Insecure Attachment
This attachment style is shown when an infant appears calm during separation but avoids their caregiver upon reunion.
What is avoidant attachment?
This form of child maltreatment accounts for 34% of substantiated cases in Canada and is tied as the most common with exposure to intimate partner violence.
What is neglect?
This is one positive life outcome associated with secure attachment in infancy, involving stronger emotional regulation and social functioning.
What is stronger emotional regulation and social functioning?
This timing is considered the most effective for approaching a baby in order to support secure attachment and emotional regulation.
What is before they cry?
This type of attachment in infancy involves a strong emotional bond where the caregiver is a reliable source of comfort and safety
What is secure attachment?
In Ainsworth’s Strange Situation, this attachment pattern is identified by infants who show intense distress upon separation and cannot be soothed easily when reunited.
What is ambivalent or anxious-resistant attachment?
In Harlow’s deprivation experiments, rhesus monkeys raised with only surrogate mothers showed freezing and cowering behaviours due to this major developmental risk factor.
What is severe social deprivation?
During this life stage, individuals who were securely attached as infants show stronger emotional regulation and cooperative peer interactions.
What is adolescence?
This concept emphasizes that no single parenting strategy or intervention works for every child, since each infant has unique needs and may require different levels of stimulation or support.
What is goodness of fit?
This period is considered especially influential because early attachment helps regulate stress and shape long-term emotional functioning.
What is infancy?
Harlow’s rhesus monkey experiments demonstrated that infants prefer this over food when forming early attachments.
What is contact comfort?
Nearly half of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder can form secure attachments when caregivers consistently provide this type of caregiving.
What is predictable and sensitive caregiving?
This type of research followed infants into adolescence and found that those securely attached early in life cooperated better with peers during challenging tasks.
What is longitudinal research?
This basic need is often indicated when an infant is observed sucking their thumb.
What is hunger?
This process explains how infants use caregivers’ facial expressions and tone of voice to guide their responses in unfamiliar situations.
What is social referencing?
This caregiving pattern is most strongly associated with the development of disorganized attachment.
What is frightening or fear-inducing caregiving?
Due to historical and ongoing colonial trauma, Indigenous children in Canada are this many times more likely to enter the child welfare system than non-Indigenous children.
What is fifteen times?
This developmental vulnerability emerges when infants lacking secure attachment show reduced flexibility in expressing and regulating emotions in middle childhood.
What is decreased adaptive emotional expression?
This trauma-informed intervention is considered the most effective for supporting both parents and children with a history of trauma.
What is Child-Parent Psychotherapy?
This caregiving framework explains how infants move between seeking comfort during distress and exploring their environment when they feel safe.
What is the Circle of Security?
Avoidant infants show little outward distress in the Strange Situation because they have learned this about expressing their emotional needs.
What is that expressing distress will not result in comfort?
Paternal disengagement at three months postpartum was shown to predict this type of behaviour problem in infants by twelve months.
What are externalizing problems?
Adults with a history of insecure attachment are more likely to experience this specific combination of outcomes, including negative social interactions, difficulty seeking support, behaviour dysregulation, and lower life satisfaction by age 30.
What is poorer long-term social and mental-health functioning?
This daily family practice is linked to longer and more consistent nighttime sleep in young children.
What are bedtime routines?
This outcome develops when repeated caregiver responses teach infants how to manage emotional arousal over time.
What is emotional regulation?