Delineating the Functions of Attachment and Affiliation in Early Adolescents' Internal Working ...

216 Pages·2014·1.97 MB·English

by  Patrick T. Davies

Delineating the Functions of Attachment and Affiliation in
Early Adolescents’ Internal Working Models of their Best Friendships

by
Meredith J. Martin

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

Supervised by Professor Patrick T. Davies
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology

Arts, Sciences and Engineering

School of Arts and Sciences

University of Rochester

Rochester, New York

2015
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Biographical Sketch
The author was born in Auburn, New York on February 18th, 1984. She attended
Binghamton University in Vestal, New York beginning in the year 2002. She graduated
Summa Cum Laude in 2006, with a Bachelor of the Arts degree in Psychology and a
minor in Anthropology. While at Binghamton, the author served as the President of the
Psi Chi National Honors Society and was awarded both the University Award for Student
Excellence from Binghamton University and the SUNY Chancellor Award for excellence
in scholarship, service, and extracurricular engagement. Upon graduating, the author
entered the PhD program in Developmental Psychology at the University of Rochester.
Under the direction of Dr. Patrick T. Davies, she studied the application of evolutionary
theory to children’s and adolescents’ social development and the emergence of
psychopathology in contexts of interpersonal threat and cooperative friendship. Towards
this effort, the author was awarded the Owen F. Aldis Scholarship from the International
Society for Human Ethology (ISHE) in support of her research on children’s strategies
for coping with peer threat. She completed her Master of Arts degree in Developmental
Psychology from the University of Rochester in 2011 and a Certificate of Quantitative
Methods in Psychology in 2013. The author was also awarded the Alfred Baldwin Award
for Excellence in Research in 2010, the Helen and Vincent Nowlis Award for Excellence
in Teaching in 2012, and the Emory Cowen Award for Best Publication by a Graduate
Student from the Psychology Department in 2013. In 2014, the author received the
Edward Curtis Peck Award for Excellence in Teaching in recognition of her contributions
to undergraduate training at the University.
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The following publications were a result of work conducted during doctoral study:

Davies, P. T. & Martin, M. J. (2014). Children’s coping and adjustment in high conflict
homes: The reformulation of emotional security theory. Child Development
Perspectives, 8, 242-249.

Davies, P. T., Martin, M. J., & Sturge-Apple, M. L. (in press). Emotional security theory
and developmental psychopathology. In D. Cicchetti (Ed.), Developmental
Psychopathology: Vol. 1. Theory and Methods (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.

Martin, M. J., Davies, P. T., & MacNeill, L. A. (2014). Social defense: An evolutionary-
developmental model of children’s strategies for coping with threat in the peer
group. Evolutionary Psychology, 12, 364-385.

Davies, P. T. & Martin, M. J. (2013). The reformulation of emotional security theory:
The role of children’s social defense in developmental psychopathology.
Development and Psychopathology, 25, 1435-1454.

Davies, P.T., Sturge-Apple, M.L., & Martin, M. J. (2013). Family discord and child
health: An emotional security formulation. In N. Landale, S.M. McHale, & A.
Booth (Eds.), Families and Child Health (National Symposium on Family Issues),
Vol. 3 (pp. 54-73). New York: Springer.

Davies, P. T., Martin, M. J., & Cicchetti, D. (2012). Delineating the sequelae of
destructive and constructive interparental conflict for children within an
evolutionary framework. Developmental Psychology, 48, 939-955.

Davies, P. T., Cicchetti, D., & Martin, M. J. (2012). Towards greater specificity in
identifying associations among interparental aggression, child emotional
reactivity to conflict, and child problems. Child Development, 83, 1789-1804.

Sturge-Apple, M., Davies, P. T., Martin, M. J., Hentges, R. (2012). An examination of
the impact of harsh parenting contexts on children’s adaptation within an
evolutionary framework. Developmental Psychology, 48, 791-805.

Martin, M. J., Bascoe, S. M., & Davies, P. T. (2011). Family relations. In B. B. Brown
and M. Printstein (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Adolescence, Vol. 2 (pp. 84-94).
Maryland Heights, MO: Elsevier

Davies, P.T., Sturge-Apple, M., Woitach, M. J., & Cummings, E. M. (2009). A process
analysis of the transmission of distress from interparental conflict to parenting:
Adult relationship security as an explanatory mechanism. Developmental
Psychology, 45, 1781-1773.
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Davies, P. T., Woitach, M. J., Winter, M. A., & Cummings, E. M. (2008). Children’s
insecure representations of the interparental relationship and their school
adjustment: The mediating role of attention difficulties. Child Development, 79,
1570-1582.

