Exploring the parent-child attachment system in middle childhood: How do psychobiological mechanisms of change work?

Middle childhood represents a crucial developmental stage characterized by significant but understudied changes in both child maturation and parent-child attachment relationships. Parental influence remains central during this period, emphasizing the need to assess how parental functioning impacts children development, particularly concerning its connections t psychopathological outcomes. Notably, in Western society behavioral disorders have garnered clinical and research interest in recent years due to their epidemiological relevance and outcome trajectories beyond developmental age. Part I of this dissertation illustrates the theoretical premises that have guided the research aims. Part II describes a tripartite study that examines how psychobiological mechanism of change work in parent child relationships in middle childhood. Part A of the study has examined parent and child profiles of functioning during middle childhood, comparing a non-clinical sample to one with behavioral disorders (BD). Part B of the study highlighted how parents’ attachment and mentalizing are linked with children's psychological maladjustment, operationalized as psychological symptoms, and explored how this relationship is moderated by parents’ emotion regulation and reactivity during conflict situations with their child, wherein physiological reactivity appears to predominate over self-reported regulation. A multi-method approach provided robust value to the findings. Finally, building on the obtained results, part C of the study examined the efficacy of a pilot online intervention — eCONNECT — based on attachment, mentalizing, and emotional regulation frameworks for parents of children with BD, revealing intriguing outcomes more closely tied to mental processes than to psychological symptomatology. In conclusion, this study highlights the link between the parent-child relationship in middle childhood and children’s psychopathological outcomes, emphasizing how working on mental processes, such as mentalizing and emotional regulation, and psycho-biological processes, such as physiological reactivity, is necessary to strengthen the relationship and support a healthy development.