Abstract
Psychological assessment is an important area of clinical work with maltreated children. The current study investigated the role of attachment organization as a predictor of patterns of similarities and discrepancies between three types of assessments of maladjustment. Results indicate that participants classified as Disorganized/Unresolved tend to show more impairment on the Ego Impairment Index of the Rorschach when compared with their peers, especially when discrepancies with self-giver and caregiver report of behavior problems are considered. Secure/Autonomous participants tended to show little or moderate levels of problems across measures. The findings point to the importance of using multiple measures when assessing juveniles showing a history of maltreatment, as well as of considering assessment findings in a relational framework.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2001). Manual for ASEBA School-Age Forms & Profiles. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth, & Families.
Achenbach, T. M., McConaughy, S. H., & Howell, C. T. (1987). Child/adolescent behavioral and emotional problems: Implications of cross-informant correlations for situational specificity. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 213–232.
Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the Strange Situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Barker, E. T., Bornstein, M. H., Putnick, D. L., Hendricks, C., & Suwalsky, J. T. D. (2007). Adolescent-mother agreement about adolescent problem behaviors: Directions and predictors of disagreement. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 950–962.
Beres, D. (1956). Ego deviation and the concept of schizophrenia. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 11, 164–235.
Berg-Nielsen, T. S., Vika, A., & Dahl, A. A. (2003). When adolescents disagree with their mothers: CBCL-YSR discrepancies related to maternal depression and adolescent self-esteem. Child: Health, Care and Development, 29(3), 207–213.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1: Attachment. New York: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1979). The making and breaking of affectional bonds. London: Tavistock.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base. New York: Basic Books.
Bretherton, I., Ridgeway, D., & Cassidy, J. (1990). Assessing internal working models of the attachment relationship: An attachment story completion task for 3 year-olds. In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cichetti, & E. M. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment during the preschool years: Theory, research and intervention (pp. 272–308). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carlson, E. A., & Sroufe, L. A. (1995). Contributions of attachment theory to developmental psychopathology. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental Psychopathology (Vol. 1, pp. 581–617). New York: Wiley.
Cashel, M. L. (2002). Child and adolescent psychological assessment: Current clinical practices and the impact of managed care. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33(5), 446–453.
Collins, N., & Read, S. J. (1994). Cognitive representations of attachment: The structure and function of working models. In D. Perlman & K. Bartholomew (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships (Vol. 5, pp. 53–90). London: Jessica Kingsley.
Cyr, C., Euser, E., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (2010). Attachment security and disorganization in maltreating and high-risk families: A series of meta-analyses. Development and Psychopathology, 22, 87–108.
De Los Reyes, A., & Kazdin, A. E. (2004). Measuring informant discrepancies in clinical child research. Psychological Assessment, 16(3), 330–334.
Dozier, M., & Lee, S. W. (1995). Discrepancies between self- and other-report of psychiatric symptomatology: Effects of dismissing attachment strategies. Development and Psychopathology, 7, 217–226.
Exner, J. E. (2003). The Rorschach: A comprehensive system. Basic foundations and principles of interpretation (4th ed.). New York: Wiley.
Fonagy, P. (2001). Attachment theory and psychoanalysis. New York: Other Press.
Fury, G., Carlson, E. A., & Sroufe, L. A. (1997). Children’s representations of attachment relationships in family drawings. Child Development, 68(6), 1154–1164.
George, C., & Solomon, J. (2000). Six-year attachment doll play classification system. Unpublished manual, Mills College, Oakland, CA.
George, C., West, M., & Pettem, O. (1997). Adult attachment projective picture system. Unpublished manual, Mills College, Oakland, CA.
Greenberg, M. T. (1999). Attachment and psychopathology in childhood. In J. Cassidy and P. R. Shaver (Eds.). Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 469–496). New York: Guilford.
Hojnoski, R. L., Morrison, R., Brown, M. C., & Matthews, W. J. (2006). Projective test use among school psychologists: A survey and critique. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 24, 145–159.
Hunsley, J., & Bailey, J. M. (2001). Whither the Rorschach? An analysis of the evidence. Psychological Assessment, 13(4), 472–485.
Joubert, D. (2007). The Adult Attachment Projective. In S. R. Jenkins (Ed.), Handbook of clinical scoring systems for thematic apperceptive techniques (pp. 633–658). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kelly, F. D. (1999). The psychological assessment of abused and traumatized children. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kolko, D. J., & Kazdin, A. E. (1993). Emotional/Behavioral problems in clinic and nonclinic children: Correspondence among child, parent and teacher reports. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 34, 991–1006.
Lilienfeld, S. O., Wood, J. M., & Garb, H. N. (2000). The scientific status of projective techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 1, 27–66.
Main, M. (1995). Recent studies in attachment. In S. Goldberg, R. Muir, & J. Kerr (Eds.), Attachment theory: Social, developmental and clinical perspectives (pp. 467–474). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50, 66–104.
Martin, J. L., Ford, C. B., Dyer-Friedman, J., Tang, J., & Huffman, L. C. (2004). Patterns of agreement between parent and child ratings of emotional and behavioral problems in an outpatient clinical setting: When children endorse more problems. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 25(3), 150–155.
