Aspelmeier, Jeffery E. (1998, March). Working models and the relational schema; Social information processing as a link between parent-child and peer relationships. Talk presented at the 1998 Kent Psychology Forum, April 26-29, 1998. In this presentation I will present a theoretical discussion of the concept of attachment schema based expectancies and the potential application of social cognitive principals to the investigation of the link between Parent child relationships and peer relationships. Attachment theory both in its normative conception (Bowlby, 1979, 1980, 1989) and from an individual differences perspective (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall, 1978) is one theory of socio-emotional development that suggest functioning in parent-child relationships and functioning in peer relationships should be associated with one-another. Such a hypothesis is based on the idea that the parent-child attachment relationship is our first source of information about relationships (close or otherwise) and that this information may be generalized to other relationships through the life span. For the most part empirical investigations of parent child attachment and peer relations have supported the proposed link between the parent-child relationship and peer relationships. In the context of both peer groups and friendships, significant associations have been found between attachment to mother and father and functioning with peers. For example, secure attachment to either parent has been linked to greater peer competence in young children. Also, in general, securely attached children have not only more friendships but better quality friendships. Thus it seems that there is some kind of relationship between attachment and peer functioning.
Though attachment theory proposes such a relationship, it is not clear what mechanism would account for it. Bowlby (1979, 1980, 1989) has proposed the notion that within the parent- child attachment relationship infants and children develop a mental representation of the attachment relationship from which develops "working models" of the self, others, and the relationship between self and other. The working model is described as a set of conscious and/or unconscious schemas, scripts or rules that summarize and individual's experiences in and expectations about relationships and, once formed, are resistant to dramatic change. (overhead 1) As Bretherton (1985, p.11) puts it: "Through continual transaction with the world of persons and objects, the child constructs increasingly complex internal working models of that world and of the significant persons in it, including the self...useful in appraising and guiding behavior in new situations." Thus individual differences in attachment related models or schema's result in differences in expectations about the self, others, and the interaction between self and others that direct not only actions and affect but also attention, memory and cognition (Mian, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Such considerations make it possible to assess attachment and its correlates using methods others than behavioral observations. Investigations of working models have predominantly used open ended projective measures including drawing of the family (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985), puppet interview and story completion tasks (Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990: Cassidy, 1988), analysis of discourse during parent-child reunions (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985), and analysis of coherence of transcripts from the Adult Attachment Interview (Koback & Sceery, 1988). These
types of investigations have revealed some individual differences with respect to attachment in the coherence and emotional openness of responses to these projective measures which have been interpreted as suggesting that secure individuals have representations of attachment relationships that are well integrated and balanced (or emotionally open) These projective methods have been applied to investigating the link between attachment and peer relations in two samples (Suess, Grossmann, & Sroufe, 1992; Cassidy, Kirsh, Scolton, & Parke, 1996). Responses to open ended stories tapping children's representations of peer intentions and interactions were coded for valence (that is positivity vs. negativity) rather than coherence and emotional openness. Result from these studies indicated that secure attachment was related to having more positive representations of peer intentions and interactions than either insecure attachment style. These studies, identifying differences in the coherence, balance and valence of working models, are important in understanding representations of attachment information, But it is also important to identify what way these differences exert their influence on the processing of social information. For the most part, very little detail has been provided about how differences in attachment working models would effect cognitive processes and how such effects could account for a link between attachment relationships and other types of relationships. However, the social-cognitive literature is replete with studies showing that mental representations can and do influence the processing of a variety of social information including: person perception, social judgments, and information seeking. Use of mental representations may also have behavioral consequences like inducing behaviors consistent with expectancies or self-efficacy beliefs, biasing attempts at hypothesis testing, and inducing others to behave in ways consistent with one's own expectancies as in the self-fulfilling prophesy (e.g. Snyder 1992).
More recently investigators have begun to make attempts to clarify the nature of mental representations of relationships and to detail the cognitive mechanisms by which they influence relationship functioning. Baldwin (1992) has observed that in the areas of relationships, object relations, and interpersonal expectations many authors are beginning to take a social-cognitive view of the issue of interpersonal relationships and propose specific cognitive structures or sets of structures that give rise to expectancies within relationships. Many similar conceptualizations have been proposed including relational models (Mitchell, 1988), interpersonal schemas (Safran, 1990), relationship schemas (Baldwin, Carrell, & Lopez, 1990; Horowitz, 1989), and relational schemas (Planalp, 1987; Baldwin 1992) which are all essentially consistent with the Bowlby's notion of working models . One feature of these conceptualizations, that has generally not been included in previous discussion of working models, is the specific information processing outcomes associated with the use of a cognitive structure. Baldwin (1992) has proposed a model of attachment as a relational schema which provides a corollary of information processing outcomes. His model suggests that based on repeated experience with interpersonal interactions individuals develop relational schemas consisting of an interpersonal script , an associated self schema, and an associated other schema. The interpersonal script is a cognitive generalization about interactions between self and other. Associated with episodic memory (both declarative and procedural) for actual encounters, it includes a specification of roles for particular members in the encounter. The declarative nature of the interpersonal script provides a summary statement about what behaviors tend to be followed by what responses. While the Procedural nature to the script provides an if-then contingency that can be use to generate interpersonal expectancies and plan behavior.
Associated with the interpersonal script are the self-schema (representing the self in a specific type of interaction) and an other schema (representing others in a specific type of interaction). With the concept of conjoint schematicity Baldwin (1992) suggests that the self and other schemas are themselves associated Thus, if a person is schematic on one component of the relational schema, then that person should also be schematic on other components as well. With respect to the priming or activation of a relational schema structure, conjoint schematicity suggests that priming of one structure (either self, other, or interpersonal script) should result in priming of the relevant associated structures. More simply, we should see conjoint priming effects for associated structures. In the context of the parent-child relationship, it is thought that the child develops an interpersonal script representing the various interaction patters experienced and schemas of self and other that correspond to their respective roles within the script. To the extent that interaction patters are repeated, the script and schemas becomes richer and more strongly associated. Thus a relational schema for an attachment relationship may become chronically accessible and may be active in interactions outside of the attachment relationship. Since it is overlearned a chronically accessible schema should function in an automatic manner. That is, the processing of schema-relevant information should occur in a rapid, effortless, parallel fashion. This includes the notion that attachment schemas may be functioning even when not appropriate to the context, for example in peer interactions. Information processing outcomes Borrowing heavily from social-cognitive literature, especially the area of self schemas (Markus & Zajonc, 1985), Baldwin (1992) has outlined several information processing outcomes associated with use of the relational schema. (1) Sensitivity to and efficiency in processing of
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