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Young children's close relationships: Beyond attachment
f’erson.
individ.
Dilf: Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 813-814, 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS Judy Dunn: Young Children’s Close Relationships: Beyond Attachment. Newbury Park, London and New Delhi: Sage publications (1993). 141 pp. Hardback: f31.95, ISBN 0-8039-4490-X. Paperback: E14.95, ISBN 0-8039-4491-8. This book presents a meticulous and perceptive account of the nature of young children’s relationships with others. It takes a broad remit, describing not only the dyadic interactions of child-parent, child-sibling, and child-friend, but also examining the connections between relationships within the family and between family relationships and friendships. Judy Dunn confronts this task in its full complexity by skilfully blending objective, systematic research findings with observational reports that are both sensitive and insightful. In so doing, she has written an immensely readable, coherent ‘state of the art’ account of children’s relationships, simultaneously forging an argument that challenges the paradigm within which much current research takes place. The thrust of Dunn’s argument is thus: if we continue to concentrate on the key dimension of security of attachment, we shall not achieve a full understanding of children’s relationships. In her view, an adequate account must acknowledge the other ways-apart from attachment-in which the child-mother relationship differs; it needs also to take on board the multidimensional and developmental aspects of children’s relationships with both parents, with siblings and with peers. Whilst recognizing that security of attachment is of major importance, Dunn asks why other factors that are known to be important in adult relationships-such as, warmth, frequency of conflict, frequency of expressed affection, shared communication, shared humour, self disclosure, and connectedness-am neglected when looking at children. Furthermore, she queries the concept that children’s relationships with their mothers serve as a template for other relationships and reports studies that reveal no significant relationship between security of child-mother attachment at 1 yr old and friendship patterns at age five, suggesting that children may compensate through their friendships for emotionally unsatisfying parent-child relationships. The case presented in this book is difficult to refute: as participants in relationships throughout life, we know’ that our relationships are complex, multi-faceted and shifting, and that there are both links and striking differences amongst our different relationships. It is perhaps this very complexity that has encouraged researchers to adopt a narrowed framework for study in order to impose some measure of control. Dunn’s argument is that we can no longer afford to constrain research in this way: in the final chapter she writes; “The attachment framework has been useful in illuminating aspects of the parent-child relationships and their significance in later life, as well as in setting up hypotheses about what processes may be important. However, its typology is both limited and limiting.” The challenge will be to translate into testable hypotheses the issues raised in this book. To address this, Dunn reports on a model, proposed by Hinde, that appreciates connections between the quality of relationships and both the wider social context and differences in individuals. Furthermore, in order to describe the key dimensions in which relationships differ, she presents detailed accounts of three 4 yrolds’ relationships with their mothers. Other testable hypotheses are also discussed: for example, the possibility that differences in parent
M. Zuckerman: Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1994). Hardback: f50.00, ISBN o-521-43200-6, 479pp. Paperback: f19.95, ISBN o-521-43770-9, 463~~. Marvin Zuckerman’s book is a thorough and up-to-date survey of research into the biological bases and behavioural expression of sensation seeking (SS), a trait described as “. . the need for varied, novel and complex sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experience”. As a prolific researcher in the SS field, Zuckermann is well qualified to undertake the task of summarizing the vast SS literature; and, as the book amply demonstrates, he has succeeded in providing an authoritative survey that is both informative to the specialist reader in personality psychology and accessible to the non-specialist reader in general psychology and related human sciences. The book comprises 14 chapters. Chapter 1 outlines the historical antecedents of the SS construct which led up to Zuckerman’s previous review in 1979 (Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of arousal). Chapter 2 traces the development of the various forms of SS scales. Chapter 3 relates the SS construct to Eysenck’s three-dimensional and the Big-5 models of personality. Chapter 4 presents demographic data on the SS scales. Chapters 5-10 consider the behavioural expression of SS, as seen in risk taking (with all its legal, social and financial consequences), sports and vocational choice/satisfaction, social, sexual and marital relationships, vicarious experience (e.g. art, media, fantasy), smoking, drinking, drugs and eating, and psychopathology and stress reactions. The biological bases of SS is examined in Chapter 11;and Chapters I2 and 13 discuss the relation of SS to psychophysiology, information processing, cognitive styles and intelligence. Finally, Chapter 14 outlines new theoretical models in SS research. The SS field is rapidly expanding and some important issues have yet to be resolved. Zuckerman’s arguments ate cogent and persuasive, although not all will meet with universal agreement. One of the most contentious of these issues concerns the role of SS in the hierarchy of traits that comprise the organization of personality. Zuckerman states that SS is strongly related to Eysenck’s psychoticism (P) factor and to impulsivity (and, weakly. to extraversion), “Sensation seeking and impulsivity are highly related traits, and taken together, along with a lack of socialization, they define the P dimension of personality”. However, this blending of SS, impulsivity and P, to give what Zuckerman calls “P-impUSS” (Impulsive 813
individ.
