Video Interaction Guidance as a method to promote secure attachment

Abstract

This paper discusses Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) as a highly effective intervention to help develop secure attachment between parents and young children. What is important in bringing about change is shown to be a focus not on the behaviours of child or infant by themselves, or on the parent’s internal understanding or representation of attachment, but rather on the interactional relationship between them. Theoretical ideas underlying both VIG and attachment theory are drawn upon to explain this. Research evidence relating to interventions that focus on concerns of attachment, that are relationship-based, or that focus on parent sensitivity or video feedback, and those looking at the effectiveness of VIG itself, are discussed. A tentative conclusion is drawn from a pilot study that VIG has been successful in increasing maternal sensitivity as measured by the CARE-Index when compared with a control group (Robertson & Kennedy, 2009). It is proposed that VIG is a sensitivity-focused intervention where the underlying theory of ‘intersubjectivity’ permeates the method at every level, from the selection of clips of attuned interaction, and the therapeutic learning process in the shared review, to the supervision of guiders delivering the intervention. ‘Considered developmentally, the field of interventions to enhance early attachments might be viewed as adolescent.’ (Berlin, 2007, p.25)