The representational assessment of attachment internal working models in preschoolers
The Strange situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) has been used for years to assess attachment in infants an toddlers (from 12 to 18 months) based on tneir behaviour. It has later been modified by Cassidy and his colleagues (1988, 1992) so as to be able to assess attachment in preschool and school age children, again based on their behaviour. These methods yield a four category classification : Secure (B), Anxious-Ambivalent (C), Anxious-Avoidant, and Anxious-Disorganized (D) attachment. But, the observation or assessment of children's mental representations is interesting both on clinical and on a theorical level. This is the reason why we used George and Solomon's (1990, 1996, 2000) Doll play stories to assess attachment in preschool age childres of the same age. Our results indicated that George and Solomon's method was able to distinguish : 1) between the four attachment categories; and 2) the clinical group from the different from other studies. These differences as well as the clinical value of the Doll play stories method are dealt with in the discussion.