Children’s family drawings: association with attachment representations in story stem narratives and social and emotional difficulties

ABSTRACT

We examined representations of attachment security using story stem narratives (Manchester Attachment Story Task, MCAST) and a family drawing task in 50 Greek children between 4 and 6 years old. Additionally, we examined the association between attachment classification based on the family drawing task and maternal reports of social and emotional symptoms assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Attachment security classification based on the MCAST was not significantly associated with attachment security classification based on the family drawings. There was a small to medium strength significant association between drawing-based insecure attachment classification and higher scores on conduct problems and inattention/hyperactivity ratings. However, the associations were not statistically significant after controlling for the effects of child gender, and maternal education and age. The findings are discussed in relation to the properties of the family drawing task to measure attachment security in the preschool and early middle childhood years.

KEYWORDS:

• Attachment
• family drawings
• Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST)
• Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
• social and emotional difficulties
• early childhood

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participant families and Kostas Dimatis for reliability coding of the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author [AK], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Banco Santander [grant number: 2016/25].

Notes on contributors

Angeliki Kallitsoglou

Angeliki Kallitsoglou is a senior lecturer in child psychology and education at the School of Education, University of Roehampton, London, UK. Her research interests include children’s social and emotional development, parenting, parent–child relationships.

Vasiliki Repana

Vasiliki Repana is an early childhood care professional with expertise in early years settings.

Monica Shiakou

Monica Shiakou is an associate professor in psychology.