May 10, 2018 - Mothers were paid. $225 for participation in the full RCT. Of the 137 families included in the present study, 73 had received the parenting.
5/10/2018 Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Young Children: Links to Individual Differences in Attachment Beier, Gross, Brett, Stern, Martin, & Cassidy (2018), Child Development Supplementary Information 1: Methods and Results Method An initial 164 dyads met the RCT inclusion criteria: (a) the custodial mother was over 18 years, proficient in English, lacking untreated thought disorders (e.g., schizophrenia), available for weekly group intervention meetings, and not a previous Circle of Security participant; and (b) the child had no severe illness or major developmental disorder. Twenty-three dyads discontinued participation. Four study session videos had recording failures, leaving the reported sample of 137. For the broader intervention project, caregivers completed questionnaires regarding their personal, child’s, and family’s characteristics and were randomly assigned to either the intervention or a delayed-treatment control group. The intervention consisted of 10 weekly 90minute group meetings led by a trained facilitator (6 – 9 mothers per group). At the outcome assessment, caregivers and children completed the attachment and prosocial behavior measures featured here and other measures not the focus of the present work (e.g., additional parent questionnaires and child tasks to measure cognitive and social functioning). Mothers were paid $225 for participation in the full RCT. Of the 137 families included in the present study, 73 had received the parenting intervention. When intervention status was included as an additional moderator in the initial round of analyses, it rarely participated in any significant interactions: when predicting helping behavior from children’s avoidance scores, there was a significant interaction between intervention status and attachment, F(1, 129) = 6.85, p = .010, ηp2 = .050, 95% CI = [.003, .139]; when predicting sharing from children’s four-category attachment classifications, there was a significant three-way interaction between intervention status, sex, and attachment, F(3, 121) = 2.81, p = .042, ηp2 = .066, 95% CI = [0, .146]. For the attachment assessment, caregivers and children first played together in the study room for 3 minutes, followed by a 3-minute separation during which the child remained in the room alone. The caregiver then returned for 3 minutes, and then left again for 5 minutes. Upon her return, the second reunion period lasted 3 minutes. Episodes were shortened if the child became distressed. There was a similar structure across helping, sharing, and comforting tasks sequences. The experimenter began by stating the problem (e.g., “Oh, I dropped my tape!”). Then, she gave additional cues to her need across task segments (three 10s helping segments, three 15s sharing segments, four 30s comforting segments). Initially, she demonstrated the problem non-verbally (e.g., reaching for the tape while grunting) without making eye contact with the child. In the second segment she verbally restated the problem 2 times (3 for Comforting), still without eye contact. In the third segment, she restated the problem 2 times (3 for Comforting) while making eye contact. In the fourth segment of the Comforting tasks, the experimenter directly requested help from the child twice (e.g., “Is there anything you can do to help?”) and stated the problem once while maintaining eye contact. Throughout all tasks, the experimenter physically expressed the appropriate emotion and minimized responses to the child’s direct conversation as much as possible.
