Maternal adverse childhood experiences and preschool children’s behavioral problems: exploring mediation via an adapted measure of adult attachment pattern
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Mothers’ insecure adult attachment pattern (i.e., dismissive, preoccupied) has been proposed to positively mediate the associations between mothers’ adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their preschool children’s sex-specific behavioral problems. However, findings remain mixed with few focusing on a total score ranging from secure to insecure. Therefore, the aim of this study was to novelly employ the Revised-Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR-R) questionnaire to explore if (1) mothers’ adult attachment pattern measured continuously from secure to insecure mediates the relationship between maternal ACEs and children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors and (2) child sex-assigned-at-birth moderated the effects. Methods Data ( n = 636) derived from the prospective APrON Study (participants recruited during early pregnancy). Maternal ACEs were measured at child age 1, while children’s behavioral problems and mothers’ adult attachment pattern at child age 5. Findings Positive, indirect effects on children’s internalizing (*bootstrap 95% CI [0.10, 0.58]) and externalizing (*[0.11, 0.62]) problems were supported. Post-hoc, a positive, indirect effect through preoccupied adult attachment pattern on their children’s internalizing problems was supported (*[0.04, 0.47]), but the effect did not differ from that of dismissive adult attachment pattern (*[−0.45, 0.15]). No moderation was observed ( p > 0.05). Significance This study is the first to employ the ECR-R to measure mothers’ adult attachment pattern continuously from secure to insecure. Findings suggest that (1) adult attachment pattern measured continuously mediates the association between mothers’ ACEs and their preschool children’s behavioral problems and (2) preoccupied adult attachment pattern behaviors may play a stronger role than those of dismissive.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".