional bias in the peer context. Bowlby (1988)
hypothesized that a gradual updating of internal working models would occur over time
in response to new information. In contrast, this study found that attachment is predictive
of hostile attributional bias in the peer context and that working models may not be
updated in response to new information. Yet, attachment was not a perfect predictor of
hostile attributional bias, and the numerous reports in the literature regarding the strong
relationship between social status and children’s hostile attributional bias suggest
otherwise. Another possible explanation becomes apparent upon examination of the
stability of children’s social status. Coie & Dodge (1983) found that, although social

90

status at year one predicted social status at year ﬁve, signiﬁcant variability existed in
children’s social status. They reported that the rejected social status group was the most
stable across time, with 30-45% of children in this group remaining so classiﬁed ﬁve
years later; whereas only 25% of neglected children were also classiﬁed as neglected 5
years later. Based on these ﬁndings, a large portion of children experience very different
peer relationships from one year to the next and it would be possible for a child to
experience peer rejection one year and be neglected or average the next. Perhaps the
children experiencing model-disconﬁrming social experiences did not have adequate
exposure to the model-disconﬁrming experience for a general, gradual updating to their
internal working models to occur. It is possible that the children experiencing peer
problems learned information about how certain individual children responded to them,
but did not generalize from these relationships to other children or other relationships.
Conceivably, children who repeatedly experience peer problems over longer periods of
time may then update their internal working models with model-disconﬁrming
information, but determining this is beyond the scope of the current investigation.
Longitudinal studies investigating the impact of sustained model-disconﬁrming social
experiences on internal working models are needed to address this question.

Mixed results were obtained when the relationship between attachment and
physical and relational aggression were explored. Contrary to ﬁndings in the literature,
children in the secure attachment group were rated by their peers as more physically
aggressive than were children in the insecure attachment groups. One possible
explanation for this ﬁnding may be the result of using a self-report measurement of

91

attachment in middle childhood. Researchers have recently identiﬁed a third insecure
attachment category, disorganized attachment, in which children seemed to begin to
evidence avoidant or ambivalent attachment behaviors which were halted mid-stream
(Bowlby, 1988). Other studies have found that disorganized attachment was the strongest
single predictor of hostile behavior towards peers (Lyons-Ruth, Alpem & Repacholi,
1993; Lyons-Ruth, 1996). The self-report measures of attachment used in this study did
not include a classiﬁcation of disorganized attachment. It may be that when attachment is
measured using self-report instruments, children who would be behaviorally classiﬁed as
disorganized would halt avoidant or ambivalent response tendencies and would respond
by choosing the secure response alternative. Thus, the secure attachment group may
include some children who would be classiﬁed as disorganized if the assignment to
attachment category had been made behaviorally. This possibility is supported by Main’s
(1990) report that many misclassiﬁcations of disorganized attachment strategies are into
the secure group.

However, results were consistent with the literature when securely and insecurely
attached children who were not experiencing peer problems were compared. When these
children were compared, insecurely attached children who were not experiencing peer
problems were rated as more physically aggressive than were children who were securely
attached and not experiencing peer problems. This ﬁnding suggests that children’s
experiences with their peers may moderate the relationship between attachment and
aggression. Perhaps the experience of peer problems is a risk factor for aggressive
behavior, regardless of attachment status. It is also possible that, if children in the

92

disorganized attachment category are misclassiﬁed as securely attached based on self-
report measures, they may account for many of the securely attached children who are
experiencing peer problems. Thus, when the aggressiveness of children without peer
problems are compared by security of attachment, the attachment categories may be more
accurate, resulting in the expected secure versus insecure differences in physical
aggression.

Attachment status was not predictive of children’s demonstration of relational
aggression at school. To date, relational aggression, per se, has not been studied in the
attachment literature. However, other studies have shown that avoidant attachment to
parents was positively associated with increased externalizing problems including
dishonesty and immaturity (Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996) while disorganized
attachment has been associated with overall hostility towards peers (Lyons-Ruth, Alpem
& Reacholi, 1993). Again, it is possible that children in the disorganized attachment
category could have been misclassiﬁed as securely attached due to the use of self-report
measures in the current study.