5/10/2018 Helping tasks. 1) The experimenter attempted to hang a poster, dropped her tape, and reached for it from a stool. 2) The experimenter attempted to open a door while holding a stack of boxes that prevented her from doing so. 3) The experimenter spilled her cup of marbles on the ground, and she knelt to collect them. Sharing tasks. 1) The experimenter initiated snack-time, poured four cookies into the child’s bowl, but then discovered that no more cookies remained for her. 2) The experimenter gave two inflated balloons to the child and one to herself, but then her own balloon deflated. 3) The experimenter gave four stickers to the child and four to herself, but then discovered that her stickers had been used and only the backing sheet remained. Comforting tasks. 1) The experimenter and child each created drawings with markers, and then the experimenter spilled water all over her own drawing. 2) The experimenter attempted to use her cell phone, but she dropped and broke it instead. 3) The experimenter bumped her knee on the edge of a table. Additional Results Frequencies of children’s attachment classifications are summarized in Table S1. Table S2 reports correlations among prosocial behavior scores. Here we present additional models predicting prosocial behavior using two commonly reported dichotomous attachment variables: security status (secure vs. insecure attachment) and disorganization (organized vs. disorganized attachment). Analyses with security status as the predictor compared children classified as secure to children who were insecure–avoidant, insecure–ambivalent/resistant, or disorganized. Analyses with disorganization as the predictor compared children classified as disorganized to children classified as secure, insecure–avoidant, or insecure–ambivalent/resistant. As in the main Results section, a series of ANCOVAs was run with each of the two dichotomous attachment variables entered as predictors, each prosocial variable as the outcome, and sex as the sole covariate; see Table S3 for results. An attachment*child sex interaction term was included in each analysis, but was dropped in cases where it was non-significant; this term was only significant in one model, such that disorganized attachment predicted lower comforting among boys, F(1, 56) = 9.07, r = -.37, p = .004, ηp2 = .139, 95% CI = [.016, .304], but not girls, F(1, 77) = .02, r = -.02, p > .250, ηp2 < .001, 95% CI = [0, .011].
5/10/2018 Supplementary Material Tables TABLE S1 Frequencies of Attachment Classifications, Security Status, and Disorganization, by Child Sex
Attachment classification Secure Avoidant Ambivalent Disorganized Security status Secure Insecure Disorganization Organized Disorganized
Girls N (%)
Boys N (%)
Total N (%)
35 19 7 18
(44%) (24%) (9%) (23%)
38 6 5 9
(66%) (10%) (9%) (16%)
73 25 12 27
(53%) (18%) (9%) (20%)
35 44
(44%) (56%)
38 20
(66%) (34%)
73 64
(53%) (47%)
61 18
(77%) (23%)
49 9
(84%) (16%)
110 27
(80%) (20%)
TABLE S2 Correlations of Prosocial Behavior Scores (N = 137)
Helping Helping 1 Sharing .430** Comforting .258** Composite .737**
Sharing
Comforting Composite
1 .435** .814**
1 .739**
1
Note. Scores are untransformed values. ** indicates p < .01.
5/10/2018
TABLE S3 ANCOVA Models of Child Security Status and Disorganization Predicting Prosocial Behavior df Security status Secure vs. Insecure Child sex Sex*Security status Disorganization Organized vs. Disorganized Child sex Sex*Disorganization
Security status Secure vs. Insecure Child sex Sex*Security status Disorganization Organized vs. Disorganized Child sex Sex*Disorganization
Prosocial Composite F p ηp2
df
F
95% CI
1, 134 1, 134
8.27 .005 .058 [.006, .148] 5.00 .027 .036 [0, .115] -- removed from model --
1, 134 1, 134
2.40 .123 .018 [0, .083] 2.31 .131 .017 [0, .082] -- removed from model --
1, 134 1, 134
9.09 .003 .064 [.008, .155] 3.76 .055 .027 [0, .101] -- removed from model -Sharing F p ηp2 95% CI
1, 134 1, 134
4.82 .030 .035 [0, .113] 2.03 .157 .015 [0, .078] -- removed from model -Comforting F p ηp2 95% CI
1, 134 1, 134
3.96 .049 .029 [0, .103] .24 > .250 .002 [0, .041] -- removed from model --
1, 134 1, 134
8.99 .003 .063 [.007, .155] 5.24 .024 .038 [0, .118] -- removed from model --
1, 134 1, 134
8.31 .005 .058 [.006, .148] .11 > .250 < .001 [0, .035] -- removed from model --
1, 133 1, 133 1, 133
6.32 8.58 5.51
df
Note. Helping and sharing scores are natural log-transformed.
95% CI
Helping p ηp2
df
.013 .004 .020
.045 .061 .040
[.002, .130] [.006, .152] [0, .122]
