The Relationship among Mother-Infant Attachment Security, Peer Play Interactions and School Readiness in Korea

Introduction

School readiness is essential for children’s subsequent adjustment and performance (Duncan, Dowsett, Clasessens, Magnuson, Huston, Klebanov, & Japel, 2007). When children have adequate school readiness skills before school entry, they are more likely to succeed in school and beyond. In particular, academic (e.g., language, literacy, mathematics) and socioemotional (e.g., emotional competence, self-regulation, executive functioning) school readiness skills have been closely linked to successful performance and adjustment to elementary school (e.g., Choi & Kim, 2019; Williford, Carter, & Pianta, 2018). In contrast, children experiencing ineffective transition between early education settings and elementary school are more likely to be at greater risk of school failure, and show problems with social skills and adjustment, and weaknesses in academic skills (e.g., Duncan et al., 2007; Pears, Carpenter, Kim, Peterson, & Fisher, 2018; Williford et al., 2018). Although early childhood programs and policies have focused on building and promoting school readiness skills, some children face difficulties during the transition to elementary school. Thus, an in-depth understanding of the developmental process of school readiness prior to school entry is needed.

School readiness is the result of the process of development that cumulates over time and is affected by interactions within different environmental contexts (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). In particular, high quality interactions and learning opportunities with proximal environment such as home and early education settings play a pivotal role in school readiness (Mashburn & Pianta, 2006), and the cumulative skills and development acquired through these interactions and experiences influence children’s school readiness skills (Park & Hong, 2019). Existing empirical evidence suggests that early attachment security and peer interactions are prospectively associated with school readiness skills (e.g., Belsky & Fearon, 2002; Moon & Jang, 2019; Bulotsky-Shearer, Manz, Mendez, McWayne, Sekino, & Fantuzzo, 2012; Ladd, Herald-Brown, & Reiser, 2008), and attachment relationships and peer experiences represent the underlying mechanisms that influence school readiness skills (e.g., Mashburn & Pianta, 2006; Williford et al., 2018). Although a range of early attachments and peer interactions have been explored as predictors of school readiness skills, the effect of mother-infant attachment security through the mediation of peer interactions over time has not received sufficient attention. Furthermore, these studies have mostly sampled Western populations; accumulating effects of early attachment security and peer interactions on Korean children’s school readiness remain unknown. Given that attachment is a cross-cultural and general emotional bond formed on a biological basis (Bowlby, 1969/1982) and that cultural values and pedagogical attitudes in society influence the developmental process of children’s school readiness (Xia, Hackett, & Webster, 2020), the purpose of this study was to examine the longitudinal association among mother-infant attachment security, peer play interactions, and school readiness as well as analyze the mediating effects of peer play interactions in this association from infancy to the transition to school age by using the nationally representative the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) data.

Method

Data

This study used data from the Panel Study on Korean Children (PSKC) that follows up and investigates the growth of children from birth to identify their developmental and lifestyle characteristics and examines the relationships among factors that influence their growth and development (Korea Institute of Child Care and Education, 2017). The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education (KICCE) approved this panel study (approval no. 2015-03). The KICCE has been funded by the national government for conducting the PSKC. The PSKC performed two stages of sampling to ensure statistical rigor. Healthcare facilities were extracted in stage 1, and households were extracted in stage 2. In stage 1, a list of healthcare facilities with at least 500 cases of childbirth in 2006 were selected as the population to be studied, and 30 of them were systematically sampled in each of the six provinces in Korea. In stage 2, households with an infant born between April and July 2008 at the selected healthcare facilities were set as the population to be studied, and 2,150 of them were sampled via multi-stage stratified sampling.

Figure 1.

The hypothesized research model.