In this study, attachment security was not predictive of children’s social status.
Although this study is inconsistent with some reports that attachment is moderately
predictive of peer rejection and victimization (Petit, Dodge & Brown, 1988; Sroufe, Fox
& Pancake, 1983; Troy & Sroufe, 1987; Cohn, 1990; Finnegan, Hodges & Perry, 1996),
it is consistent with a more recent study which found that attachment generalized
primarily to the quality of close peer relationships, but not to peer popularity and
reciprocated friendship (Lieberman, Doyle & Markiewicz, 1999).

93

1].. fF'l' ﬁS'lIﬂ '-P '1]

This study contributes a developmental variable, attachment security, to the social
information-processing literature that seems to inﬂuence children’s interpretations of
another person’s intentions (step two in the social information-processing model; Crick &
Dodge, 1994). This study demonstrated that children’s attachment relationships with
their parents signiﬁcantly predicted their interpretations of parent ﬁgures’ and peers’
intents in ambiguous situations. These ﬁndings also extend the attribution theory
literature by investigating contextual inﬂuences (family and peer settings) on the
relationship between children’s social status and social information-processing by
including attributions in family contexts in addition to the more frequently studied peer
context. By the inclusion of girls, it supplements much of the current literature, which is
very often restricted to boys’ social information-processing, especially in investigations
of hostile attributional bias.

In this study, children’s security of attachment was the strongest single predictor
of hostile attributional bias in the parent and peer contexts. This supports Aydin and
Markova’s (1979) and Crick & Dodge’s (1994) hypothesis that biases in judging other
people’s intentions as positive or negative probably reﬂect an individual’s previous
experiences with other pe0p1e and that reliance on past social knowledge and experiences
may lead to ignoring relevant social cues and contextual factors (Dodge & Crick, 1990;
Crick & Dodge, 1994). It is interesting to note that in the present study, children did not

only seem to rely on their experiences with people similar to the actor, but may have

94

relied more on their experiences with parents to make inferences about peers’ behaviors
in ambiguous situations.

The ﬁnding that attachment security was predictive of children’s hostile
attributional bias in the peer context is consistent with previous ﬁndings that rejecting
parenting is associated with children’s attributions of peers’ behaviors (Cassidy, Kirsh,
Scolton & Parke, 1996; Burks & Parke, 1996; Downey, Lebolt & Rincon, 1995) and
supports these authors’ conclusions that children develop representations of family
relationships which are used as guides for later relationships with peers and have
implications for children’s expectations in social situations outside of the home. This is
an especially important ﬁnding in contrast to two other studies which have found context
speciﬁcity for children’s social information-processing skills and intent attributions in
teacher and peer contexts (Dodge, Mcclaskey & F eldman, 1985; Dodge & Price, 1994).
The current ﬁndings suggest that children do not use previous experiences with all adults
to guide expectations and inferences in ambiguous situations with other children, but that
there is something important about children’s attachment relationships with their parents
that inﬂuences attributional biases with peers.

It is somewhat unexpected that the physical and relational aggression and social
status variables were not signiﬁcant predictors of hostile attribution bias in the classmate
context. However, the majority of studies demonstrating a strong relationship between
social status, aggression, and attributional errors were conducted on boys. Studies
concerning girls’ social information-processing skills are not as consistent in
demonstrating a relationship between aggression, social status, and attribution bias,

95

although some have suggested that neglected girls are at risk for aggressive behavior and
hostile attribution biases (Cirino & Beck, 1991; Dodge & Feldman, 1990; Feldman &
Dodge, 1986; Perry, Perry & Rasmussen, 1986). The current study is somewhat unique
in that it included both boys and girls in the sample. It is possible that social information-
processing skills in general, and hostile attributional biases in particular, develop
differently for boys and girls. Social status and aggression may be weaker predictors of
hostile attributional biases for girls, resulting in the non-significance for these predictors
in the current study. Furthermore, children in the neglected social status group are similar
to average children in that their social preference scores are average, that is they are not
actively preferred or disliked by peers (Coie, Dodge & Coppotelli, 1982). In contrast to
average children, neglected children have lower social impact scores, that is, they tend to
be less visible to the peer group and have little inﬂuence on other children. Because
neglected girls have been identiﬁed as being at a greater risk for social inforrnation-
processing deﬁcits, as have rejected boys, it is possible that social impact would be a
stronger predictor of hostile attributional bias for girls whereas social preference may be a
stronger predictor of hostile attribution errors for boys. These differences could account
for the decreased prediction of the social status and aggression variables when the
regression analyses were conducted on the entire sample.

