Experiential connectedness in children's attachment interviews: An examination of natural word use

Attachment classification derived from narrative analysis is widely used as a marker of psychological organization. In contrast to this top-down approach, bottom-up, word count-based analyses of narratives are also used to measure psychological states. The current study integrates these 2 approaches by examining their overlap in 93 school-aged children. Participants completed the Child Attachment Interview; transcriptions of this interview were subjected to word count-based linguistic analysis. Compared with secure children, dismissing children showed less and preoccupied children showed more signs of experiential connectedness. Disorganized children decreased in experiential connectedness during loss discussions and used more words related to death during nonloss sections of the interview. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to attachment and relationship research.