Mash, E. J., & Hunsley, J. (2005). Special section: Developing guidelines for the evident-based assessment of child and adolescent disorders. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34, 362–379.
McGrath, R. E., Pogge, D. L., Stokes, J. M., Cragnolino, A., Zaccario, M., Hayman, J., et al. (2005). Field reliability of Comprehensive System scoring in an inpatient adolescent sample. Assessment, 12(2), 199–209.
Montgomery, E. (2008). Self- and parent assessment of mental health: Disagreement on externalizing and internalizing behaviour in young refugees from the Middle East. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 13(1), 49–63.
Moss, E., Parent, S., Gosselin, C., Rousseau, D., & St-Laurent, D. (1996). Attachment and teacher-reported behavior problems during the preschool and early school-age period. Development and Psychopathology, 8, 511–525.
Offord, D. R., Boyle, M. H., Racine, Y., Szatmari, P., Fleming, J. E., Sanford, M., et al. (1996). Integrating assessment data from multiple informants. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 35(8), 1078–1085.
Ollendick, T. H. (1999). President’s column: Empirically supported assessment for clinical practice: Is it possible? Is it desirable? Clinical Psychologist, 52, 1–2.
Pianta, R. C., Egeland, B., & Adam, E. K. (1996). Adult attachment classification and self-reported psychiatric symptomatology as assessed by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 273–281.
Rapaport, D., Gill, M., & Schafer, R. (1968). Diagnostic psychological testing (rev. ed.; R. Holt, Ed.). New York: International Universities Press.
Renk, K., & Phares, V. (2004). Cross-informant ratings of social competence in children and adolescents. Clinical Psychology Review, 24(2), 239–254.
Renouf, A. G., & Kovacs, M. (1994). Concordance between mothers’ reports and childrens’ self-reports of depressive symptoms: A longitudinal study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 33(2), 208–216.
Reynolds, C. R., & Kamphaus, R. W. (2004). Behavior assessment system for children manual (2nd ed.). Circle Pines, MN: AGS Publishing.
Rosenstein, D. S., & Horowitz, H. A. (1996). Adolescent attachment and psychopathology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 244–253.
Salbach-Andrae, H., Klinkowski, N., Lenz, K., & Lehmkuhl, E. (2009). Agreement between youth-reported and parent-reported psychopathology in a referred sample. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 18, 136–143.
Schechter, D. S., Zygmunt, A., Trabka, K. A., Davies, M., Colon, E., Kolodji, A., et al. (2007). Child mental representations of attachment when mothers are traumatized: The relationship of family-drawings to story-stem completion. Journal of Early Child and Infant Psychology, 3, 119–141.
Siegel, M. (1987). Psychological testing from early childhood through adolescence. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Smith, S. R. (2006). Performance-based assessment in school: A comment on Hojnoski, Morrison, Brown, and Matthews. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 25(3), 248–256.
Smith, S. R., & Handler, L. (2006). The clinical assessment of children and adolescents: A practitioner’s handbook. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Solomon, J., & George, C. (1999). The place of disorganization in attachment theory: Linking classic observations with contemporary findings. In J. Solomon & C. George (Eds.), Attachment disorganization (pp. 3–32). New York: Guilford.
Solomon, J., George, C., & De Jong, A. (1995). Children classified as controlling at age six: Evidence of disorganized representational strategies and aggression at home and at school. Development and Psychopathology, 7, 447–463.
Sourander, A., Helstela, L., & Helenius, H. (1999). Parent-adolescent agreement on emotional and behavioral problems. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 34, 657–663.
Stokes, J. M., Pogge, D. L., Powell-Lunder, J., Ward, A. W., Bilginer, L., & DeLuca, V. A. (2003). The Ego Impairment Index: Prediction of treatment outcome in a child psychiatric population. Journal of Personality Assessment, 81(1), 11–19.
Stovall-McClough, K. C., & Cloitre, M. (2006). Unresolved attachment, PTSD and dissociation in women with childhood abuse histories. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(2), 219–228.
Viglione, D. J., Perry, W., & Meyer, G. (2003). Refinements in the Rorschach Ego Impairment Index incorporating the Human Representational Variable. Journal of Personality Assessment, 81(1), 149–156.
Weiner, I. B. (1997). Current status of the Rorschach Inkblot method. Journal of Personality Assessment, 68, 5–19.
Wood, J. M., Nezworski, M. T., Garb, H. N., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2001) Problems with the norms of the Comprehensive System for the Rorschach: Methodological and conceptual considerations. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 8, 397–402.
Zegers, M. A. M., Schuengel, C., van Ijzendoorn, M. H., & Janssens, J. M. A. M. (2006). Attachment representations of institutionalized adolescents and their professional caregivers: Predicting the development of therapeutic relationships. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 76(3), 325–334.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Joubert, D., Webster, L. Resolving Discrepancies in Psychological Assessment Data with Maltreated Children and Adolescents: The Relevance of Attachment Organization. Journ Child Adol Trauma 5, 353–366 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1080/19361521.2012.724045
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19361521.2012.724045