Critical Evaluation Of Attachment Theory Essay

Attachment theory as conceptualized by Bowlby (1969) is based on the theory infants develop an internal model of parental trust as the parent provides a haven for the child. The individual’s attachment style helps form their personality and is a set trait across their lifetime. As the child grows into adolescence does the attachment style help predict the individual’s adjustment and developmental outcome in home and school? The few studies done on attachment and adjustment in adolescent have been mixed, finding links between some outcomes and not others. The current study seeks to see if parental attachment is a predictor of adolescent adjustment and mitigates against anti-social behavior. The study collected participants from three different risk categories: high risk, moderate risk, and normative risk. The high-risk participants, who were referred to the study due to antisocial behavior, were …show more content…
Two coders were trained on 20 training cases to code the CAI interviews and achieved a 90% agreement. In addition to the CAI interview direct observation of parent-child interaction was taped, observed and coded for analysis. The direct observation used the “hot-topic” paradigm to observe parent-child interactions in a stressful environment. With the “hot-topic” paradigm the parent and child are asked to have a 10-minute discussion on a topic chosen by each of them that is causing a difficulty in the relationship. After this an interview with the parent was conducted to collect family characteristics and demographics. In addition to the observations, the parent was asked to fill out the Child Adolescent Pediatric Assessment and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for their child. The adolescent was asked to fill out the Self-Report Delinquency instrument which covers a range of anti-social