Toddler affect with mothers and fathers: the importance of infant attachment

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the degree to which toddlers’ affect at 20 months during the Parent Ignore Toddler Situation (PITS), a modified still-face paradigm, with mothers and fathers was predicted by attachment (12 and 14 months), temperamental negative reactivity (3, 5, 7, 12, and 14 months), and attachment X negative reactivity during infancy. Parents (N = 135) were predominantly Caucasian (90.3% of mothers and 87.4% of fathers). Results from multi-level models, controlling for baseline affect and current parent sensitivity, indicated several effects involving attachment, but not temperament. An Episode X Avoidant attachment interaction indicated that toddlers who were classified as avoidant with either parent during infancy showed a flattened pattern of positive affect across the PITS episodes compared with those classified as secure. In contrast, a Parent X Ambivalent attachment interaction indicated that toddler negative affect was higher when they had an ambivalent attachment with mothers but not fathers.

KEYWORDS:

• Attachment
• temperament
• infacy
• still-face paradigm
• affect

View correction statement:

Correction

Acknowledgments

We express our deep appreciation to the families who participated in the study and to the students who helped collect and code the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a grant from NICHD: 5R03 HD39802 granted to the first author.