The purpose of this article was to adapt and validate the Attachment Q-Sort (AQS;
Vaughn & Waters, 1990) in the Italian context of child rearing at home and
in centre care, and to analyse the associations of attachment to the mother and to
the professional caregiver with play behaviour of the child. The article reports on
three studies. The first study describes the procedure used to create the Italian
version of the Attachment Q-Sort. Fifteen Italian experts provided the AQS
descriptions of the prototypical “most secure child”; moreover,
18 Italian caregivers used the AQS to describe the hypothetical “ideal
child” in the context of the child care centre. The profiles of the
Italian experts were very similar to those of American experts. Italian experts and
Italian caregivers also strongly agreed in their descriptions, respectively, of the
“most secure” and the “ideal” child. The
second study reports on the reliability of the AQS data. Eighty-six children (43%
male; 59%first-borns) and their mothers and caregivers participated in the research.
Children’s ages ranged from 14 to 36 months (M = 26.6; SD =
6.78). All children spent at least 30 hours per week in the child care centres.
Test-retest reliability and inter-observer agreement appeared to be satisfactory.
Agreement between mother/caregiver- and observer-reported security scores was less
convincing. In the third study, the associations between the network of attachment
and level of play were examined. Fifty children (58% male; 60% first-borns)
participated. Children’s ages ranged from 14 to 36 months (M =
25.8; SD = 6.56). Play behaviour was observed at the child care centre during free
play sessions of 30 minutes and social and cognitive play categories were coded.
Secure attachment led to higher cognitive levels of play. Attachment to the
caregiver was generally more influential than attachment to the mother.
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