Harriet Salatas Waters

The attachment working models concept: among other things, we build script-like representations of secure base experiences.

Abstract Mental representations are of central importance in attachment theory. Most often conceptualized in terms of working models, ideas about mental representation have helped guide both attachment theory and research. At the same time, the working models concept has been criticized as overly extensible, explaining too much and therefore too little. Once unavoidable, such openness is increasingly unnecessary and a threat to the coherence of attachment theory. Cognitive and developmental understanding of mental representation has advanced markedly since Bowlbys day, allowing us to become increasingly specific about how attachment-related representations evolve, interact, and influence affect, cognition, and behavior. This makes it possible to be increasingly specific about mental representations of attachment and secure base experience. Focusing on script-like representations of secure base experience is a useful first step in this direction. Here we define the concept of a secure base script, outline a method for assessing a persons knowledge/access to a secure base script, and review evidence that script-like representations are an important component of the working models concept.

A, B Seeing: The Role of Constructive Processes in Children's Comprehension Monitoring.

Using E. M. Markmans (1977, 1979) comprehension-monitoring paradigm, 192 skilled and less skilled readers from 3rd and 6th grade read stories containing inconsistent information. Half of the students constructed a storyboard representation of the story using plastic cutout figures placed on a background storyboard; half only read the text. Storyboard construction enhanced the integration of text propositions and increased inconsistency detection, particularly for less skilled readers. A story recall test also revealed significant effects of storyboard construction on the encoding and recall of critical propositions. These findings were interpreted in terms of the dual effects of storyboard construction on enhanced encoding and memory and its demands on proposition integration. Furthermore, it is proposed that storyboard construction can serve as a basis for effective intervention and training of proposition integration skills.

The phenomenology of false memories: episodic content and confidence.

Three experiments investigated the phenomenology of false memories in J. D. Bransford and J. J. Franks (1971) semantic integration paradigm using Remember-Know judgments and confidence ratings. Findings included high rates of Remember false alarms that increased with greater integrative demands, a dissociation between Remember and Know judgments in the standard Bransford and Franks condition, and similar patterns of Remember and Know judgments in a condition where semantic integrative processes were weakened. Confidence ratings were consistently higher for Remember judgments except where integrative processes were greatest. These results are discussed in terms of the phenomenology of true and false memory for episodes.

Script-like attachment representations and behavior in families and across cultures: studies of parental secure base narratives.

Abstract The articles included in this Special Issue of Attachment and Human Development were originally presented as contributions to symposia at the Society for Research in Child Development (Atlanta, Georgia, April 2005) and at the European Developmental Psychology Conference (Laguna, Canary Islands, August 2005). The articles represent efforts of independent research teams studying the emergence, maintenance, and implications of attachment representations. In each study, a central measure of attachment representation was a recently described measure of the secure base script (Waters & Rodrigues-Doolabh, 2004). This measure assesses the “scriptedness” of secure base content in stories told in response to a set of word-prompts. Each paper included in this special issue addresses a specific issue relevant to the reliability, validity, or broader utility of the attachment script representation measure as an indicator of the respondents awareness of and access to a secure base script. The first paper provides a précis of the measure itself, including its conceptual underpinnings and the notion of “scriptedness” as it relates to the secure base construct. In the second article, the cross-time stability of the scriptedness scores is tested. The third and fourth articles present relations between the scriptedness score from the new measure and indices of state of mind about attachment from the Adult Attachment Interview (one sample of Italian mothers, the other in a sample of adolescents). The fifth article describes relations between the attachment script representation score and mother – child interaction during a memory reminiscence task. The final article in this set is a report on associations between the maternal attachment script representations and child attachment security for a sample of adopting mothers and adopted children. Taken together, these studies provide broad support for this new procedure and scoring system to capture important aspects of secure base knowledge for adults and also provide evidence for the relevance of secure base scripts in the socialization of child secure base behavior.

Memory development in adolescence: Relationships between metamemory, strategy use, and performance

Abstract Eighth and tenth grade students were asked to study and recall a list of paired associates. The word pairs were available either throughout an 8 sec per word study period or only at the beginning and were composed of either high frequency or low frequency words. After recall, students were asked to indicate which of several study strategies they had used with each word pair (read pair carefully, rehearsal, visual elaboration, verbal elaboration). In addition, they were asked which of these strategies would have had the best effect on recall. Knowledge of appropriate memory strategies (metamemory) was positively related to strategy use, and strategy use was positively related to recall performance at both ages. Improved performance with materials available throughout study and with high frequency word pairs was explained by increased use of elaborative strategies. Age differences in performance were explained by increased strategy effectiveness. These results are discussed in relation to changing relationships among metamemory, strategy use, and performance with age.

Sex Differences in the Use of Organization Strategies: A Developmental Analysis.

