Attachment and Developmental Outcomes: The Role of Mental Representations in Predicting Internalizing and Externalizing Problems in Preschool Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of mental representation in predicting the internalizing and externalizing problems in preschool children. The sample consisted of 75 children (52 girls, 23 boys) between 4 and 6 years. The participants were selected by multistage cluster sampling from 6 nursery school of Tehran, Iran. The mothers completed the Child Behavioral Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001). The mental representations of children were assessed by the McArthur Story Stem Battery (Emde, Wolf & Oppenheim, 2003). The results of step by step regression indicated that negative representation of self, moral issues, empathic relations, negative emotion and verbal conflict were the most important predictors of internalizing and the representations of aggression, verbal conflict and negative representation of parents were the most determinant predictors of externalizing problem. The findings were consistent with attachment theory, suggesting internal working models can be considered as a mechanism between child-parent interaction and developmental outcomes.