The Relationship Between Security of Attachment and the Development of a Personal Premise System of Relationships and Expectations for Peer Interaction

Block (1984) postulated that children develop a personal premise system concerning the nature of relationships from the kind of responsiveness, balance, and control they experience when interacting with the caregiver and the caregiver's degree of accessibility during caregiver–child interactions. Block's theory was used in this review to discuss how children's personal premise systems or models of relationships develop through the process of attachment to the caregiver, and how, as children establish more extensive social relationships, this premise system becomes a more generalized model of self and others which shapes all interactions with others including peer relationships during early and middle childhood. The review also suggests continuity in the organization of behavior, for just as the nature of the early personal premise system is shaped by caregiver responsiveness, control, consistency, and availability, so the quality of ties youngsters form with their peers seems also to be shaped by the tone of children's responsiveness to peers, the degree and kind of control youngsters exert in peer interactions, the consistency of behaviors with peers, and children's emotional and physical availability to peers.