Japanese children's family drawings and their link to attachment

要旨

This study explored the applicability of family drawings as a tool to estimate attachment security in a sample of Japanese six-year-olds (N = 47), applying Kaplan and Main's (1986 Main, M. and Solomon, J. 1986. “Discovery of a new, insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern: Procedures, findings and implications for the classifications of behavior”. In Affective development in infancy, Edited by: Brazelton, T. B. and Yogman, M. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Press. [Google Scholar]) Family Drawing system. Maternal secure/insecure attachment status judged by the Adult Attachment Interview predicted family drawings' secure/insecure distinction produced by Japanese six-year-olds. However, insecure Japanese drawings took forms not seen in the original Berkeley drawings, such as a lineup of faces alone. Further examination of the Japanese children's drawings using global rating scales (Fury, Carlson, & Sroufe, 1997 Fury, G. S., Carlson, E. A. and Sroufe, L. A. 1997. Children's representations of attachment relationships in family drawings. Child Development, 68: 1154–1164. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) yielded significant gender differences, rarely reported in the attachment literature, with girls scoring higher in scales that predict attachment security and boys scoring higher in scales that predict attachment insecurity. However, attachment security, as captured in the drawings, was not related to attachment security, observed behaviorally using Main and Cassidy's (1988 Main, M. and Cassidy, J. 1988. Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6: Predictable from infant attachment classifications and stable over a 1-month period. Developmental Psychology, 24: 415–426. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) sixth-year reunion system. Implications of the findings are discussed in light of measurements, gender, and culture.

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