Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad De Sevilla, Seville, Spain.
Attach Hum Dev. 2021 Dec;23(6):969-986. doi: 10.1080/14616734.2020.1841253. Epub 2020 Nov 5.
Children in foster care are at risk of developing insecure and disorganized attachment, which is problematic for establishing new relationships in foster families. However, most previous studies have focused on attachment behaviors in young children rather than on attachment representations. We compared foster children's attachment representations with those of a community group, analyzing also the contribution made by different factors to foster children's attachment representations. We assessed the attachment representations of 109 children aged between 4 and 9 years (51 children in non-kin foster care and 58 community children) in southern Spain, using a narrative story stem measure. Case records information were collected for adversity and child protection variables. Foster children had fewer security and more avoidance indicators than their community counterparts, with those who had suffered more severe maltreatment scoring lower for security and higher for disorganization. Exposure to physical and emotional abuse and birth parents' opposition to the foster placement predicted more disorganized attachment representations. Interventions with foster children should consider their heterogeneity in terms of attachment outcomes, and foster caregivers of abused children may need guidance in order to provide therapeutic caregiving.
寄养儿童有形成不安全和无组织依恋的风险，这对在寄养家庭中建立新关系是有问题的。然而，大多数先前的研究都集中在幼儿的依恋行为上，而不是依恋表象上。我们比较了寄养儿童和社区群体的依恋表象，还分析了不同因素对寄养儿童依恋表象的贡献。我们使用叙事故事干测量法评估了西班牙南部 109 名 4 至 9 岁儿童（51 名非亲属寄养儿童和 58 名社区儿童）的依恋表象。案例记录信息收集了逆境和儿童保护变量。与社区儿童相比，寄养儿童的安全感指标较少，回避指标较多，受虐待程度越严重的儿童，安全感得分越低，组织混乱程度得分越高。遭受身体和情感虐待以及亲生父母反对寄养安置会导致更紊乱的依恋表象。对寄养儿童的干预措施应考虑他们在依恋结果方面的异质性，并且受虐待儿童的寄养照顾者可能需要指导，以便提供治疗性的照顾。
