The Role of Attachment in Children's Memory and Suggestibility

人们对儿童报告准确记忆和抵制错误建议的能力越来越感兴趣。社会和情感因素可以帮助我们理解控制儿童记忆和易受暗示的机制。影响儿童记忆和易受暗示能力的一个社会情感因素是亲子依恋关系的质量。理论上，儿童的依恋可以表现为高度回避和/或高度焦虑相对于低回避和/或低焦虑。逃避和焦虑程度低的儿童被描述为安全型依恋。初步证据表明，与安全型依恋儿童相比，回避型依恋儿童的记忆力较差，对依恋相关信息的暗示能力也较强，他们寻求照顾的努力很可能遭到拒绝或轻视。由于受虐待的儿童通常是不安全的，因此这些儿童可能需要特殊的访谈技巧来确保准确的记忆并减少易受暗示的风险。在实际层面上，这个话题特别重要，因为受虐待的儿童经常在法医环境中接受讯问。在特殊的访谈技巧得到验证之前，需要基础的科学研究来确定依恋是否以及如何影响儿童的记忆和暗示。为了进一步了解依恋不安全感与记忆/暗示之间的关系，本项目将确定回避个体信息加工倾向的潜在机制。依恋对记忆的影响是否延伸到与依恋无关的信息也将被研究。这些问题将通过检查影响编码/注意、存储/排练和检索的因素，在3岁和5岁的儿童中进行调查。将进行三个实验。在每个实验中，将呈现依恋和非依恋刺激，并评估儿童的记忆和暗示。孩子和家长的依恋取向将被确定。第一个实验的重点是编码，第二个是存储/排练，第三个是检索因素。将进行单变量和多变量统计分析。预期结果包括：回避型依恋儿童会将注意力从依恋相关刺激上转移开，但不会转移到非依恋相关刺激上（实验1），并且这些儿童会避免对依恋相关主题进行预演（实验2）。在某种程度上，依恋相关信息是编码的，回避型儿童应该能够更好地在情感支持的环境中获取这些信息（实验3）。如果回避型儿童的主要困难是在检索（即，在记忆报告的时候），这将对如何询问儿童有特别重要的影响，例如，在学校和法庭环境中。本课题具有一定的理论和应用意义。这个项目将是第一个研究记忆发展和社会情感发展的整合的项目。因此，该项目的成果将在几个方面促进科学知识的发展。首先，本项目将建立依恋与儿童记忆和暗示之间的联系。该项目还将查明受依恋影响的记忆的具体阶段。最后，研究者将确定记忆-依恋关系是否取决于孩子的年龄。该项目还与法医和教育实践相关。具体而言，研究结果将阐明法医访谈策略，特别是对于具有回避依恋倾向的儿童（例如，由于儿童虐待），以最大限度地提高记忆准确性，同时最大限度地减少记忆失真。结果可能揭示了法医采访者目前在采访不安全依恋儿童时使用的非最佳策略，并且该实验将为更好的不安全依恋儿童记忆报告提供替代途径。此外，学术学习大量涉及记忆，这可能受到依恋历史的影响。在家里被轻视或拒绝的孩子可能在某些学校环境中执行记忆任务时遇到困难。这项研究可能会揭示这些困难的来源，以及最有可能的教育策略，即不安全依恋儿童编码、存储和/或检索信息的能力。

There has been increasing interest in children's ability to report accurate memories and resist false suggestions. Social and emotional factors may help us understand the mechanisms that govern children's memory and suggestibility. A socio-emotional factor that may affect children's memory and suggestibility is the quality of the attachment relationship between parent and child. In theory, children's attachment can be characterized as high in avoidance and/or high in anxiety versus low in avoidance and/or low in anxiety. Children low in avoidance and anxiety are described as securely attached. Preliminary evidence suggests that avoidantly attached children, whose bids for care have likely been rejected or belittled, display poorer memory and increased suggestibility for attachment-related information, compared with securely attached children. Because abused children are frequently insecurely attached, it follows that these children may require special interviewing techniques to ensure accurate memory and reduce the risk of suggestibility. On a practical level, this topic is particularly significant because abused children are often questioned in forensic settings. Before special interviewing techniques can be validated, basic scientific research is needed to establish if and how attachment may affect children's memory and suggestibility. To further our understanding of relations between attachment insecurity and memory/suggestibility, this project will identify the mechanisms underlying the information processing propensities of avoidant individuals. Whether the effects of attachment on memory extend to nonattachment-related information will also be examined. These issues will be investigated in 3- and 5-year-olds by examining factors that affect encoding/attention, storage/ rehearsal, and retrieval. Three experiments will be conducted. In each experiment, attachment and nonattachment stimuli will be presented and children's memory and suggestibility assessed. Children's and parents' attachment orientation will be determined. The first experiment focuses on encoding, the second on storage/rehearsal, and the third on retrieval factors. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses will be performed. Expected outcomes include that avoidantly attached children will avert attention away from attachment-related stimuli but not nonattachment-related stimuli (Experiment 1), and that these children will avoid rehearsal of attachment-related topics (Experiment 2). To the extent that attachment-related information is encoded, avoidant children should be better able to access such information in an emotionally supportive context (Experiment 3). If avoidant children's main difficulty is at retrieval (i.e., at the time of memory report), this would have especially important implications for how children are questioned, for instance, in school and forensic contexts. This project will have both theoretical and applied significance. This project will be among the first to examine the integration of memory development and socio-emotional development. Consequently, results from the project will advance scientific knowledge in several ways. First, this project will establish the association between attachment and children's memory and suggestibility. The project will also pinpoint the specific stages of memory affected by attachment. Finally, the investigators will determine whether the memory-attachment relationship depends on the child's age. The project is also relevant to forensic and educational practices. Specifically, the findings will shed light on forensic interview strategies, especially for children with avoidant attachment orientations (e.g., as a result of child maltreatment), to maximize memory accuracy while minimizing memory distortion. The results may reveal that forensic interviewers currently use nonoptimal strategies when interviewing insecurely attached children, and the experiments will suggest alternative routes to better insecurely attached children's memory reports. Moreover, academic learning heavily involves memory, which may be affected by attachment history. Children who have been belittled or rejected at home may suffer from difficulties performing memory tasks in certain school contexts. This research may shed light on the source of those difficulties and on the educational strategies most likely the insecurely attached child's ability to encode, store, and/or retrieve information.