Children’s Family Drawings and Attachment: a Multidimensional Scaling Approach to Study Internal Working Models

The present study was designed to address this point by scoring family drawings of 83 5 to 9 olds whose contemporary expectations related to attachment figures were assessed by Bowlby’s SAT. The drawing attachment-based coding scheme included categories adapted from the pioneer work by Kaplan and Main (1986). By using SSA and the External Variables as Points Technique, many drawings’ features appeared to relate to attachment typologies. The SSA Plot showed a structure based on an axial partitioning of the space having secure and ambivalent groups one on the opposite site of the other one, each having drawings’ specific characteristics. Secure children’s drawings were characterized by the presence of a floor under figures’ feet and by a high proportion between family members. In ambivalent children’s drawings appeared floating figures who were small in their size The avoidant group located in the middle between the previous two groups with a set of drawings’ features either specific (such as big and encapsulated figures, often with barriers in between, lack of body’s parts) either related with secure and ambivalent children’s drawings’ items. Finally, the findings will be discussed in terms of the uses of family drawings to evaluate internal working models on which children’s attachment behaviour is based and their use in clinical psychology and research.