Reme Melero Cavero
CIPI. Generalitat Valenciana, Spain
Assessment of attachment bonding through instruments developed and/or validated in the Spanish context.
Participants: Reme Melero Cavero, Mª José Cantero López, Verónica Jimeno Jiménez, Silvia Vidal Torres
The quality of the attachment we establish with our attachment figures has a direct impact on emotional well-being, cognitive functioning and the quality of intimate relationships. As Bowlby (1979) noted "the psychology and psychopathology of emotion is, to a large extent, the psychology and psychopathology of attachment" (p. 130). In this sense, the assessment of attachment style analyses the different strategies of emotional regulation that are put in place in stressful situations and that have the immediate aim of restoring the feeling of emotional security. The assessment allows, therefore, to detect and intervene in dysfunctional strategies characteristic of emotional insecurity which, although functional in the short term, can have a negative impact on affective, cognitive and social development. In this symposium we present 3 attachment assessment instruments developed and validated in Spanish population: (1) the Adult Attachment Questionnaire Revised (CAA-r, Melero and Cantero, 2021) aimed at adult population, (2) the Questionnaire of Attachment Indicators in the Classroom (CIA-Aula, Cantero et al., 2020) for children in Early Childhood Education and (3) the Battery of Activating Images of Mental Representations of Attachment (BIARMA, Cantero et al, 2021) which analyses the memories that a person has about the interaction that he/she maintains or maintained with his/her attachment figures during childhood and/or adolescence. The diagnostic criteria for the assessment of mental representations of attachment obtained through the incomplete histories procedure (ACST, Bretherton et al., 1990) will also be presented after its application and adaptation to the Spanish population.
PhD in Psychology from the University of Valencia (UV) and Expert in Clinical Neuropsychology. Master in Clinical Neuropsychology and Clinical Psychology. She is a member of the Optimal Development Research Group-GIDOP (UV). Her research interests are mainly focused on the study of child and adult attachment. She completed her doctoral thesis on attachment and couple relationships and has participated in several research projects funded by official bodies related to child attachment. She is co-author of the Adult Attachment Questionnaire (CAA-r) and several child attachment scales. She obtained a research stay under the direction of Patricia Noller (University of Queensland). She teaches in several postgraduate degrees in areas related to attachment and child neurodevelopment. She currently works as a psychologist at the Centre for Guidance and Assessment of Disability (CIPI, Generalitat Valenciana) and as an associate professor at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology (UV).