Beginning with the 1^st general survey in 2008, the PSKC survey was conducted annually, and the 12^th general survey was completed in 2019. Children enrolled in the PSKC were 0 years old at the time of the 1^st survey (2008), and they turned 11 years old at the time of the 12^th survey. Upon recognizing the need for further evaluation in addition to the general survey, 220 volunteering households that completed the 2^nd general survey in 2009 were enrolled in an in-depth evaluation which consisted of major developmental tests that had not been included in the general survey. The surveys and tests were performed by relevant experts (experts with a graduate degree in child development or early child education) who had completed education and training for the tests included in the in-depth evaluation (roles of evaluator, precautions, PAI, Q-set, ECBQ training, interrater reliability, and supervision) either by visiting the sample households or by having the parents visit the survey facility (Korea Institute of Child Care and Education, 2010).

Results

Preliminary analysis

The correlations among the variables, and the mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis values of the variables are presented in Table 1. The criteria for the assumption of a normal distribution were satisfied with an absolute skewedness value of three or less and an absolute kurtosis value of 10 or less (Curran, West, & Finch, 1996).

Table 1

Mean, Standard Deviation (SD), and intercorrelations among the study measures.

Structural model

To test the hypothesized model, the partial mediation model with direct paths from attachment security and school readiness domains (social and emotional development, approaches to learning, communication, and cognitive development & general knowledge) and indirect paths from attachment security and school readiness mediated via peer play interaction, was estimated. The partial mediation model had χ2 = 224.204, df = 143; p = .000 and all fit indices indicating a good approximate fit: CFI = .930, TLI = .907, SRMR = .225, RMSEA = .057 (the 90% confidence interval of RMSEA was .042 - .071). On the basis of these results, it could be concluded that the hypothesized model was suitable. Standardized parameters are presented in Figure 2. In the model, attachment security had a direct influence on social and emotional development (β = .131, p < .05) and a positive influence on peer play interaction (β = .217, p < .001), followed by school readiness. Specifically, peer play interaction had an influence on social and emotional development (β = .178, p < .05), approaches to learning (β = .280, p < .01), communication (β = .285, p < .01), and cognitive development & general knowledge (β = .364, p < .001).

Figure 2.

The structural equation model regarding the relationship between mother-infant attachment security, peer play interactions, and school readiness domains. Note: Path coefficients are standardized.

Assessment of mediation

Bootstrapping procedures were used to test the significance of the mediation effects of peer play interaction. We generated 200 bootstrapping samples from the original data set (N = 175) by random sampling. The mediating effect of peer play interaction and its associated 95% confidence intervals are displayed in Table 2. It was found that attachment security exerted indirect effect on school readiness domains (social and emotional development, approaches to learning, communication, and cognitive development & general knowledge) through the mediating effect of peer play interaction.

Table 2

Bootstrapping indirect effects and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the mediational model.

Discussion

School readiness is understood as a product of the developmental process that cumulates over time and is affected by social relationships within different environmental contexts (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Mashburn & Pianta, 2006). Studies have shown that child‒mother attachment at home and peer relationships in classroom play critical roles in the developmental trajectories of school readiness skills (e.g., Belsky & Fearon, 2002; Moon & Jang, 2019; Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2012; Ladd et al., 2008; Williford et al., 2018). Building upon this body of research, the present study examined the prospective associations among mother-infant attachment security, peer play interactions, and school readiness and the role of early attachment security and peer play interactions as developmental pathways for school readiness from infancy to the transition to school age, using contemporary and nationally representative PSKC data.

