Attachment, causal attributions, and conceptions of intelligence in 10 to 13-year-old children|Rapporti tra attaccamento, stili attributivi e concezioni dell’intelligenza in bambini di 10-13 anni

The present study aims at investigating children's and preadolescents' beliefs and self-perceptions (1) to verify a relationship between attachment style and implicit theory of intelligence, (2) to examine whether there is a relationship between attachment type and causal attributions and, finally, (3) to confirm a link, already documented in literature, between causal attributions and representation of intelligence. Correlations between the mentioned variables, measured using self-report questionnaires, were assessed on a sample of 96 children and preadolescents attending from last year of primary school and the last of junior high-school. The tendency of individuals with an incremental theory of intelligence is to have either a secure attachment or avoidant and of students with an entitary conception to be ambivalent-anxious. Subjects with secure and avoidant attachment styles make attributions related to personal commitment, which are more functional to learning; on the other hand, subjects with disorganized attachment shared the most dysfunctional attributions. Students with an incremental theory of intelligence attributed an important weight to commitment to judge school successes and a statistically significant higher weight to commitment to judge failures. Results confirm the hypothesis according to which an incremental theory of intelligence, associated with a secure attachment style, fosters attributional styles which are more functional for an effective learning. Finally, clinical and educational implications are discussed.