Post-hoe analyses were conducted to examine this possibility. Regression
analyses identical in format to those presented earlier were calculated separately for boys
and girls. Results partially supported the argument that social information-processing
styles may develop differently for boys and girls. Neither of the aggression variables

96

signiﬁcantly predicted hostile attribution bias in the peer context for either gender.
However, social preference was a signiﬁcant predictor of hostile attributional bias in the
peer context for boys (0 = -.30, p < .05) but not for girls ([1 = .08, p = .53). In contrast,
there was a trend for social impact to be a marginally signiﬁcant predictor for girls ([1 =
.20, p < .15) but not for boys ([1 = .04, p = .79). Furthermore, attachment security was a
stronger predictor for girls’ hostile attributional bias (1} = -.28, p < .05) but was only a
trend for boys (11 = -.19, p = .13).

There are several methodological limitations to the current study. One
methodological difﬁculty lies in the self-report measurement of attachment. The
questionnaires used to measure attachment in this study are relatively new (Finnegan,
Hodges & Perry, 1996; Kems, Klepac & Cole, 1996) and, even though they have been
shown to possess good reliability and validity, they have not yet been validated in
longitudinal studies that have infant attachment classiﬁcations using the Strange
Situation. Furthermore, the results of this investigation suggest the possibility that
children with a disorganized attachment style may be misclassiﬁed as securely attached
using self-report measures. Because children with a disorganized attachment style exhibit
avoidant and resistant/ambivalent attachment behaviors which are inhibited prematurely,
they may still be observed when attachment is measured behaviorally. In this instance,
disorganized attachment may be misclassiﬁed as avoidant or anxious/ambivalent
attachment in studies when attachment is measured behaviorally, but at least would
remain in the insecure attachment category. However, when self-report measures are

97

used, if children with a disorganized attachment status inhibit avoidant or
anxious/ambivalent responses, it is possible that they then select the responses more
reﬂective of secure attachment and are so classiﬁed by the self report measures.

Another problem inherent in using self-report measures of attachment is the
danger that children’s responses on self-report measures are more reﬂective of their
internal working models of relationships than of their actual behavioral attachment status.
However, to the extent that as infants and toddlers mature into young children, teenagers,
and adults, cognitions become an increasingly important variable in the attachment
behavioral system, this may be less of an issue because self-report measures may tap into
an increasingly vital aspect of attachment in middle childhood and adulthood. The self-
report measures utilized in this study attempt to minimize the chances that internal
working models are assessed instead of attachment by asking children to rate their most
likely behavior in a given hypothetical situation rather that what they think about the
situation.

A third methodological limitation involves the variable rate of student
participation in this study. The rate of participation was extremely variable, from a low
of 50% to a high of 85% across classrooms. In some classrooms, an overwhelming
majority of children did not participate, which could have affected the aggression and
social status categories either because of the decreased number of available raters or
because some of the more aggressive or popular, rejected, and neglected children were

not given permission to participate. This could have inﬂuenced the strength of the

98

prediction of the social status and aggression variables, both of which were assessed by
peer nomination measures.

Finally, almost all of the children who participated were Caucasian and were
attending public schools in the south-eastem and mid-western United States. Caution
should be exercised in extending the results to children with other ethnic backgrounds,
geographic locations, and life experiences.

Conclusions

The purpose of this study was to explore how children’s relationships with their
parents and with peers combine to inﬂuence their social knowledge as contained in
internal working models. The results provide support for attachment theory’s claims that
children’s relationships with their parents inﬂuence future interactions by providing
ﬁ'ameworks for interpersonal understanding and guidelines for responding (Miller, 1993).
Furthermore, the results provide additional evidence that children develop representations
of family relationships which are used as guides for later relationships with peers (Burks
& Parke, 1996) and have implications for children’s expectations in social situations
outside of the home (Downey, Lebolt, Rincon, 1995). Although the results of this study
did not support the conclusion that children update their internal working models in
response to new, model-disconﬁrming information, this study’s limitations make it
difﬁcult to fully interpret this result.