The current findings revealed that attachment security at 17 months had a direct effect on the social and emotional development domains of school readiness in the transition to school age over time. In other words, social and emotional development at age 7 increased with increasing infant attachment security at 17 months. This shows that attachment relationship established with mother at 17 months continues on as an internal working model, impacting social and emotional development at age 7 (Ainsworth, 1978) and early attachment security plays an important role in the development of social and emotional readiness skills (i.e., the ability to follow directions, work in a group, engage in classroom tasks, and control impulses). Sroufe (1983) found that children who formed an insecure attachment at 12 months and 18 months exhibited lower levels of interest, empathy, compliance, and sociability in early childhood, revealing a close link between attachment relationship and social and emotional development. Granot and Mayseless (2001) confirmed the link between insecure attachment and lower levels of socioemotional skills. The current study supports previous findings that school readiness, particularly social and emotional development, can be predicted on the basis of mother-infant attachment relationship (e.g., Belsky & Fearon, 2002; Moon & Jang, 2019; Raikes & Thompson, 2008). On the other hand, children with insecure attachments are at an increased risk of facing behavior problems and these may lead to poor socioemotional school readiness skills (Moon & Jang, 2019). In a longitudinal study from infancy to early childhood, Shim and Lim (2019) found that insecurely attached infants at 17 months exhibit more internalizing behaviors, such as depression, withdrawal, and anxiety, and externalizing behavioral problems, such as aggression, impulsivity, and distraction at age 6 than their counterparts with secure attachments. Kochanska and Kim (2013) reported that insecure attachment during infancy has a causal relationship with child anger proneness and subsequent antisocial behavioral problems. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the view that a secure attachment is influential during the emergence of developmental outcomes (Raikes & Thompson, 2008), and that the security of mother-infant attachment relationships is a reliable predictor of children’s later social and emotional development (Belsky & Fearon, 2018). Consequently, education and counseling programs for parents of infants need to be developed and implemented to help mothers foster a secure relationship with their infants through sensitive and responsive interactions (Lee, 2002). Specifically, practical programs that impart knowledge about infant development and parenting, desirable parenting methods, and age-specific play activities that promote attachment are needed to bolster parent‒child attachment.

As expected, peer play interactions at age 4 had a positive effect on school readiness at age 7. In other words, school readiness at age 7 increased in all four domains with increasing positive peer play interactions at age 4. From the perspective of the zone of proximal development by Vygotsky (1978), peers play the pivotal role of a helper during young children’s transition from the level of actual development to level of potential development. Ladd et al. (2008) found that young children achieve development by helping peers, through which they undergo social and cognitive learning. Singer, Golinkoff, and Hirsh-Pasek (2006) also stressed that children actively practice their understanding of language and expand their cognition during peer play. Slicker and Hustedt (2020) observed that children may not only gain exposure to sophisticated language and other academic skills through play and peer conservation, but also acquire varied approaches to learning and other essential social and emotional regulation skills required for school readiness. These studies have shown that peer interactions during play have a powerful impact on the development of school readiness skills. The findings of the current study are in line with previous results that show that reciprocal and positive peer interactions during play reinforce young children’s learning readiness skills (e.g., Lim, 2020; Song, 2019) and that interactions in a peer play context are strongly associated with young children’s school readiness (e.g., Choi & Kim, 2019; Fantuzzo et al., 2005; Min, 2019). The current findings also bolster the results of previous studies in that positive peer experience in preschool is associated with social and academic competence in formal schooling (e.g., Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2012) and that children with high levels of disconnection from peers show the lowest levels of achievements in reading, language, and mathematics in third grade (e.g., Sekino, 2007). Considering the importance of peer play interactions, the classroom must provide opportunities to promote positive peer interactions through which peers can support, model, and extend early learning, literacy, or mathematics skills (e.g., Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2012). Therefore, teachers need to develop and implement support for positive peer interactions within the classroom.

In line with our expectations, attachment security at 17 months affected school readiness at age 7 through the mediation of peer play interactions at age 4. In other words, higher infant attachment security at 17 months was associated with more positive play interactions at age 4, and this led to higher school readiness at age 7. Particularly, attachment security at 17 months improved school readiness at age 7 through the mediation of peer play interactions at age 4 even after controlling for temperament, which is a determinant of peer play interactions at age 4 (Shim & Lim. 2019), and controlling for sex and monthly age, which significantly impact school readiness at age 7 (Hair et al., 2006; Min, 2019). More specifically, higher attachment security at 17 months was associated with reciprocal and positive peer play interactions at age 4, which in turn led to a positive effect on all four school readiness domains. It can be interpreted that infant attachment security determined the quality of peer play interactions (Oh & Lee, 2020), and peer play interactions, in turn, manifested as social and interactive play behaviors, which ultimately improved school readiness skills.

These findings suggest that, first, attachment security during infancy served as a safe haven and secure base for children as they transitioned to school age, when their significant social environment shifts from home to school (Yun, 2021). That is, children with secure histories of attachment consider parents as a secure base from which they begin to explore new environments and a safe haven to return to when they need to feel safe, comforted, or delighted (Ainsworth, 1978). Thus, those having a secure base and safe haven tend to function better emotionally, socially, and academically than their counterparts (Sroufe, 2005) in the transition to school age. In the developmental process toward school readiness, the security of infant attachment relationships provides a foundation for the formation of the peer group, and peer interactions during play, in turn, promote academic, language, and social-emotional competencies (Williford et al., 2018). Particularly, these findings, from a sample of the Korean population, add to the general literature as they highlight the stability of early attachment over time (e.g., Sroufe, 2005) and provide consistent evidence that the relationship between quality of parenting and attachment security is observable across a wide range of cultural contexts (e.g., Belsky & Fearon, 2018). Consequently, it is imperative that infants form a secure relationship with their parents in order to successfully prepare for school, achieve successful performance, and adjust to elementary school. Second, school readiness skills resulted from the accumulating effects of the benefits of secure attachment and positive peer interactions. Consequently, the quality of daily interactions experienced at home and in the classroom may be the key mechanism supporting young children’s learning and development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Singer, & Berk (2011) emphasized that young children’s learning and social and emotional adjustment are more heavily influenced by the quality of social interactions they experience in their daily lives, as opposed to their individual academic skills. Maxwell and Clifford (2004) noted that young children’s skills and development before school entry are substantially influenced by their interactions with family and others as well as the environment. Williford et al. (2018) stressed that school readiness skills such as academic, language, and social-emotional competencies are developed through social relationships with peers, family, and teachers. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that sensitive and supportive interactions with mother and peers are the basis and the most important foundation for developing school readiness skills in young children and that school readiness is dependent upon the contexts in which learning occurs—contexts which include the home and school environment (Hair et al., 2006).

The present study is the first empirical study to examine the predictive significance of early attachment security and peer play interactions for school readiness developmental pathways in Korea. The findings of this study highlight the central role played by the quality of early attachment relationships and types of peer interactions in achieving the goal that all children enter school ready to learn (Mashburn & Pianta, 2006). In particular, we found that infant attachment security at 17 months had an indirect effect on all domains of school readiness skills at age 7 through the mediation of peer play interactions at age 4, and simultaneously, it had a direct effect on the social and emotional development domain of school readiness at age 7. These findings suggest that security of early attachment relationships provide children with specific social and emotional skills required for successful school performance (Berneir et al., 2015), and is essential for all domains of school readiness (social and emotional development, approaches to learning, communication, and cognitive development and general knowledge). Additionally, this study not only found a temporal and causal association among early attachment security, peer play interactions, and school readiness skills, but the mediating effect of peer play interactions on the relation between infant attachment security and children’s school readiness was also observed. These findings support that school readiness skills are a function of a child’s early attachment history and their subsequent developmental experience with peers (Belsky & Fearon, 2002). Moreover, there is evidence of mechanisms linking both infant attachment security and peer play interactions with school readiness skills.

These findings lead to the identification of many potential targets for primary prevention and intervention efforts that improve school readiness, such as building and strengthening relationships between children and parents and children and peers. There are four specific implications of these findings. First, children need to engage in sensitive and responsive interactions with their mother at home, that is, their primary environment. This is because the quality of interaction with one’s mother determines the quality of the attachment relationship, and leads to the development of an internal working model that continuously influences subsequent approaches to building social relationships (Bretherton & Munholland, 2018). Thus, various parental education programs should be initiated to help mothers engage in positive interactions and establish secure attachment with their infant. For example, education programs emphasizing the importance of attachment, caregiver roles, and sensitivity, responsiveness, consistency, and skills of parenting can help foster secure infant attachment (Shim & Lim, 2019). Second, various educational activities and programs must be provided to young children to allow them to experience meaningful play interactions with their peers. Recently, in Korean society, an increasing number of young children have been placed in an “intentional play disconnection” set-up owing to the rampant “early education” by parents (Choi & Kim, 2019). Play disconnection, the inability to participate in play, and play disruption, the aggressive and negative expression of oneself, have an adverse effect on children’s school readiness skills (e.g., Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2012; Sekino, 2007). Particularly, negative peer play interactions not only have a detrimental effect on social and emotional development but also adversely impact mathematical thinking and linguistic abilities of young children (Choi & Kim, 2019). Thus, it is important to note that peer play interactions among young children can influence their social relationships as well as the development of school readiness in later years, and therefore, actively pay attention to ways to facilitate and support peer play interactions. For instance, programs that target improvement of social and emotional skills, such as sharing interest in others’ areas of interest, understanding others’ emotions, sharing ideas with peers, cooperative problem solving, and self-regulation, can facilitate and boost peer interactions (Youn, Kwon, & Son, 2004). Third, early childhood education programs should actively implement parental education regarding elementary school entry to assist in children’s smooth transition to elementary school. Since Korean parents recognize elementary school as the onset of formal schooling and understand school readiness as a concept related to focusing on academic skills (Kim & Chung, 2017), their understanding of the importance of a holistic view of the child should be deepened, considering multiple school readiness domains, including social-emotional, learning behaviors, cognitive, and physical development, by offering an elementary school transition program. These programs should aim to teach parents the importance of helping their children acquire skills such as self-regulation, problem solving, and maintaining social relationships, as opposed to focusing only on academic skills, such as reading, writing, and counting. Moreover, the results of the current study will serve as evidence to rectify the incorrect belief—that cognitive skills and literacy are indicators of later successful school performance and adjustment—prevalent among Korean parents. Finally, a new teacher, a new peer group, a larger child-to-adult ratio, an unfamiliar school environment, and less time for free play along with a heightened orientation toward learning trigger tremendous stress in children (Bernier et al., 2015). It is necessary to expand elementary school curricula to include components which promote children’s behavioral and emotional adjustment (Ladd et al., 2008). Various practice programs that help young children adjust to elementary school are also required. For example, intensive programs to improve elementary school readiness, kindergarten‒elementary connection program to help children adjust to elementary school, and elementary school adjustment program should be developed and implemented (An, 2014). These programs will enable young children to develop positive emotions, such as hopeful expectations for a new environment and understand and practice the attitudes and abilities demanded in elementary school.

Several limitations from this study need to be considered. First, although we controlled for temperament, sex, and monthly age, which influence peer interactions in early childhood and school readiness in transition to school age, respectively, future studies should also control for other covariates of infant attachment, such as infant’s temperament and cognitive development, mother’s attachment to their parents, temperament, personality, and education level (Sroufe, 2005), in order to examine the relation among attachment security, peer play interactions, and school readiness in more depth. Second, we distinguished attachment security between infancy and early childhood, but continued collection of the PSKC longitudinal data would allow future studies to also include childhood and adolescence while examining whether attachment security continues to influence educational achievement and social and emotional competences during elementary school years, whether school readiness skills influenced by attachment security and peer interaction endure over time, and whether they are associated with later academic, social and emotional outcomes in middle childhood. Finally, young children’s school readiness results from a large number of interinfluencing factors that are related to the children themselves, their immediate environment (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2000), and changes societal pedagogical attitudes. Thus, investigating the effects of these factors in consideration of various environmental variables that can influence school readiness (e.g., child’s personal traits, parenting behaviors, family environment, teacher‒child interaction) based on an ecological developmental perspective is necessary.

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