Quiz — Chapter 15: Attachment — The Foundation of Human Connection

25 questions. Answer key at end.

1. Bowlby's attachment theory proposes that the infant-caregiver bond exists primarily because:

A) Infants need feeding and the caregiver provides it — conditioning the bond through nutrition B) Proximity to a protective caregiver serves a survival function — reducing predation risk in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness C) Social learning teaches infants to prefer caregivers who provide stimulation D) The bond is a byproduct of the infant's general social attachment motivation

2. Harlow's wire-mother experiments demonstrated that:

A) Infant monkeys prefer the caregiver who provides the most food B) Contact comfort is the primary commodity of attachment — preferred over the feeding source C) Maternal deprivation produces uniform and irreversible psychopathology D) Attachment bonds are formed primarily through operant conditioning

3. The "secure base" function of the caregiver refers to:

A) The caregiver as a safe retreat during distress B) The caregiver as a stable platform from which the infant can explore the environment C) The caregiver's ability to provide reliable nourishment and protection D) The emotional regulation the caregiver provides during reunion

4. Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure assessed attachment security primarily through:

A) Behavioral observation during separation from the caregiver B) Interview with the caregiver about their relationship history C) The infant's behavioral response upon reunion with the caregiver D) Physiological measurement during the separation episode

5. An infant who appears indifferent upon caregiver return — continuing to play without moving toward the caregiver — is most likely showing which attachment pattern?

A) Secure B) Anxious-preoccupied C) Avoidant D) Disorganized

6. Avoidant attachment appears to be produced by caregiving that:

A) Is unpredictably responsive — sometimes sensitive, sometimes unavailable B) Consistently dismisses or responds negatively to the infant's distress signals C) Is frightening or abusive — making the caregiver simultaneously safe haven and source of threat D) Is excessively responsive — overprotecting the infant from manageable distress

7. What makes disorganized attachment particularly clinically significant?

A) It affects the largest percentage of infants in Western samples B) It is associated with the caregiver being both the source of threat and the expected solution to threat — creating an unsolvable relational problem C) It is the only attachment pattern that cannot be modified through subsequent relational experience D) It is specifically associated with maternal depression and not other caregiving difficulties

8. Bowlby's concept of internal working models refers to:

A) Explicit memory systems for storing relationship histories B) Unconscious representations of relational reliability, self-worth, and world safety — built from repeated early experience C) Cognitive schemas for interpreting social situations, constructed deliberately in early childhood D) The mental templates that children use to predict caregiver behavior consciously

9. Mary Main's Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) assesses:

A) What happened to the adult in early childhood — the content of early relational experience B) The coherence and balance of the adult's narrative about early attachment experiences — how they talk about it, not what occurred C) The adult's current relationship satisfaction and attachment style in romantic relationships D) The degree of childhood trauma, measured against validated severity scales

10. Main's most important finding regarding the AAI was:

A) Adults who had secure childhoods consistently produce secure children B) How adults narrate their attachment history — the coherence of the account — predicts their infant's attachment security, independent of what actually happened C) The AAI is the most reliable predictor of romantic relationship satisfaction in adulthood D) Adults with unresolved trauma cannot develop secure attachment in adult relationships

11. In the two-dimension model of adult attachment, "attachment anxiety" refers to:

A) Discomfort with emotional closeness and dependency B) Worry about rejection, abandonment, and relationship adequacy — hyperactivation of the attachment system C) Fear of relationships based on early traumatic experience D) Anxiety about performance in social situations generally

12. A person who values independence highly, feels uncomfortable when partners want to get very close, and tends to downplay the importance of relationships would most likely be classified as:

A) Anxious-Preoccupied B) Secure C) Dismissing-Avoidant D) Fearful-Avoidant

13. Research on the stability of attachment patterns across the lifespan finds:

A) Attachment patterns established in infancy are permanent — they do not change across the lifespan B) Attachment patterns show moderate stability but are predictably modified by major positive or adverse relational experiences C) Attachment patterns are only stable through adolescence and reorganize completely in adulthood D) Attachment patterns are unstable throughout the lifespan and are not meaningfully related across time points

14. "Earned security" in the attachment literature refers to:

A) Security achieved through therapy alone — not available without professional intervention B) Security achieved through economic and social stability in adulthood, compensating for early adversity C) Secure narrative organization achieved through reflective processing of an insecure early attachment history D) Security earned through consistently good caregiving of one's own children

15. Which of the following attachment-style pairings in romantic relationships is associated with the most consistent cycle of escalation and withdrawal?