DirectionsforEutureResearch. The method and results of this investigation point
to several different avenues for study. First, the self-report measures of attachment used
in this study were only recently developed for use with kids in middle childhood.

99

Longitudinal studies are needed that follow infants through middle childhood in order to
validate the questionnaires with attachment information from the Strange Situation.
Currently, the authors of the self-report measures have not suggested cut-off points for
classiﬁcation of attachment categories. Information from longitudinal studies with
Strange Situation classiﬁcations of attachment could be used to identify potential cut-off
scores for classiﬁcation of attachment categories by self-report questionnaires in middle
childhood. Future longitudinal research should also include infants in the disorganized
attachment classiﬁcation and should focus on how to identify disorganized attachment
styles by self-report.

The results of this study also suggest that longitudinal research is needed to
investigate how consistency of social status over time impacts internal working models of
relationships in model-conﬁrming and model-disconfrrming situations. This type of
research would enable a determination of how children who repeatedly and consistently
experience peer problems integrate information about how they are treated by peers with
information about their relationship experiences with parents and other family members,
such as siblings. Studying children’s internal working models in model-conﬁrming and
model-disconﬁrming sibling relationships would add another relationship context to both
the attachment and social information-processing literature.

Furthermore, it would be interesting to investigate the differential prediction of
attachment and social status in children ﬁom different ages, ethnicities, and psychosocial
backgrounds including children with abuse histories and with a family history of divorce
and remarriage. The current investigation included attachment data only as it related to

100

mothers. Future investigations should be conducted which also include attachment to
fathers in the differential prediction of internal working models of social relationships.

Clinicallmplioations. This study’s ﬁndings that children’s attachment
relationships were better predictors of their internal working models of peer relationships
than was social status suggests avenues for intervention with children who are
experiencing peer problems and behaving aggressively. Social information-processing
research has indicated that children, especially boys, who anticipate negative interactions
with others tend to react more aggressively. The current study’s results suggest that
children’s anticipation of negative interactions with others is related to the security of
their relationships with their mothers. Currently, interventions for children who behave
aggressively or who have low social status are conducted primarily using social skills
training with same age peers. The results of this study suggest that interventions should
include a component focusing on parent-child relationships either by actively involving
parents in the treatment process in the context of family therapy or by including family
components in individual or peer group sessions.

Singer & Singer (1992) propose that the phenomenon of transference in
psychotherapy may reﬂect normal social information processing in which people use past
knowledge and experiences to interpret the meaning of unfamiliar or novel current events
and contexts as they occur in daily life and in the therapeutic relationship. In this light,
the children’s tendencies to use information about their relationships with their parents to
anticipate and understand interactions with peers in this study is suggestive of one
mechanism by which transference may operate in psychotherapy. It is possible that

101

psychotherapy clients use information contained in internal working models based on
attachment relationships with parents in social information processing steps prompted by
ambiguous, novel, or unfamiliar therapist behavior. Furthermore, especially for therapy
clients with insecure attachment histories with parents, it may be that model-
disconﬁrming interactions in the therapeutic relationship is one of the essential
ingredients that promotes positive personal growth and change. Future investigations of
therapy process and outcome with children and adults should include measurement of
clients’ attachment relationships with parents, therapists’ model-conﬁrming and -
disconﬁrming behaviors, clients’ attributions for therapist intent and actions pre-, during,
and post-therapy, and therapy outcome, as well as clients’ own perceptions of their

satisfaction throughout the therapy process.

102

APPENDICES

103

APPENDIX A

104

APPENDIX A

Coping Strategies Questionnaire

Name:

 

 

Age:

Circle which: Boy or Girl

PracticeStory

One day at school you get your test back from your teacher and you see that you scored a
low grade on the test. When you get home your mother can tell that you feel bad and she
asks if you want to talk about it. Some kids would want to talk to their mother about it,
but other kids would want to be left alone. Which is more like you?

