Conference Agenda

Attachment theory proposes that early interaction experiences with caregivers shape children‘s mental representations of themselves. Secure attachment is proposed to foster a positive, lovable view of the self. While previous research generally supports this claim, more longitudinal studies on the relation between between attachment security and self-esteem, assessed with gold-standard measures, are recommended (Pinquart, 2023). The current study aims to examine whether attachment security is stable between late childhood and adolescence and predicts higher self-esteem in adolescence and young adulthood.

To this end, we employed a longitudinal study and assessed attachment security with the Security Scale at 12 years (Kerns et al., 1996) and, most importantly, with Coherency of Mind in the Adult Attachment Interview at 15 years. Self-esteem was measured with the Lifespan Self-Esteem Scale (Harris et al., 2018) at 12, 15, and 18 years.

First regression analyses with a subsample of 69 adolescents (analysis of the full sample, N = 155, will be provided until the conference) revealed that attachment security at 12 years predicted attachment security but not self-esteem at 15 years. Self-esteem showed rank-order stability between 15 and 18 years. Attachment security at 15 years predicted higher self-esteem at 18 years, controlling for baseline self-esteem at 15 years.

These initial results advance attachment theory in showing that secure attachment predicts a more positive view of the self. The differentiated result pattern suggest that attachment may be particularly important for self-esteem in late adolescence, with mid-adolescent self-esteem potentially being shaped more strongly by concerns of social approval (Gruenenfeld-Steiger et al., 2016). Overall, the study provides new longitudinal evidence for both the stability of attachment security across adolescence and its specific contribution to self-esteem gains in late adolescence.

Attachment theory conceptualizes caregiving quality as foundational for the development of emotion regulation through early co-regulation and the gradual internalization of self-regulatory capacities. While much attachment research has focused on sensitivity and responsiveness, less attention has been given to psychologically controlling caregiving behaviors that intrude upon the child’s emotional and psychological autonomy. Parental psychological control represents an attachment-relevant form of emotionally intrusive caregiving that may undermine secure internal working models and disrupt adolescents’ regulation of negative emotions. The present study examined longitudinal pathways linking parental psychological control to adolescents’ internalizing symptoms through anger, sadness, and their dysregulation, capturing both stable individual differences and dynamic intra-individual processes.

Data were drawn from a three-wave Italian sample of 99 adolescents. Parental psychological control was assessed at Time 1; parental psychological control, adolescents’ anger, sadness, anger dysregulation, sadness dysregulation, and internalizing symptoms were assessed at Time 2; and internalizing symptoms were assessed again at Time 3. To reflect attachment-relevant regulatory processes, we operationalized mean levels of emotions and dysregulation as indicators of between-person variability, and instability scores as indicators of within-person variability.

Two path models were tested: one focusing on anger and anger dysregulation, and one on sadness and sadness dysregulation, each examined as mediators of the association between parental psychological control and internalizing symptoms while accounting for both cross-sectional and longitudinal effects. Results indicated that higher levels of parental psychological control were associated with greater emotional instability and dysregulation in adolescence, which in turn predicted increases in internalizing symptoms over time.

From an attachment-informed clinical perspective, these findings highlight emotionally controlling caregiving as a relational risk context for maladaptive self-regulatory processes, underscoring the importance of targeting both caregiving dynamics and adolescents’ emotion regulation patterns in prevention and intervention efforts.

Interoception, defined as the perception of internal bodily states such as heartbeat, respiration, and visceral sensations, is fundamental to the minimal self, grounding bodily self-experience and -regulation. Current theorizing proposes that interoception is not a unitary ability, but consists of several interrelated but distinct components: 1) interoceptive accuracy (ability to detect bodily signals accurately), 2) interoceptive sensibility (subject beliefs about sensibility to bodily signals), and 3) interoceptive metacognitive awareness (insight into one’s own awareness of bodily states). Interoception is theorized as being shaped by early social interactions, especially by sensitive and reflective caregiver interactions (Fotopoulou & Tsakiris, 2017). From an attachment theoretical perspective, attachment representations are proposed to influence the experience of oneself and self-regulation throughout the lifespan. Attachment representations are thus expected to influence open and coherent processing of bodily signals, therefore shaping interoception.

We investigated the association between attachment representations and different dimensions of interoception in an adult sample (N = 116, Mage = 40.43). Coherence of Transcript and attachment categories were coded from the Adult Attachment Interview. A heartbeat counting task (following Schandry, 1981) with confidence ratings was used to assess interoceptive accuracy, sensibility and metacognitive awareness.

Regression analyses show a positive prediction of interoceptive accuracy – but not sensibility or awareness – by Coherence of Transcript and attachment category. Individuals in the secure category showed higher interoceptive accuracy than individuals in the dismissing and preoccupied category.

Results highlight the relevance of attachment for the processing and regulation of emotional and bodily signals: Secure attachment is associated with more open and accurate processing of bodily signals. Attachment representations can thus be viewed as cognitive-affective frameworks that shape how sensory information is processed to construct interoception. Results further point to a role of sensitive and reflective interactions with caregivers in the development of interoceptive abilities.

Discussant of the Symposium