Date of Award:

12-2010

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department:

Psychology

Advisor/Chair:

Gretchen Peacock

Abstract

Secure attachment in the mother-child relationship has been shown to be predictor of positive mental health and pro-social behaviors in children who are typically developing. This study uses a sample of young children (18 mo. to 2 yrs) who had been identified as having a delay in some area of development. Mothers of these children completed two paper-pencil measures of attachment, along with measures of child temperament, maternal psychological problems, parenting stress, and child behavior problems. A second set of measures was completed one year later. Results showed that increased parenting stress and difficulty of child temperament contributed to less security of attachment, while increased maternal psychological problems predicted higher attachment security. Analysis indicated that scores on both attachment measures were stable, and that a lower degree of attachment security predicted behavior problems in this sample of children with developmental delays.

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on January 19, 2011.

Copyright for this work is retained by the student.