Developmental changes in separation anxiety in childhood

Abstract

Eighty children, 20 boys and girls at each of four age levels (3–4, 7–8, 10–11 and 14–15 years), responded to a Pictorial Experimental Paradigm (PEP) derived from Spielberger's STAIC, involving the rating of the intensity of three positive and three negative adjectives when considering separation from the caretaker in two types of situations: “left-with-a-sitter” where parting is “mitigated” by adult companionship, and “left-alone” where separation is “unmitigated”. Item reliability and specificity for separation anxiety are described in terms of Cronbach's alpha, intercorrelations and comparisons with ratings obtained from a parallel PEP dealing with death anxiety on the same sample. Performance on the separation PEP indicated clear developmental trends; the decrease with age of intensity ratings was significant. A trend analysis showed that 77% of the age variance could be explained by a linear component. Against a background of findings in infancy of higher intensity levels of separation anxiety when parting is unmitigated by adult companionship, the results of this experiment were further examined for differences in intensity ratings for the left-alone and left-with-sitter separation situations. Scores for the unmitigated situation were found consistently higher than for the mitigated one across the age ranges of 3 to 15 years. A factor analysis showed two exclusively distinct factors corresponding to the two separation situations. The findings of the study are discussed in terms of methodological, theoretical and applied implications of tracing the natural development of separation anxiety.

Key Words:

• Separation Anxiety
• pictorially aided assessment
• pictorial rating scale
• developmental task
• powers of regulation
• safe base