ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the infant’s ability to self- and interactively regulate. As one can gather, a great deal of attachment research has focused on classifying or categorizing children and adults as secure, insecure, or disorganized with respect to attachment. In fact, a high degree of coordination within the dyad was a risk factor for developing disorganized attachment and low degree of coordination predicted attachment insecurity. There is flexibility to navigate between self- and interactive regulation, allowing the infant to balance his attention, affect, and levels of arousal without becoming overwhelmed. As john Bowlby stated, the developmental pathway “turns at each and every stage of the journey on an interaction between the organism as it has developed up to that moment and the environment in which it then finds itself”. Bowlby believed a caregiving system evolved in tandem with the attachment system, whose function is to ensure protection of the young.
