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Longitudinal association between infant disorganized attachment and childhoodposttraumatic stress symptoms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2008

Helen Z. MacDonald ,
Marjorie Beeghly ,
Wanda Grant-Knight ,
Marilyn Augustyn ,
Ryan W. Woods ,
Howard Cabral ,
Ruth Rose-Jacobs ,
Glenn N. Saxe  and
Deborah A. Frank
Helen Z. MacDonald*
Affiliation:
Boston University VA Boston Healthcare System
Marjorie Beeghly
Affiliation:
Wayne State University Children's Hospital Boston Harvard University
Wanda Grant-Knight
Affiliation:
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago
Marilyn Augustyn
Affiliation:
Boston University
Ryan W. Woods
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Howard Cabral
Affiliation:
Boston University
Ruth Rose-Jacobs
Affiliation:
Boston University
Glenn N. Saxe
Affiliation:
Children's Hospital Boston Harvard University
Deborah A. Frank
Affiliation:
Boston University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Helen Z.MacDonald, Behavioral Sciences Division, Natural Center for PTSD, VA Boston HealthcareSystem, 150 South Huntington Avenue, 116B-4, Boston, MA02130.
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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether children with a history of disorganizedattachment in infancy were more likely than children without a history of disorganizedattachment to exhibit symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at school agefollowing trauma exposure. The sample consisted of 78 8.5-year-old children from a larger,ongoing prospective study evaluating the effects of intrauterine cocaine exposure (IUCE)on children's growth and development from birth to adolescence. At the 12-month visit,children's attachment status was scored from videotapes of infant–caregiverdyads in Ainsworth's strange situation. At the 8.5-year visit, children were administeredthe Violence Exposure Scale—Revised, a child-report trauma exposure inventory,and the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents by an experienced clinicalpsychologist masked to children's attachment status and IUCE status. Sixteen of the 78children (21%) were classified as insecure–disorganized/insecure–otherat 12 months. Poisson regressions covarying IUCE, gender, and continuity of maternal careindicated that disorganized attachment status at 12 months, compared with nondisorganizedattachment status, significantly predicted both higher avoidance cluster PTSD symptoms andhigher reexperiencing cluster PTSD symptoms. These findings suggest that the quality ofearly dyadic relationships may be linked to differences in children's later development ofposttraumatic stress symptoms following a traumatic event.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , Spring 2008 , pp. 493 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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Footnotes

The research presented in this paper was supported, in part, by a grant from theNational Institute of Drug Abuse (R01DA6532) to Deborah A. Frank, PrincipalInvestigator, and a grant from NIH/NCRR (M01RR00533). The authors are grateful to thefamilies for their participation in this study. We also acknowledge the research staffin the developmental lab at Boston Medical Center for their valuable assistance withdata collection and reduction in this project and Dr. Heidi Ellis who kindly editedearlier versions of this paper.

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