UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

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Author: search.filters.author.Dykas, Matthew Jason

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    Attachment Security and the Processing of Attachment-Relevant Social Information in Late Adolescence
    (2006-04-26) Dykas, Matthew Jason; Cassidy, Jude A; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    According to attachment theory, internal working models of attachment function to influence the ways in which individuals obtain, organize, and operate on attachment-relevant social information (Bowlby, 1980). The principal aim of this investigation was the examination of whether adolescents' internal working models of attachment are linked to their memory for attachment-relevant social information. I proposed that adolescents who possess negative internal working models of attachment (i.e., insecure adolescents and adolescents who possess negative representations of their parents) process attachment-relevant social information differently from adolescents who possess positive internal working models of attachment (i.e., secure adolescents and adolescents who possess positive representations of their parents). I also proposed that such differences are associated with two distinct patterns of attachment-relevant social information-processing. More precisely, I hypothesized that insecure adolescents and adolescents who possess negative representations of their parents are more likely to <em>suppress</em> attachment-relevant social information (from entering conscious awareness) in some circumstances, and to process attachment-relevant social information in a <em>negatively-biased schematic manner</em> in others. To test this hypothesis, I tapped adolescents' (n = 189) internal working models of attachment by assessing their "state of mind with respect to attachment" (as assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview), representations of parents, and attachment-related romantic anxiety and avoidance (as assessed using the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory). I used four experimental tasks to assess adolescents' memory for attachment-relevant social information. Many of the findings reported in this investigation can be viewed as supporting the notion that insecure adolescents and adolescents who possess negative representations of their parents either suppress attachment-relevant social information or process such information in a negatively-biased schematic manner. For example, in the experimental task that tapped suppression, insecure adolescents showed poorer memory for emotionally-significant childhood experiences. Moreover, in all three of the experimental tasks tapping schematically-driven social information-processing, insecure adolescents and adolescents who possessed negative representations of their parents showed either greater memory for negative parental attributes or more negative reconstructive memory for conflict. In addition to these principal findings, evidence emerged that adolescent attachment was linked to memory for peer-related information, as well as to parents' reconstructive memory for adolescent-parent conflict.
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    Adolescent Secure-Base Use and Parental Secure-Base Support: Relations with Adolescent Attachment Security
    (2003-11-17) Dykas, Matthew Jason; Cassidy, Jude; Gelso, Charles; Rubin, Kenneth; Psychology
    The goal of this investigation was to examine whether adolescent (AAI) attachment security could be linked to adolescents' secure-base use and parents' secure-base support while discussing the adolescent's developmentally salient task of leaving home after finishing high school. Results indicated that secure adolescents were more likely than insecure adolescents to use their mothers and their fathers as secure bases. Results also indicated that fathers of secure adolescents were more likely than fathers of insecure adolescents to support their adolescents' secure-base behavior. There was no evidence, however, that mothers of insecure adolescents differed from mothers of secure adolescents in their amounts of secure-base support. Results also indicated that dyadic open communication was greatest in secure adolescent-mother and secure adolescent-father discussions. Secure adolescents were also more likely than insecure adolescents to use at least one parent as a secure-base and to have open dyadic communication with at least one parent.