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Disorganization, COMT, and Children's Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment.

ABSTRACT: Why is disorganized attachment associated with punitive-controlling behavior in some, but caregiving-controlling in others? Hygen et al. (2014) proposed that variation in the Catechol-O-methyl transferase(COMT) Val158Met genotype explains this variation, providing preliminary data to this effect. We offer a conceptual replication, analyzing data on 560 children (males: 275) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. As predicted, competitive model-fitting indicated that disorganized infants carrying Met alleles engage in more positive behavior and less negative behavior than other children at age 5 and 11, with the reverse true of Val/Val homozygotes, seemingly consistent with caregiving-controlling and punitive-controlling styles, respectively, but only in the case of maternal and not teacher reports, thereby confirmating a relationship-specific hypothesis.

SUBMITTER: Li Z

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4940399 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Disorganization, COMT, and Children's Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment.

Li Zhi Z Hygen Beate W BW Widaman Keith F KF Berg-Nielsen Turid S TS Wichstrøm Lars L Belsky Jay J

Frontiers in psychology 20160712

Why is disorganized attachment associated with punitive-controlling behavior in some, but caregiving-controlling in others? Hygen et al. (2014) proposed that variation in the Catechol-O-methyl transferase(COMT) Val158Met genotype explains this variation, providing preliminary data to this effect. We offer a conceptual replication, analyzing data on 560 children (males: 275) drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. As predicted, competitive model-fitting indicated tha ...[more]

PMID: 27462283

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Project description:OBJECTIVES:The Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM) is currently the most widely used and validated measure of attachment in psychosis. However, the PAM does not assess disorganized attachment, the type of attachment that has been most closely linked with vulnerability to psychosis. This study aimed to expand the PAM to capture the concept of disorganized attachment and to examine its psychometric properties in a psychosis sample. METHODS:Clinical and academic experts in the field of psychosis and service user representatives were asked to assess the comprehensiveness and comprehensibility of the pool of disorganized items. This process resulted in 12 items hypothesized to capture disorganized attachment that were included with the original items of the PAM. A sample of 144 individuals with either a self-reported diagnosis of, or treatment for, a psychosis-related condition completed a battery of online measures comprising the revised PAM, existing measures of adult disorganized attachment and constructs hypothesized to be conceptually related to disorganized attachment. RESULTS:An exploratory factor analysis was conducted with three factors retained; these were labelled anxious, avoidant and disorganized attachment. The factors displayed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability and the disorganized factor displayed good construct validity with related measures and constructs. CONCLUSIONS:These results provide preliminary evidence that the revised PAM captures the concept of disorganized attachment. However, confirmatory psychometric evaluation of the revised PAM is required, within a separate psychosis sample, to confirm its factor structure. The relationship between these results and the current literature, in addition to the clinical and research implications, are discussed. PRACTITIONER POINTS:We present an expanded version of the Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM), revised to capture the concept of disorganised attachment in adulthood. This expanded measure showed good reliability and the new disorganized subscale demonstrated construct validity. These results provide preliminary evidence that disorganized attachment can be measured using a simple self-report measure with individuals with psychosis. Further research is required to confirm the structural dimensionality of the revised PAM within a new sample using confirmatory factor analysis. Following further psychometric validation the use of this measure has the potential to be expanded to other mental health conditions in which disorganized attachment has been implicated in the development and maintenance of difficulties, for example, trauma-related conditions and borderline personality disorder.

Project description:Close social bonds are integral for good health and longevity in humans and non-human primates (NHPs), yet we have very little understanding of the neurobiological differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Our current understanding of social bonding is grounded in Bowlby's theory of attachment. Work done with human infants and adult couples has suggested that attachment behavior developed in infancy remains stable through development into adulthood. Unfortunately, knowledge of the neurobiological correlates of attachment behavior has been limited due to a lack of animal models with both infant and adult attachments similar to humans. To address this, we measured behavioral responses to separation from their primary attachment figure in infant and adult titi monkeys (Plecturocebus cupreus). In Experiment 1, we tested for a linear relationship between the subject's response to separation as an infant and their response to separation as an adult. We found greater decreases in infant locomotor behavior in the presence, as opposed to absence, of their primary attachment figure to be indicative of decreased anxiety-like behavior in the presence, as opposed to absence, of their adult pair mates during a novelty response task. In Experiment 2, we increased our sample size, accounted for adverse early experience, and tested a different outcome measure, adult affiliative behavior. We hypothesized that the level of intensity of an infant's response to separation would explain affiliative behavior with their mate as an adult, but adverse early experience could change this relationship. When we compared infant response to separation to adult affiliative behavior during the first 6 months of their first adult pair bond, we observed a linear relationship for infants with typical early experience, but not for infants with adverse early experience. Infants with a greater change in locomotive behavior between the father and alone conditions were more affiliative with their first adult pair mate. These data support the use of titi monkeys as an appropriate animal model for further investigation of the neurobiology underlying attachment behavior.

Dataset Information

Disorganization, COMT, and Children's Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment.

Publications

Disorganization, COMT, and Children's Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment.

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