Follow-Up Section: Early Childhood Emotional Competence: Young Children's Emotionally-Charged Moral Narratives: Relations with Attachment and Behavior Problems

Participants were 45 mostly African-American or Latino young children (25 boys, 20 girls, mean age = 56.4 months), with about half recruited from a mental health facility and half from preschool settings. Children were administered two separate interviews examining their affectively-charged moral narratives regarding acts of victimization (Moral MSSB) and their attachment-related narratives (SAT). In addition, children's teachers or therapists completed assessments of the attachment-like aspects of their relationships with children (STRS), and a measure of children's behavior problems and competencies (C-TRF). Overall, after controlling for child age, gender, SES, and expressive language ability, children with more externalizing problems were more likely to describe aggressive themes, and less likely to mention adult aid or taking responsibility for transgressions in their moral narratives. In addition, more positive attachments (both the SAT and STRS) were associated with fewer externalizing problems. More than half of the total variance in children's externalizing scores could be predicted from a combination of the attachment and Moral MSSB variables. These findings have implications for understanding the affective origins of young children's externalizing behavior problems involving both peers and adults.