Center for Attachment Research
The Center for Attachment Research (CAR), recently fully inaugurated, has its origins in the 2004 arrival to NSSR of Associate Professors Miriam and Howard Steele. They brought with them from England a determination to apply attachment theory to clinical and applied research questions concerning child, parent, and family development. CAR activities revolve around a number of initiatives involving NSSR, Parsons, and Lang students and faculty, as well as external institutions with shared agendas.
Two main research initiatives currently occupy “front burner” positions. The first applies state-of-the-art assessment techniques to inform therapeutic interventions with families facing challenges in their relationships with their adoptive and fostered children. CAR work is informed by welltested methods for understanding and promoting family well-being across generations. Young adults and parents are interviewed concerning their thoughts and feelings regarding their attachment histories. The protocol followed is known as the Adult Attachment Interview, the strongest available predictor of parenting behavior and probable child outcomes. We also rely on a range of other reliable measures of social and emotional functioning for people of every age across the lifespan. A current project with funding from the Spence-Chapin Adoption Services aims at improving the quality of care being provided to Chinese orphans living in Chinese Child Welfare Institutes from which many are adopted. Another funded project is examining sources of strength and resilience in young adults “aging out” of care in New York City.
The second main area of ongoing work at CAR is the study and assessment of children’s “emotional intelligence.” At the heart of this endeavor is our “Affect Task” a cartoon-based assessment of children’s recognition of emotion or affect and their ability to attribute appropriate affects in and following interpersonal conflicts. We have previously shown how individual differences in children’s understanding of emotion reflect differences in the emotional climate within the family and teacher ratings of strengths and difficulties the children are facing. With the help of a devoted team of MA and doctoral students, data has been collected from school-age children in a range of settings in New York and tri-state area. This aspect of CAR work is benefiting from a close connection with the Parsons The New School for Design, where design students have been collaborating with psychology students on digitizing the task for wider use beginning in the fall of 2006.
For more information, contact:
Miriam Steele
Center for Attachment Research
65 Fifth Ave., room 333
New York, NY 10003
Telephone: 212.229.5700 x3111
Fax: 212.989.0846
Email: steelem@newschool.edu