Measuring Attachment Representations in Rural and Poor African American Children

测量农村和贫困非裔美国儿童的依恋表征

• 批准号: 8100174
• 负责人: MARTHA J. COX
• 金额: $ 10.66万
• 依托单位: UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-07-01 至 2013-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8100174
• 关键词: Achievement; Address; Adult; African American; Attitude; Behavior; Behavioral; Belief; Caregivers; Caring; Child; Child Care; Child Language; Cognitive; County; Development; Emotions; Environment; Epidemiology; Failure; Family; Funding; Home visitation; House Call; Individual; Lead; Life; Link; Longitudinal Studies; Low income; Measurement; Measures; Mediating; Mediator of activation protein; Minority; Modeling; Motivation; North Carolina; Nursery Schools; Pattern; Pennsylvania; Performance; Persons; Play; Process; Recording of previous events; Regulation; Research; Role; Rural; Sample Size; Sampling; School-Age Population; Schools; Scientist; Secure; Security; Self-control as a personality trait; Shapes; Social Interaction; Structure; Temperament; Testing; Time; Translations; Validation; aged; authority; cognitive function; cost; early experience; environmental change; expectation; experience; free behavior; high risk; infancy; kindergarten; peer; programs; public health relevance; sound; suburb; success; teacher

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Measuring Attachment Representations in Rural and Poor African American Children. The development of the person is considered by many behavioral scientists to involve a dynamic process whereby self-regulatory structures and functions grow from the collaborative interplay between the developing child and the environment. The child and environment are seen from this perspective as mutually transformative over time as earlier patterns of adaptation are transformed by environmental change while environmental features are represented differently by individuals and thus have different meaning and influence. This conceptualization of development is important in guiding research aimed at understanding the child's adaptation to new settings and challenges during key developmental transitions such as the transition to formal schooling. In the transition to school the child encounters new authority figures, standards of performance, and activities and rules in the formal classroom setting, as well as engages in a wide variety of new social interactions with peers and adults. The way in which the child understands and represents the emotion and behaviors of others has been related to children's relationships with their peers and teachers and to broad indicators of school success. Research on this topic highlights the importance of attachment relationships on later functioning, an effect considered by many to be dependent on the child's translation of interaction patterns into relationship representations. Despite the potential importance of these representations, they are rarely studied as part of the adaptation that children make to early schooling and are particularly understudied among children who are at high risk for school failure because of rural, low income, and minority status. One of the barriers to study of this phenomenon is the lack of validation of a measure of attachment representation for rural, low-income, African American children at early school age. In this application we seek support for exploring the Manchester Child Attachment Story Tasks (MCAST) as a valid and reliable measure of attachment representation for rural, low-income African American kindergarten children. We also seek to explore whether attachment representations in rural, low-income African American children serve to mediate the link between maternal care and the child's adaptation to formal schooling. To accomplish this aim, we will use subjects from an ongoing longitudinal study, the Family Life Project (FLP), adding measurement funded by this application to already collected information. This study is ideally suited to explore our questions in a cost-efficient manner. The FLP is a program project in which an epidemiological sample of over 1200 children and their families were enlisted in 6 rural counties in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. We will randomly draw a subsample of 200 North Carolina children from low income, African American families. This sample size gives us good power to explore questions regarding attachment representations using the MCAST. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The current project addresses specific issues related to how children internalize relationships with their primary caregivers and then potentially use those representations to guide how they interact and form new relationships with teachers and peers during the transition to school. These processes may be particularly informative regarding how early familial experience continue to influence socioemotional development and functioning outside of the family environment.

描述（由申请人提供）：测量农村和贫困非裔美国儿童的依恋表征。许多行为科学家认为，人的发展涉及一个动态过程，自我调节结构和功能通过发展中的儿童与环境之间的协作相互作用而成长。从这个角度来看，随着时间的推移，儿童和环境是相互转化的，因为早期的适应模式会因环境变化而改变，而环境特征因个人的不同表现而具有不同的含义和影响。这种发展的概念化对于指导旨在了解儿童在关键发展转变（例如向正规学校过渡）期间对新环境和挑战的适应的研究非常重要。在向学校过渡的过程中，孩子会在正式的课堂环境中遇到新的权威人物、表现标准、活动和规则，并与同龄人和成人进行各种新的社交互动。儿童理解和表达他人情感和行为的方式与儿童与同龄人和老师的关系以及学校成功的广泛指标有关。关于这个主题的研究强调了依恋关系对以后功能的重要性，许多人认为这种影响取决于孩子将互动模式转化为关系表征。尽管这些表征具有潜在的重要性，但很少将它们作为儿童对早期学校教育适应的一部分进行研究，尤其是在那些因农村、低收入和少数民族身份而面临学业失败高风险的儿童中。研究这一现象的障碍之一是缺乏对学龄早期农村、低收入非裔美国儿童依恋表征测量的验证。在此应用程序中，我们寻求支持探索曼彻斯特儿童依恋故事任务（MCAST），作为农村低收入非裔美国幼儿园儿童依恋表征的有效且可靠的衡量标准。我们还试图探讨农村低收入非裔美国儿童的依恋表征是否有助于调节孕产妇护理与儿童适应正规学校教育之间的联系。为了实现这一目标，我们将使用正在进行的纵向研究“家庭生活项目”(FLP) 中的受试者，将由该应用程序资助的测量添加到已收集的信息中。这项研究非常适合以经济有效的方式探索我们的问题。 FLP 是一个计划项目，其中收集了北卡罗来纳州和宾夕法尼亚州 6 个农村县的 1200 多名儿童及其家庭的流行病学样本。我们将随机抽取 200 名来自低收入非裔美国家庭的北卡罗来纳州儿童作为子样本。这个样本量使我们有能力使用 MCAST 探索有关附件表示的问题。 公共卫生相关性：当前项目解决了与儿童如何内化与其主要照顾者的关系有关的具体问题，然后可能利用这些表征来指导他们在向学校过渡期间如何与老师和同龄人互动并形成新的关系。这些过程可能特别有助于了解早期家庭经历如何继续影响家庭环境之外的社会情感发展和功能。