Abstract:

Child-mother attachment, as a primary relationship established during infancy, has a significant influence in the process of socialization during early childhood. Recent research has outlined three approaches to the studies of parenting and child development, including trait approach, domain-specific view approach and social cognition approach. In these studies, the authors discriminated the different roles of maternal sensitivity, protective situation and social anticipation of infant in the developing attachment security. By comparing the different understanding of mother-child interaction between trait approach and social cognition approach, as well as strengthening the importance of the interactive situation from domain-specific view approach, the authors proposed the necessity and possibility of integration of all three elements emphasized by different researchers. Finally, future attachment intervenes should aim at improving parents’ abilities of awareness and response to infants’ negative emotion, and providing appropriate contingent experience learning for infants.

Key words: attachment, maternal sensitivity, domain-specific view approach, social anticipation