Some kids would
want to talk to her BUT

about it.
Really true Sort of true
for me for me
[:1 C]

105

Other kids would
want to be left
alone.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me

D Cl

1. You and your mother go to a carnival one evening. Some of the rides look a little
scary but they look fun and exciting too. You want you mother to go on some of the
rides with you, but your mother says she is tired and just wants to sit on a bench and
watch. Some kids would go on the rides alone, but other kids wouldn’t go on the rides

alone. Which is more like you?

Some kids would
go on the rides
alone.
Really true Sort of true
for me for me
D C]

Other kids wouldn’t
go on the rides
alone.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me

E] D

2. One the way home from school a bully stops you and threatens you. This makes you
upset and afraid. When you get home you talk to your mother about it. Some kids would
stay close‘to their mother and talk about it for a long time, but other kids would talk to
their mother for a short time and then get over it. Which is more like you?

Some kids would

stay close to their
mother and talk about
it for a long time.
Really true Sort of true
for me for me
E] D

Other kids would talk
to her for a short time
and then get over it.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me
E] El

3. You get sick and have to spend a few days in the hospital. Some kids would want
their mother to spend the whole time with them in their hospital room, but other kids
wouldn’t mind if their mother just visited them once or twice a day during visiting hours.

Which is more like you?

Some kids would
want their mother to BUT
spend the whole time
with them.
Really true Sort of true
for me for me

E] El

Other kids would
not mind if she just
visited them during
visiting hours.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me

Cl Cl

4. Your mother takes you to the doctor’s ofﬁce for a check-up. While you are sitting in
the waiting room, she says she is going to run an errand and will be back to pick you up
later. Some kids wouldn’t care if their mother left them waiting alone, but other kids
would prefer that their mother wait with them. Which is more like you?

Some kids wouldn’t Other kids would
care if their mother BUT prefer that their mother
left them alone to wait. wait with them.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D D D D

5. You are at the movies with your mother and you have to go out to the bathroom.
When you come back in the movie it is so dark that you can’t ﬁnd your mother. Some
kids would calmly look for their mother and not be too worried, but other kids would
look for their mother and be very upset until they found her. Which is more like you?

Some kids would Other kids would
calmly look for her BUT look for her and be
and not be worried. upset until they found her.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D D C] D

6. You have been at summer camp for two weeks and many kids in your section have

received letters or phone calls from their mothers. You have not received any letters or
phone calls ﬁom your mother. Some kids would not care that they have not heard from
their mother, but other kids would be disappointed that they have not heard for their
mother. Which is more like you?

Some kids would not Other kids would be
care that they haven’t BUT disappointed that they
heard from their haven’t heard from their
mother. mother.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
Cl E] Cl C]

107

7. Your class is going to Washington, DC. on a ﬁeld trip for several days. Your mother
has agreed to go along as a room mother. But the day before your class is supposed to go
your mother decides that she is too busy to go along on the trip. Some kids would still
want to go with their class on the trip even if their mother didn’t go, but other kids would
not want to go on the trip if their mother didn’t go. Which is more like you?

Really true
for me

El

Some kids would

want to go if their
mother didn’t go.

BUT

Sort of true
for me

Cl

Other kids would
not want to go if their
mother didn’t go.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

Cl C]

8. You and your mother are visiting a new shopping center to see what it is like. Your
mother suggests that the two of you explore the center together. Some kids would only
want to explore it on their own, but other kids wouldn’t mind exploring it with their

mother. Which is more like you?

Really true
for me

Cl

Some kids would
only want to explore BUT
it on their own.

Sort of true
for me

Cl

Other kids wouldn’t
mind exploring with
their mother.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

C] D

9. One of your teachers says something mean to you at school one day. Some kids

would let their mother know they were upset and would talk with her about it, but other
kids would not let their mother know they were upset and would not talk to her about it.
Which is more like you?

Really true
for me

Some kids would
let their mother know BUT

they were upset and
would talk to her about it.

Sort of true
for me

C]

108

Other kids would not let her
know they were upset and
wouldn’t talk to her about it.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

C1 C1

10. You and your mother go to the movies together. When you go into the theater, you
see that it is crowded and you can’t ﬁnd two seats together. Some kids would be sorry
that they can’t sit with their mother, but other kids would prefer to sit away from their
mother anyway. Which is more like you?

