Abstract
There has been considerable debate regarding the effects of stress on children’s memory, and a growing body of research has developed to address this issue. An important direction in this line of research concerns sources of individual differences in children’s memory for distressing experiences. The focus of this review is on one such source, namely attachment and how attachment theory may provide a theoretical framework from which to understand the association between stress and memory in children. We first provide an overview of research concerning children’s coping with and memory for stressful events. We then briefly describe the main tenets of attachment theory, emphasizing those tenets with implications for children’s reactions to and memory for distressing experiences. Next, we review empirical evidence and discuss theoretical implications of attachment’s potential influence on children’s encoding, retention, and retrieval of stressful events. Throughout this review, we discuss important questions and directions for future research, and we highlight theoretical and applied implications regarding relations among emotion, attachment, and memory in childhood.