Abstract Two experiments investigated sex differences in the use of organization strategies in free recall with categorizable and unrelated word lists across age. It was proposed that the use of memory strategies first develops under more favorable processing conditions and then generalizes. Accordingly, processing conditions were manipulated in both Experiment 1 (categorizable lists) and Experiment 2 (unrelated word lists). Males and females either received word lists presented with semantic orienting task instructions or with standard instructions in which they were asked only to listen to and remember the list materials. Results from Experiment 1 indicated that only females demonstrate significant levels of organization in first grade, and then only under the more favorable semantic processing conditions. In third grade both males and females show significant levels of organization, but only under semantic orienting task instructions. In fifth grade, females generalize the use of organization to the less favorable standard processing conditions. Results from Experiment 2 showed no use of organization for males or females in third grade with unrelated word lists, and significant levels of organization for females in fifth grade, but only under more favorable processing conditions. Sex differences were not only pronounced across the ages tested, but were consistent with principles of strategy development in general, with males showing a developmental lag in the use of organization strategies across age.

Children’s Use of Memory Strategies Under Instruction

This chapter is concerned with training procedures for the acquisition and generalization of learning and memory strategies during the early and middle childhood years. The first section of the chapter presents a general developmental framework in which all strategy development can be viewed. Its emphasis is on the change from limited, context-specific, and often inconsistent strategy use to broader, more consistent, context-free strategy use. It is proposed that strategy generalization proceeds from specific contexts that encourage strategy use to a broader range of contexts in which the individual is more active in initiating appropriate strategy use. Several common memory strategies that develop during childhood are examined within this general developmental framework. Its application to and usefulness in new domains are also examined. After the general developmental framework is presented, the question how best to promote the acquisition and generalization of appropriate learning and memory strategies is addressed. The roles of task procedure and materials, practice and familiarity with learning and memory tasks, and verbalizable knowledge of strategies and task demands in strategy development and training are examined. It is suggested that all could be effective in promoting strategy use, with the possibility that some approaches would work better at certain ages (i.e., an age-instruction interaction). Changes in strategy effectiveness with age are also discussed with respect to the evaluation of training procedures.

Memory Strategy Development: Do We Need Yet Another Deficiency?

Recent discussions of strategy development have included the introduction of the concept of utilization deficiency. The present analysis examines the definition of utilization deficiency vis-à-vis the older contrasts between mediation and production deficiency and assesses the logical clarity of the current definition. Further, because utilization deficiency focuses on the transition from initial to proficient strategy use, the present analysis considers all of the possible types of strategy inefficiencies and evaluates whether the current definition of utilization deficiency precludes consideration of important strategy inefficiencies that have been documented in the existing literature and are likely to form the bulk of yet-to-be discovered inefficiencies. Although the emphasis on strategy inefficiencies is welcomed, the current analysis concludes that there are serious problems with the current definition of utilization deficiency, problems that both obscure important theoretical distinctions of the past and limit the investigation of strategy inefficiencies that are likely to play an important role in our understanding of the development of strategy use. Furthermore, the linear developmental model that frames utilization deficiencies from no benefit to sophisticated strategy use ignores the heterogeneity in strategy development that has been recently documented.

Superordinate—subordinate structure in semantic memory: The roles of comprehension and retrieval processes

In the first of two experiments, third-grade, sixth-grade, and college-age subjects were asked either to generate passages to be recalled two weeks later (good comprehension condition), or to listen to recordings of passages generated by other subjects and recall them two weeks later (average comprehension condition). Both the initial passages and the recall protocols were analysed using the propositional representation developed in Kintschs model of semantic memory. At each age higher-order propositions were recalled better than lower-order propositions, extending the generality of Kintschs model across a wide range of ages. In addition, the comprehension manipulation failed to interact with recall across rank of proposition indicating that the differential recall phenomenon is not a product of subject-initiated comprehension strategies. In Experiment 2, the recall contingencies between superordinate and subordinate propositions were analysed. The results indicated that a proposition is more likely to be recalled when a proposition to which it is subordinate is also recalled. These results support an interpretation of differential recall across superordinate—subordinate structure which emphasizes the interaction of the structure of the representation of meaning in memory (as defined by Kintschs model) and retrieval processes.

Caregiving antecedents of secure base script knowledge: a comparative analysis of young adult attachment representations.

Based on a subsample (N = 673) of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) cohort, this article reports data from a follow-up assessment at age 18 years on the antecedents of secure base script knowledge, as reflected in the ability to generate narratives in which attachment-related difficulties are recognized, competent help is provided, and the problem is resolved. Secure base script knowledge was (a) modestly to moderately correlated with more well-established assessments of adult attachment, (b) associated with mother-child attachment in the first 3 years of life and with observations of maternal and paternal sensitivity from childhood to adolescence, and (c) partially accounted for associations previously documented in the SECCYD cohort between early caregiving experiences and Adult Attachment Interview states of mind (Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2014) as well as self-reported attachment styles (Fraley, Roisman, Booth-LaForce, Cox, & Holland, 2013). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).