Preliminary study of a digital measure of attachment for children from 9 to 12 years old

Abstract

The objective of the present work is to develop an attachment test in a digital form. The child is presented with five conflictingstories that he/she must complete. It is assumed that the unique mode of resolution of the story will identify the mental model of thechild´s attachment relationships. Five conflicting stories were prepared with female characters and four with male characters: thefirst proof story about the difficulty facing an exam, the second about bullying, the third about a bicycle accident, the fourth aboutfeeling sick at a friend´s house, and the fifth about getting lost in a shopping. The test was administered to a sample of 120 childrenaged 9 to 12, of both sexes, who attended primary schools, in the City of Buenos Aires, individually, and on Android Tablet support.The reliability among judges reaches an agreement of .97 (avoidant attachment), .84 (ambivalent anxious attachment) and .90 (secure attachment). Convergent validity analysis between the digital attachment test and the questionnaire by Finzi., et al. [1,2] indicated an r = .489 between secure attachment, according to the Finzi., et al. and the digital test, and r = .633 and r = .480, for avoidantand anxious/ambivalent attachment, respectively, between the two attachment tests. An attachment digital method was developedthat has been motivating and natural for children in middle and late childhood. The validity of the test is adequate but it remains tobe used with clinical groups.