It was examined whether secure infant–mother attachment contributes to emotionally congruent and organized mother–child dialogues about emotions in later years. The attachment of 99 children was assessed using the Strange Situation at the age of 1 year and their emotion dialogues with their mothers were assessed at the ages of 4.5 and 7.5 years. Dialogues were about past emotional events and separation of a child from parents, and were classified into an emotionally matched group or 1 of 3 non-emotionally matched groups. Security in infancy was associated with emotionally matched dialogues at the age of 4.5; there was moderate stability in dialogues between 4.5 and 7.5 years; and infant attachment predicted dialogues at 7.5 beyond the prediction offered by age 4.5 dialogues.
The co-construction of emotionally congruent, or-ganized, and cooperative dialogues between parents and children about children’s emotional experiences has been proposed as one of the important outcomes of security of the infant–mother relationship during the years following infancy (Bretherton, 1990; Gross-mann, 1999; Oppenheim & Waters, 1995; Thompson, 2000; Waters & Cummings, 2000). The role of the parent in such dialogues in promoting the child’s exploration of his or her internal emotional world has been described by attachment theorists as an ex-pansion of the parent’s role during the early years in supporting the infants’ secure exploration of the ex-ternal world (Main, 1996). Parental guidance of the child’s exploration of their emotional memories and experiences that is tuned to the child, emotionally regulating and organizing, and accepting of the child has been hypothesized to contribute to dialogues that enhance the child’s feeling of being understood and secure (Bretherton, 1993; Fivush, Bohanek, Robertson, & Duke, 2004; Harris, 1999; Nelson, 1996; Oppenheim & Waters, 1995). Accordingly, the goal of the present study was to test the hypothesis that early secure attachment contributes to such dialogues. This hypothesis was examined longitu-