Other kids would
rather sit away from

Some kids would
be sorry they can’t BUT

sit with their mother. her anyway.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D [:1 Cl [3

11. You and your mother drive to Detroit to explore a new mall. When you get there
your mother suggests that you explore on your own for an hour and then meet up with her
at a particular store. Some kids wouldn’t explore a new mall without their mother, but
other kids would explore a new mall alone. Which is more like you?

Other kids would
explore the new mall

Some kids would
not explore the new BUT

mall without their without her.
mother.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
E] El El E1

12. One day your and your mother go to the zoo. Your mother says that because she has
not seen you much lately, she would like the two of your to look at the animals together.
Some kids would be willing to look at the animals with their mother, but other kids
would rather look at the animals alone and meet up with their mother later. Which is
more like you?

Some kids would be

willing to look at the BUT

animals with their
mother.

Really true Sort of true
for me for me
D D

Other kids would
rather look at the
animals alone and meet
their mother later.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me
D D

13. You have to go to the doctor for a check-up and you are in the waiting room with
your mother. Your mother wants to leave you at the doctor’s ofﬁce while she does some
shopping. Some kids would be upset and try to make their mother stay, but other kids
would not be so upset and wouldn’t try to make their mother stay. Which is more like
you?

Some kids would be Other kids would
upset and try to make BUT not be so upset and wouldn’t
their mother stay. try to make their mother stay.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D D C] D

14. One day you have a problem with a ﬁiend at school. When you get home, your
mother can tell that you are upset and starts talking to you about it. Some kids would feel
comfortable talking to their mother about their feelings and problems, but other kids
would just want their mother to leave them alone. Which is more like you?

Some kids would Other kids would
feel comfortable BUT just want their mother
talking to their mother to leave them alone.
about their feelings and
problems.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me

Cl C1 El E1

110

15. There is an after-school sports team that you really want to join, but you realize that
you don’t know anyone on the team. You ask your mother to go to the try-outs with you.
She says she can drive you there but can’t stay there with you. Some kids would go only
if their mother could stay during the try-outs, but other kids would go even if their mother
couldn’t stay. Which is more like you?

Some kids would Other kids would
go only if their BUT go even if she couldn’t
mother would stay. stay.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
Cl Cl D t:

16. One day at school the teacher tells the class about a new class project, a class play,
and asks everyone to decide overnight if they want to play a part in it. The teacher
suggests that kids discuss being in the play with their mother before deciding whether to
be in it. Some kids wouldn’t want to discuss being in the play with their mother before
deciding, but other kids would want to discuss it with their mother before deciding.
Which is more like you?

Some kids wouldn’t Other kids would
want to discuss it BUT want to discuss it with her
with their mother before deciding.
before deciding.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
[:1 C1 C1 Cl

17. You and your mother are at a busy shopping mall in Detroit, and suddenly you can’t
ﬁnd your mother. You are upset, but a little later you ﬁnd each other. Some kids would
soon get over being upset, but other kids would stay worried for a long time that they
might get separated again. Which is more like you?

Some kids would Other kids would
soon get over being BUT stay worried that they
upset. might get separated again.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me

Cl C] 13 El

111

18. Your mother comes home after being away for a week or two. Some kids would stop
what they are doing and run to greet her with a hug or kiss, but other kids would not stop
what they are doing to greet her. Which is more like you?

Some kids would Other kids would
stop to greet her BUT not stop to greet her.
with a hug or kiss.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
El Cl C] D

19. One day at school the teacher misunderstands something you did and scolds you for
it. You become upset. Some kids would stay very upset until they talk to their mother
about it, but other kids wouldn’t be so anxious to talk to their mother about it. Which is
more like you?

Some kids would Other kids wouldn’t
stay upset until BUT be so anxious to talk
they talked to their to her about it.
mother about it.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
Cl [:1 D D

20. One day you come home from school upset about something. Your mother asks you
what the problem is. Some kids wouldn’t want to talk to her about it, but other kids
would want to discuss it with her. Which is more like you?

Some kids wouldn’t Other kids would
want to talk to her BUT want to talk to her
about it. about it.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me

Cl Cl E] El

112

APPENDIX B

113

APPENDIX B

Security Scale

Name:

 

Now we’re going to ask you some questions about you and your mom. We are interested
in what each of you is like, what kind of person you are like. First let me explain how
these questions work. Each question talks about two kinds of kids, and we want to know
which kids are most like you. Here is a sample question.

