Towards Assessing Attachment on an Emotional Security Continuum

The report by Fraley and Spieker serves to remind the discipline of the possible virtues of assessing attachments on continua, a practice that has a long history in attachment research. This commentary further develops the potential contributions of this approach to assessment and advocates for renewed efforts towards assessment attachments on a single continuum of emotional security. A contention is that theory is essential as a guide for new direction in attachment assessment and that Bowlby’s notion of secure base and emotional security provides the needed conceptual foundation for these further developments (Waters & Cummings, 2000). Moreover, challenges that have been made historically to scoring attachment on a security continuum are addressed. New means to continuously score attachment are advocated as a supplement to the primary direction of categorically assessing attachment patterns. Developmental Psychology (2003, in press).