Dilf: Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 813-814, 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS Judy Dunn: Young Children’s Close Relationships: Beyond Attachment. Newbury Park, London and New Delhi: Sage publications (1993). 141 pp. Hardback: f31.95, ISBN 0-8039-4490-X. Paperback: E14.95, ISBN 0-8039-4491-8. This book presents a meticulous and perceptive account of the nature of young children’s relationships with others. It takes a broad remit, describing not only the dyadic interactions of child-parent, child-sibling, and child-friend, but also examining the connections between relationships within the family and between family relationships and friendships. Judy Dunn confronts this task in its full complexity by skilfully blending objective, systematic research findings with observational reports that are both sensitive and insightful. In so doing, she has written an immensely readable, coherent ‘state of the art’ account of children’s relationships, simultaneously forging an argument that challenges the paradigm within which much current research takes place. The thrust of Dunn’s argument is thus: if we continue to concentrate on the key dimension of security of attachment, we shall not achieve a full understanding of children’s relationships. In her view, an adequate account must acknowledge the other ways-apart from attachment-in which the child-mother relationship differs; it needs also to take on board the multidimensional and developmental aspects of children’s relationships with both parents, with siblings and with peers. Whilst recognizing that security of attachment is of major importance, Dunn asks why other factors that are known to be important in adult relationships-such as, warmth, frequency of conflict, frequency of expressed affection, shared communication, shared humour, self disclosure, and connectedness-am neglected when looking at children. Furthermore, she queries the concept that children’s relationships with their mothers serve as a template for other relationships and reports studies that reveal no significant relationship between security of child-mother attachment at 1 yr old and friendship patterns at age five, suggesting that children may compensate through their friendships for emotionally unsatisfying parent-child relationships. The case presented in this book is difficult to refute: as participants in relationships throughout life, we know’ that our relationships are complex, multi-faceted and shifting, and that there are both links and striking differences amongst our different relationships. It is perhaps this very complexity that has encouraged researchers to adopt a narrowed framework for study in order to impose some measure of control. Dunn’s argument is that we can no longer afford to constrain research in this way: in the final chapter she writes; “The attachment framework has been useful in illuminating aspects of the parent-child relationships and their significance in later life, as well as in setting up hypotheses about what processes may be important. However, its typology is both limited and limiting.” The challenge will be to translate into testable hypotheses the issues raised in this book. To address this, Dunn reports on a model, proposed by Hinde, that appreciates connections between the quality of relationships and both the wider social context and differences in individuals. Furthermore, in order to describe the key dimensions in which relationships differ, she presents detailed accounts of three 4 yrolds’ relationships with their mothers. Other testable hypotheses are also discussed: for example, the possibility that differences in parent
M. Zuckerman: Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1994). Hardback: f50.00, ISBN o-521-43200-6, 479pp. Paperback: f19.95, ISBN o-521-43770-9, 463~~. Marvin Zuckerman’s book is a thorough and up-to-date survey of research into the biological bases and behavioural expression of sensation seeking (SS), a trait described as “. . the need for varied, novel and complex sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical and social risks for the sake of such experience”. As a prolific researcher in the SS field, Zuckermann is well qualified to undertake the task of summarizing the vast SS literature; and, as the book amply demonstrates, he has succeeded in providing an authoritative survey that is both informative to the specialist reader in personality psychology and accessible to the non-specialist reader in general psychology and related human sciences. The book comprises 14 chapters. Chapter 1 outlines the historical antecedents of the SS construct which led up to Zuckerman’s previous review in 1979 (Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of arousal). Chapter 2 traces the development of the various forms of SS scales. Chapter 3 relates the SS construct to Eysenck’s three-dimensional and the Big-5 models of personality. Chapter 4 presents demographic data on the SS scales. Chapters 5-10 consider the behavioural expression of SS, as seen in risk taking (with all its legal, social and financial consequences), sports and vocational choice/satisfaction, social, sexual and marital relationships, vicarious experience (e.g. art, media, fantasy), smoking, drinking, drugs and eating, and psychopathology and stress reactions. The biological bases of SS is examined in Chapter 11;and Chapters I2 and 13 discuss the relation of SS to psychophysiology, information processing, cognitive styles and intelligence. Finally, Chapter 14 outlines new theoretical models in SS research. The SS field is rapidly expanding and some important issues have yet to be resolved. Zuckerman’s arguments ate cogent and persuasive, although not all will meet with universal agreement. One of the most contentious of these issues concerns the role of SS in the hierarchy of traits that comprise the organization of personality. Zuckerman states that SS is strongly related to Eysenck’s psychoticism (P) factor and to impulsivity (and, weakly. to extraversion), “Sensation seeking and impulsivity are highly related traits, and taken together, along with a lack of socialization, they define the P dimension of personality”. However, this blending of SS, impulsivity and P, to give what Zuckerman calls “P-impUSS” (Impulsive 813