P . C .
Some kids would Other kids would
rather play outdoors BUT rather watch T.V.
in their spare time.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D E] C1 C]

What I want you to decide ﬁrst is whether you are more like the kids on the leﬁ side who
would rather play outdoors, or more like the kids on the right side who would rather
watch T.V. Don’t mark anything yet, but decide which kid is most like you and go to that

side of the sentence. Now, decide whether that is sortoftnreforyou, or reallytruefor
you, and check that box.

For each sentence, you will only check one box, the one that goes with what is true for
you, what you are most like.

114

Now we’re going to ask you some questions about you and your mom. If you have both
a mom and a stepmom, tell us about the one you live with.

1.

Really true
for me

Really true
for me

Really true
for me

Really true
for me

Some kids ﬁnd it
easy to trust their
mom

Sort of true

for me
C]

Some kids feel that
their mom butts in

a lot when they are
trying to do things.

Sort of true
for me

[3

Some kids ﬁnd it
easy to count on

their mom for help.

Sort of true
for me

C]

Some kids think
their mom spends
enough time with
them.

Sort of true
for me

E]

BUT

BUT

BUT

BUT

115

Other kids are not sure
if they can trust their
mom.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me
C1 [:1

Other kids feel like their
mom lets them do things
on their own.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

E] D
Other kids think it’s
hard to count on

their mom.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

Cl C]

Other kids think that
their mom does not
spend enough time
with them.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

Cl [3

Really true
for me

[3

Really true
for me

Really true
for me

Really true
for me

[3

Some kids do not
really like telling
their mom what

they are thinking or

feeling.

Sort of true
for me

E]

Some kids do not
really need their
mom for much.

Sort of true
for me

[:1

Some kids wish
they were closer to
their mom.

Sort of true
for me

1:]

Some kids worry

that their mom does
not really love them.

Sort of true
for me

D

BUT

BUT

BUT

BUT

116

Other kids do like
telling their mom
what they are thinking
and feeling

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

Cl C]

Other kids need their
mom for a lot of things.

Sort of true Really true
for me for me
Cl C]
Other kids are happy

with how close they
are to their morn.

Sort Of true Really true
for me for me
D C]
Other kids are really
sure that their mom
loves them.
Sort of true Really true
for me for me

E] El

Really true
for me

10.

Really true
for me

11.

Really true
for me

12.

Really true
for me

Some kids feel that
their mom really

understands them.

BUT

Sort of true
for me

Cl

Some kids are really
sure their mom would
not leave them.

BUT

Sort of true
for me

C]

Some kids worry

that their morn might BUT
not be there when

they need her.

Sort of true
for me

Cl

Some kids think their
mom does not listen BUT
to them.

Sort of true
for me

C]

117

Other kids feel like
their mom does not

really understand them.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

[:1 D

Other kids sometimes
wonder if their mom
might leave them.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

El D

Other kids are sure

that their mom will be
there when they
need her.
Sort of true Really true
for me for me
D D
Other kids do think
their mom listens
to them.
Sort of true Really true
for me for me

E] D

13.

Really true
for me

Cl

14.

Really true
for me

15.

Really true
for me

Some kids go to their
mom when they are BUT
upset.

Sort of true
for me

D

Some kids wish
their mom would
help them more with
their problems.

BUT

Sort of true
for me

Cl

Some kids feel
better when their
mom is around.

Sort of true
for me

El

Other kids do not go
to their mom when
they are upset.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

Cl El

Other kids think
their mom helps
them enough.

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

E] C]

Other kids do not really
feel better when their
mom is around.

BUT

Sort of true
for me

Really true
for me

El [:1

118

APPENDIX C

119

APPENDIX C

Peer Nomination Inventory

Name:

 

Instructions: Look at your class roster and choose the names of 3 of your classmates who
best ﬁt each description. In the space provided, write the code number that matches each
of the classmates names that you have chosen. Please do not share your answers with
others.

120

QuestionA

Choose the names of three classmates who amgoodatsports. Please write their code
numbers in the space below:

 

 

 

QuestionB

Choose the names of three classmates who you likejoplayardththeleast. Please write
the code numbers that match their names in the spaces below.

