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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attachment measures | 5/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_measures | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:31:30.330759+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) === Developed by Carol George and Malcolm West in 1999, this is a free response task that involves telling stories in response to eight picture stimuli (1 warm-up & 7 attachment scenes). The advantage of using a picture free-response system is that individuals are not asked to describe their own experiences, a method that has been shown to be subject to social desirability and defensive processes especially for assessing attachment trauma. (This method is similar to the School-Age Assessment of Attachment (SAA), below.) George and colleagues have described the AAP assessment in articles and books, and in a 2023 book, how to implement the AAP in clinical practice for assessment, client conceptualization, treatment planning, analysis, and as a therapeutic guide. The AAP can identify three organized patterns of attachment, secure, insecure-avoidant (or deactivating defenses), insecure-preoccupied/ambivalent (or cognitive disconnection), and also insecure-unresolved (disorganized attachment). The AAP identifies the same adult attachment groups as the early version of the AAI (Berkeley model), as described above. In addition to providing adult group classifications, the AAP is also used to code individual attachment defensive information processing patterns, experiences of attachment trauma, attachment synchrony, and personal agency. The strongest concurrent validation of the measure is the correspondence between AAP and AAI classification agreement. The AAP is demonstrated to be increasingly useful in clinical and neurobiological settings.
=== Patient Attachment Coding System (PACS) === Developed by Alessandro Talia and Madeleine Miller-Bottome in 2012, it is a language-based, observational measure of attachment used in the context of psychotherapy, described in Talia, Miller-Bottome, & Daniel (2017) in the journal Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy and other publications. The PACS has been defined as "leading to a paradigm shift in attachment-informed research and clinical practice.". Rather than coding the form or content of patients' discourse, the PACS tracks the frequency of specific discourse markers that reflect how the patient regulates trust and connection with the therapist. In this way, the PACS contributes to our knowledge of specific types of communication and behaviors that distinguish patients of different attachment patterns in psychotherapy:
Secure: They tell clear, well-structured narratives that are easy to visualize; they describe relationships and experiences together with elaborating upon the impact they had on them; they offer interpretations about others' and their own behavior with tentativeness and curiosity Avoidant: They downplay either their appraisal of relationships, or the effect these had on them; they are not likely to recount episodes, disclose feelings, or reflect on inner determinants of experiences Preoccupied: They present narratives that are unclear, full of irrelevant details; they describe relationships and experiences with either excessive certainty, or excessive vagueness and lack of a clear stance.
The PACS identifies the same adult attachment groups as the AAI or the AAP, as well as yielding dimensional scores for "linguistic behaviors" such as Proximity seeking, Contact Maintaining, Exploring, Avoidance, Resistance. The strongest concurrent validation of the measure is the correspondence with the AAI (k = .82), and the Reflective Functioning Scale (r = .72). The PACS is increasingly used in clinical settings.
=== Social psychology Self-report questionnaires === Hazan and Shaver created the first questionnaire to measure attachment in adults.
Their questionnaire was designed to classify adults into the three attachment styles identified by Ainsworth. The questionnaire consisted of three sets of statements, each set of statements describing an attachment style:
Secure - I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don't often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me. Avoidant - I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being. Anxious/Ambivalent - I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me or won't want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.
People participating in their study were asked to choose which set of statements best described their feelings. The chosen set of statements indicated their attachment style. Later versions of this questionnaire presented scales so people could rate how well each set of statements described their feelings. One important advance in the development of attachment questionnaires was the addition of a fourth style of attachment. Bartholomew and Horowitz presented a model that identified four categories or styles of adult attachment.
Their model was based on the idea attachment styles reflected people's thoughts about their partners and thought about themselves. Specifically, attachment styles depended on whether or not people judge their partners to be generally accessible and responsive to requests for support, and whether or not people judge themselves to be the kind of individuals towards which others want to respond and lend help. They proposed four categories based on positive or negative thoughts about partners and on positive or negative thoughts about self.
Bartholomew and Horowitz used this model to create the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ-CV). The RQ-CV consisted of four sets of statements, each describing a category or style of attachment: