Infant attachment security correlates, continuity and outcomes, and the influence of stress on caregiving sensitivity: new meta-analytic evidence

This symposium features current meta-analytic work from the Australian Temperament Project – Generation 3 research group. Mature cohort studies including attachment observations are rare and present important opportunities for knowledge synthesis and growth. Our team’s study of predictive pathways associated with caregiving sensitivity and offspring attachment security relies on solid meta-analytic evidence. The cluster of meta-analytic studies presented in this symposium represents our most recent evidence bases, informing empirical studies of our inter-generational data. The three papers address the meta-analytic evidence for a) continuity of attachment across the pre-school years, b) impacts of couple relationship quality on infant attachment security, and c) predictive associations between parent stress and caregiving sensitivity. Individually, each paper captures a critical corner of the literature, re-examining seminal hypotheses about offspring attachment security and care-giving sensitivity. Meta-analytic evidence of the first paper in our series presents the most comprehensive meta-analytic study yet conducted on attachment continuity across infancy and the pre-school years. Evidence in the second paper disaggregates parental relationship quality and conflict, and their associations with infant attachment security. The paper confirms the negative influence of couple conflict, but raises questions about positive couple adjustment in the causal pathway. The final paper systematically explores the role of three dimensions of stress on the expression of care-giving sensitivity. Collectively, the papers illustrate key decisions encountered and made in the application of meta-analytic methodologies to complex theoretical constructs, as well as the value of building subsequent studies of care-giving sensitivity and offspring attachment on meta-analytic foundations. Together the papers represent an important set of new findings about the aetiologies of secure base care-giving and offspring attachment.