Davies, P. T. & Woitach, M. J. (2008). Children’s emotional security in the interparental
relationship. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 269-274.
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Acknowledgements
The author would not have been able to complete this dissertation without the
inexhaustible support and guidance of her mentor, Dr. Patrick Davies. His generosity,
brilliance, and drive to push the boundaries of the field were an inspiration and guiding
force throughout her graduate career. She will be forever grateful for his ability to
persistently challenge her while still letting it be ok to cry in his office once in awhile.
The author would also like to thank her family for their unending love and support. She
thanks her husband and best friend, Travis Martin, for his patience, for holding down the
fort, for always knowing how to make her laugh, and for loving her no matter what. The
author owes her love of learning and creativity to her mother, Mary Woitach. She thanks
her mom for showing her what it means to be a strong, wise, and passionate woman and
for remaining fiercely positive throughout this entire journey. The author also thanks her
brothers, Nicholas and Timothy Woitach, for making her feel unconditionally loved
while keeping her humble. Finally, the author would like to thank all of the members of
the research team, at both the University of Rochester and the University of Notre Dame,
who were integral in completing The Me and My Family Project. The author is especially
grateful for the support and dedication of her project director, Karin D. Gasaway. Thank
you too, to the adolescents, parents, and teachers who were kind enough to share their
time and their experiences with our team. Thank you.
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Abstract
The quality of early adolescents’ close friendships can have an enduring impact
on psychological adjustment even into adulthood (Bagwell et al., 2001; Brown, 2004;
LaGreca & Harrison, 2005). Despite long-standing recognition of the importance of
friendship for development, we know very little about why friendships influence
adjustment or how adolescents actively interpret their friendship experiences. As a first
step towards addressing these gaps, this study applied an evolutionary behavioral systems
approach to the study of adolescents’ internal working models (IWMs) of their best
friendship. 280 early adolescents (µage = 13) and their families were followed over two
years. Using a novel narrative interview and coding procedure called the 3-Words
Interview, independent raters distinguished between the functions of the attachment (i.e.,
distress reduction) and affiliative (i.e., bond enhancing) systems in organizing teens
working models of their best friendship. Each system predicted unique pathways to
adjustment. Employing latent difference scores, the saliency of attachment in teens’
friendship IWMs uniquely predicted greater internalizing symptoms across the two years,
particularly when those teens also experienced poor quality maternal relationships. In
contrast, friendship affiliation predicted greater social competence and fewer
externalizing symptoms. Poor maternal relationship quality exacerbated the negative
effects of low friendship affiliation. The effects varied across teen, teacher, and parent
reports. Together, the findings provide a first step in developing an ethological theory of
friendship and psychopathology in adolescence.
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Contributors and Funding Sources
This work was supervised by a dissertation committee of Professors Patrick T.
Davies (advisor) and Melissa L. Sturge-Apple of the Department of Clinical and Social
Sciences in Psychology and Dena Swanson of the Department of Counseling and Human
Development. The data for this study was collected as part of a broader, longitudinal
project funded by an NIMH grant (2R01 MH57318) awarded to Patrick T. Davies and E.
Mark Cummings. Three undergraduate research assistants: Heather Carella, Katie Kao,
and Emily Yan, were trained by the student to complete the 3-Words Interview Coding
Procedure. All other work conducted for the dissertation was completed independently by
the student.
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Nature and Significance of Friendships in Early Adolescence 1
1.1 Defining Friendship 3
1.2 Defining Friendship Quality 5
1.3 Friendship Quality and Psychological Adjustment 8
1.4. Early Adolescence as a Developmental Context for Friendship 17
Chapter 2 The State of the Literature: Identifying the Gaps and Next Steps 20
2.1. A Metatheoretical Disconnect between Conceptualization and 21
Assessment
2.2. The Absence of a Mid-level Theoretical Framework 24
2.3. The Need for a Process-Oriented Approach 30
Chapter 3 A Behavioral Systems Approach to Defining Friendship 32
3.1. The Main Assumptions of a Behavioral Systems Approach 32
3.2. Attachment and Affiliation in Early Adolescent Friendship 39
Chapter 4 Applying Attachment and Affiliation to Developmental 43
Pathways of Friendship
4.1. Narrative Approaches to Capturing Behavioral Systems Processing 45
4.2. Placing Friendship in Context: Parent-Child Relationship as a 51
Moderator
4.3. Gender and as a Covariate 55
Chapter 5 Summary of Aims and Hypotheses 59
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Chapter 6 Methods 61
6.1. Participants 61
6.2. Procedures 62
6.3. Measures 63
Chapter 7 Results 71
7.1. Preliminary Analyses 71
7.2. Examining Specificity in Predicting Adjustment 74
7.3. Examining Maternal Relationship Quality as a Moderator 79
Chapter 8 Discussion 87
8.1. Distinguishing Attachment and Affiliation 89
8.2. Main Effects and Moderation: Specificity in Predicting 94
Adjustment
8.3. Discrepancies among Reporters 113
8.4. Limitations and Future Directions 115
8.5. Final Conclusions 121
Chapter 9 References 123
Appendix 152
List of Tables x
List of Figures xi
x

List of Tables
Table Title Page

Table 1 Outline of existing assessments of friendship 171
quality

Table 2 Description of the adaptive function, observed 173
goal, and common strategies of some of the salient
behavioral systems in childhood

Table 3 Primary distinctions between the attachment 174
and affiliative systems in friendship

Table 4 Measures included in the primary analyses 175

Table 5 Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations among 178
the primary variables

Table 6 Factor means and variances from three unconditional latent 180
difference score models by reporter (i.e., teen, teacher, parents)