 

 

 

QuestiQnE

Choose the names of three classmates who startfrghts. Write their code numbers in the
spaces below.

 

 

 

121

QuestionD

Choose the names of three classmates who kick,hit,onpushothers. Write the code
numbers that match their names in the spaces below.

 

 

 

QuestionE

Choose the names of three classmates who arehelpful. Write their code numbers below.

 

 

 

QuestionE

Choose the names of three classmates who telLfriendsthattheynuilLstonlikingthem
nnlesstheydoarthnthelshesatd. Write the code numbers that match the classmates’

names below.

 

 

 

122

Questionﬁ

Choose the names of three classmates who you gcteyenrrzhentheyaremadhykeeping
peoplefromheingintheingroupoffriends. Write the code numbers that match their

names below.

 

 

 

QuestionH

Choose the names of three classmates who nylomakeothenkrdsnotlrkeaeertarmperson
bysmeadmgmmorsaboutthemorjalkinghehindtheirhacks. Write the code numbers

that match their names below.

 

 

 

QuestionJ

Choose the names of three classmates who you liketoplayauiththemost. Write the
code numbers that match their names below.

 

 

 

123

APPENDIX D

124

APPENDIX D

Attributional Bias Questionnaire

Name:

 

lnstnretions: When you read each story, pretend that it is happening to you. Answer the
questions that follow. Be sure to read each answer choice careﬁrlly.

PraeticeStory

1. Let’s imagine that you are looking forward to being with your ﬁiends at recess. The
bell rings and you get up to go outside. Your teacher tells you to stay in because she
wants you to help her clean the erasers during recess.

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT
think that the teacher
was being mean

Really true Sort of true
for me for me
D C]

125

Other kids would
think that the teacher
was not being mean

Sort of true Really true
for me for me

[:1 El

Storyl

Let’s pretend that some kids you know are playing kickball on the playground. You
would really like to play too, so you walk up to them and ask them if you can play. One
of the kids says that you can’t play right now.

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT Other kids would
think that the kid think that the kid
was being mean. was not being mean.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D El E] D

StoryZ

Let’s pretend that your mom and brother (or sister) are playing a board game that you like
to play. They are laughing and having a good time and you’d like to join them. You
walk up to them and ask if you can play too. Your mom says, “Not right now.”

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT Other kids would
think that the mom think that the mom
was not being mean. was being mean.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D D E] El

126

Stow—3

Let’s imagine that you are standing on the playground talking to some kids you know.
All of a sudden, you get hit hard in the back with a ball thrown by another kid you know.

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT Other kids would
think that the kid think that the kid
was being mean. was not being mean.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
E] U D D

StoryA

Let’s imagine that on the way home from school, you are thinking about how much fun
you are going to have (playing video games, watching t.v., talking on the phone, etc.)
when you get home. You get inside the door and your mom is standing there with a rake
in her hand. She tells you to go outside to rake the leaves.

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT Other kids would
think that the mom think that the mom
was being mean. was not being mean.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
[:1 c1 [:1 El

127

Stand

Let’s pretend that a new classmate that you want to meet is sitting next to you in class.
You whisper to him or her during class. The new classmate does not respond to you.

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT Other kids would
think that the kid think that the kid
was not being mean. was being mean.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
C] D D D

Storyo

Let’s pretend that after school you went outside to play with some kids you know in your
neighborhood. You come inside around 5:30pm for dinner. You go into the kitchen to
see what your mom has made for dinner. You discover that she has made something that
she knows you don’t like.

Which is more like you? Choose one response and mark an “X” in the box.

Some kids would BUT Other kids would
think that the mom think that the mom
was not being mean. was being mean.
Really true Sort of true Sort of true Really true
for me for me for me for me
D C] D E]

128

REFERENCES

129

REFERENCES

Ainsworth, M. D. S. Blehar, M. C. Waters, 13., &Wall, S. (1978). Battemsof
attachnrentrApsychologiealsnrdyoftheStrangeSrmation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Armsden, G. C. & Greenberg, M. T. (1987). The inventory of parent and peer
attachment: Individual differences and their relationship to psychological well-being in

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