Art‐Based, Continuous Measurement for the Attachment Paradigm: Development and Implementation of a Digital Application

AttachmentAttachment is a term widely used in psychology to describe the strong emotional relationshipRelationship that an infant or child forms with a caregiver and, according to John Bowlby, represents a lifelong construct. One of the most commonly used measurementMeasurement methodsMethod for attachmentAttachment is the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), which attempts to reflect the interviewees’ current stateStates of mind regarding attachmentAttachment by primarily asking interviewees about their thoughtsThoughts and feelingsFeelings about their childhoodChildhood experiences with their parents and how these experiences influenced their personalityPersonality developmentDevelopment. The main problem with AAI is its labor-intensive applicationApplication, so various approaches have been developed to simplify this kind of analysisAnalysis or measurementMeasurement. The approach presented here aims to demonstrate a simple, art-basedArt-based, and continuousContinuous measurementMeasurement of interpersonalInterpersonal attachmentAttachment, examining connectionsConnections between human thoughtThoughts processes and interpersonalInterpersonal attachmentAttachment, assuming that both positive interactions and problems within interpersonalInterpersonal attachmentAttachment correspond to attachmentAttachment categories. On the basis of three experimentalExperimental settings, different analysisAnalysis methodsMethod are presented, analyzed, and discussed, whereby each of the settings demonstrates its advantagesAdvantages and disadvantagesDisadvantages, which are more or less suitable depending on the applicationApplication. Overall, the approach is easy to understand and can be used quickly, so that further developmentDevelopment with a greater focus on the interpretation of the results in relation to attachmentAttachment can be recommended, as these approaches could represent an improvement for the early detection of mental healthMental health risks that would lead to mentalMental disorders in adolescentAdolescent children or poorer therapeuticTherapeutic outcomes due to interpersonalInterpersonal attachmentAttachment issues.