Editing Attachment theory (section)

=== Later patterns and the dynamic-maturational model ===
Techniques have been developed to guide a child to verbalize their state of mind with respect to attachment. One such is the "stem story", in which a child receives the beginning of a story that raises attachment issues and is asked to complete it. This is modified for older children, adolescents and adults, where semi-structured interviews are used instead, and the way content is delivered may be as significant as the content itself.<ref name="Schaffer">{{cite book |title=Introducing Child Psychology | vauthors = Schaffer R |publisher=Blackwell |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-631-21628-5 |location=Oxford |pages=83–121}}</ref> However, there are no substantially validated measures of attachment for middle childhood or early adolescence (from 7 to 13 years of age).<ref name="AACAP-2005">{{cite journal | vauthors = Boris NW, Zeanah CH | title = Practice parameter for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with reactive attachment disorder of infancy and early childhood | journal = Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry | volume = 44 | issue = 11 | pages = 1206–19 | date = November 2005 | pmid = 16239871 | doi = 10.1097/01.chi.0000177056.41655.ce | url = http://www.aacap.org/galleries/PracticeParameters/rad.pdf | url-status = dead | access-date = September 13, 2009 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090824051123/http://www.aacap.org/galleries/PracticeParameters/rad.pdf | others = Work Group on Quality Issues | archive-date = August 24, 2009 }}</ref>

Some studies of older children have identified further attachment classifications. Main and Cassidy observed that disorganized behaviour in infancy can develop into a child using caregiver-controlling or punitive behaviour to manage a helpless or dangerously unpredictable caregiver. In these cases, the child's behaviour is organized, but the behaviour is treated by researchers as a form of disorganization, since the hierarchy in the family no longer follows parenting authority in that scenario.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Main M, Cassidy J | date = 1988 | title = Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6. | url = https://archive.org/details/sim_developmental-psychology_1988-05_24_3/page/415 | journal = Developmental Psychology | volume = 24 | issue = 3 | pages = 415–426 | doi = 10.1037/0012-1649.24.3.415 }}</ref>

American psychologist [[Patricia McKinsey Crittenden]] has elaborated classifications of further forms of avoidant and ambivalent attachment behaviour, as seen in her [[dynamic-maturational model of attachment and adaptation]] (DMM). These include the caregiving and punitive behaviours also identified by Main and Cassidy (termed A3 and C3, respectively), but also other patterns such as compulsive compliance with the wishes of a threatening parent (A4).<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Crittenden PM | date = 2008 | title = Raising Parents: Attachment, Parenting and Child Safety | location = London | publisher = Routledge }}</ref>

Crittenden's ideas developed from Bowlby's proposal: "Given certain adverse circumstances during childhood, the selective exclusion of information of certain sorts may be adaptive. Yet, when during adolescence and adulthood the situation changes, the persistent exclusion of the same forms of information may become maladaptive".<ref>{{cite book | last = Bowlby |first =John |title=Loss: Sadness and depression|page=45 |year=1980 |place=New York|publisher=Basic Books|series = Attachment and Loss|volume = III|isbn =978-0-465-04237-1}}</ref>

Crittenden theorizes the human experience of danger comprise two basic components:<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Strathearn L, Fonagy P, Amico J, Montague PR | title = Adult attachment predicts maternal brain and oxytocin response to infant cues | journal = Neuropsychopharmacology | volume = 34 | issue = 13 | pages = 2655–66 | date = December 2009 | pmid = 19710635 | pmc = 3041266 | doi = 10.1038/npp.2009.103 }}</ref>

# Emotions provoked by the potential for danger, which Crittenden refers to as "affective information." In childhood, the unexplained absence of an attachment figure would cause these emotions. A strategy an infant faced with insensitive or rejecting parenting may use to maintain availability of the attachment figure is to repress emotional information that could result in rejection by said attachment figure.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Andrea|first=Crittenden, Patricia McKinsey Landini|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/768809528|title=Assessing adult attachment : a dynamic-maturational approach to discourse analysis|date=2011|publisher=W.W Norton & Co|isbn=978-0-393-70667-3|oclc=768809528}}</ref>
# Causal or other sequentially ordered knowledge about the potential for safety or danger, which would include awareness of behaviours that indicate whether an attachment figure is available as a secure haven. If the infant represses knowledge that the caregiver is not a reliable source of protection and safety, they may use clingy and/or aggressive behaviour to demand attention and potentially increase the availability of an attachment figure who otherwise displays inconsistent or misleading responses to the infant's attachment behaviours.<ref name="landa2013">{{cite journal | vauthors = Landa S, Duschinsky R |s2cid=17508615 |title=Crittenden's dynamic–maturational model of attachment and adaptation |journal=Review of General Psychology |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=326–338 |year=2013 |doi=10.1037/a0032102 }}</ref>

Crittenden proposes both kinds of information can be split off from consciousness or behavioural expression as a 'strategy' to maintain the availability of an attachment figure (see [[#disorganized attachment|disorganized/disoriented attachment]] for type distinctions). Type A strategies split off emotional information about feeling threatened, and Type C strategies split off temporally-sequenced knowledge about how and why the attachment figure is available.<ref>{{cite journal |vauthors=Crittenden PM, Newman L |date=July 2010 |title=Comparing models of borderline personality disorder: Mothers' experience, self-protective strategies, and dispositional representations |journal=Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry |volume=15 |issue=3 |pages=433–51 |doi=10.1177/1359104510368209 |pmid=20603429 |s2cid=206707532}}</ref> In contrast, Type B strategies use both kinds of information without much distortion.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Crittenden PM | title = Children's strategies for coping with adverse home environments: an interpretation using attachment theory | url = https://archive.org/details/sim_child-abuse-neglect_1992_16_3/page/329 | journal = Child Abuse & Neglect | volume = 16 | issue = 3 | pages = 329–43 | year = 1992 | pmid = 1617468 | doi = 10.1016/0145-2134(92)90043-q | access-date = | doi-access = free }}</ref> For example, a toddler may have come to depend upon a Type C strategy of tantrums to maintain an unreliable attachment figure's availability, which may cause the attachment figure to respond appropriately to the child's attachment behaviours. As a result of learning the attachment figure is becoming more reliable, the toddler's reliance on coercive behaviours is reduced, and a more secure attachment may develop.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Benoit |first1=Diane |title=Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome |journal=Paediatrics & Child Health |date=October 2004 |volume=9 |issue=8 |pages=541–545 |doi=10.1093/pch/9.8.541|pmid=19680481 |pmc=2724160 }}</ref>