The attachment working models concept: Among other things, we build script-like representations of secure base experiences

Abstract

Mental representations are of central importance in attachment theory. Most often conceptualized in terms of working models, ideas about mental representation have helped guide both attachment theory and research. At the same time, the working models concept has been criticized as overly extensible, explaining too much and therefore too little. Once unavoidable, such openness is increasingly unnecessary and a threat to the coherence of attachment theory. Cognitive and developmental understanding of mental representation has advanced markedly since Bowlby's day, allowing us to become increasingly specific about how attachment-related representations evolve, interact, and influence affect, cognition, and behavior. This makes it possible to be increasingly specific about mental representations of attachment and secure base experience. Focusing on script-like representations of secure base experience is a useful first step in this direction. Here we define the concept of a secure base script, outline a method for assessing a person's knowledge/access to a secure base script, and review evidence that script-like representations are an important component of the working models concept.

Keywords:

• Attachment
• script
• working models

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Center for Mental Health Promotion and the New York Attachment Consortium.

Notes

1 As scripts represent connected temporal – causal sequences, they are learned more or less as wholes, not piecemeal element by element. Thus, it is not necessary that each of the elements in Table I be explicitly mentioned in the passage. Explicit or implied use of several secure base elements is sufficient evidence to score the person as familiar with the secure base script. As in the Strange Situation, AAI, or typical attachment behavior scoring, one looks for converging indications rather than drawing strong inferences from isolated details.

2 Non-secure base passages are scored on a 1 – 7 scale indicating the extent to which the passage is organized around the non-secure base script used to generate the prompt-word outline. For example, a passage organized around the Afternoon Shopping script would refer to (or imply) traveling to the shopping area with a friend, looking at various items on sale, making some purchases, becoming tired, snacking, and returning home.