Abstract (eng)
The current study examined the link between toddlers’ cognitive development and father-child attachment security using data from 96 full-term children between 12 and 35 months (55 girls and 41 boys) and their biological fathers (high SES). The mentioned data has been collected in context of the CENOF research study. Attachment security has been assessed by the Attachment Q-Sort (Waters, 1995; German Version: Ahnert et al., 2012). Toddlers’ cognitive developmental state has been measured by the Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development (Third Edition; Bayley, 2006). The inclusion of further attachment components, e.g. supporting exploration (Ahnert et al., in prep.), and evaluation of toddlers’ cognitive abilities in six cognitive areas, e.g. problem-solving (Häusler, 2015), offered an extensive view of the relationship under investigation. Overall, the results show a significant but weak link between global attachment security and toddlers’ problem-solving ability. At the level of single attachment components, the analysis indicates significant but weak links between attachment components and toddler’s cognitive development, with a clear difference between girls and boys. Summarised, a weaker attachment security appears to be linked to a weaker problem-solving ability also in families of higher socio-economic status and healthy, maturely born toddlers with an age-appropriate cognitive development. Future research should investigate the associations with consideration of families with low socioeconomic status and children with high development risks. Including differences in levels of insecure attachment patterns would be relevant for further analysis.