A) Secure-Secure B) Anxious-Avoidant C) Avoidant-Avoidant D) Anxious-Anxious

16. Physiological research on avoidant infants (measuring cortisol and heart rate during the Strange Situation) found:

A) Avoidant infants show lower physiological arousal than anxious or disorganized infants — consistent with their behavioral indifference B) Avoidant infants show equivalent physiological arousal to other attachment styles — the indifference is behavioral, not physiological C) Avoidant infants show higher physiological arousal than secure infants only during reunion, not during separation D) Avoidant infants show reduced cortisol reactivity as a result of chronic caregiver dismissiveness, indicating genuine down-regulation

17. The therapeutic relationship is described as a potential corrective relational experience primarily because:

A) Therapy provides insight and understanding about early attachment that directly changes internal working models B) The therapeutic relationship provides consistent availability and responsiveness — a different relational pattern that offers competing data to the working model C) Therapists are trained to be dismissive-avoidant, providing a safe relational distance that allows exploration without threat D) Medication used in conjunction with therapy normalizes the neurological substrate of insecure attachment

18. "Mentalization" — the capacity to understand behavior in terms of mental states — is described as important in attachment work because:

A) It provides a cognitive understanding of attachment theory that changes relational behavior B) It allows the person to understand a partner's behavior as reflecting the partner's internal state rather than as a verdict on relational worthiness C) It increases empathy, which directly improves attachment security D) It enables memory retrieval of early attachment experiences that were previously inaccessible

19. Which of the following best characterizes the anxious-preoccupied attachment pattern?

A) Comfortable with intimacy; uses partner as a secure base; communicates needs directly B) Hyperactivated attachment system; preoccupied with the relationship; amplified response to perceived withdrawal; difficulty self-soothing C) Deactivated attachment system; minimizes relational needs; prefers independence D) Oscillates between approach and withdrawal; wants and fears closeness simultaneously

20. The chapter describes attachment to places and groups as an extension of the attachment system. Which finding supports this claim?

A) Forced displacement and group dissolution produce grief responses that parallel individual attachment loss B) The same neurological systems that support infant-caregiver bonding are also active during place preference in adults C) Religious attachment is the most powerful form of group attachment and is universally present across cultures D) People who have secure individual attachment are more likely to develop strong group and place attachments

21. Which caregiving pattern most consistently produces anxious-preoccupied attachment?

A) Consistently dismissive and unresponsive to the infant's distress signals B) Frightening — creating a situation where the caregiver is both the source of threat and the expected solution C) Inconsistently responsive — sometimes sensitive and sometimes unavailable, unpredictably D) Consistently over-responsive — attending to infant needs before they are fully expressed

22. The "self-perpetuating" quality of internal working models refers to the fact that:

A) Working models are genetically programmed and therefore resistant to change B) Working models shape behavior in ways that tend to recruit confirming relational experience, maintaining the model's predictions C) Working models are stored in the implicit memory system and therefore inaccessible to deliberate modification D) Working models are maintained through conscious narrative rehearsal of early experiences

23. An adult who wants close relationships but feels threatened by them — who oscillates between approach and withdrawal — would most likely be classified as:

A) Anxious-Preoccupied B) Dismissing-Avoidant C) Secure D) Fearful-Avoidant

24. The chapter's practical advice for someone who identifies as anxiously attached focuses primarily on:

A) Selecting secure attachment partners who can provide consistent reassurance B) Developing the capacity to self-soothe — tolerating relational ambiguity without immediately seeking reassurance, and checking the accuracy of threat detection C) Avoiding relationships until attachment security has been achieved through therapy D) Directly challenging the partner's behavior when withdrawal signals are detected

25. The chapter's central claim about attachment change is best summarized as:

A) Attachment security is fixed by age 18 months and is only minimally modifiable thereafter B) Earned security — achieved through reflective processing and sustained reliable relationships — is well-documented and produces outcomes similar to primary security C) Change in attachment security is possible only through formal psychotherapy using attachment-based protocols D) Attachment patterns can change rapidly when the right partner is found, eliminating the effects of early experience

Answer Key