Transitional objects and cognition : a developmental study

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between the psychoanalytic and the cognitive-developmental perspectives on childhood, with particular regard to children's early attachments to inanimate objects, termed "transitional" objects. The various theoretical interpretations of such attachments were reviewed and critiqued. Based on this discussion, an alternative account, integrating aspects of D. W. Winnicott's and Jean Piaget's views of early development, was put forward.

This theoretical section of the study was complemented by an empirical investigation of transitional objects. Carried out by means of interviews with the parents of 50 preschool children, this investigation sought to establish criteria for identifying transitional objects and to test the two leading hypotheses as to their significance. As a test of the claim that transitional objects serve to symbolize the mother, a measure of maternal separation was used to compare subjects with transitional objects to those without such attachments. As a test of the claim that transitional objects function to protect the child from impingements, the same two groups were compared on three measures of the levels of stress they had previously experienced. Finally, an attempt was made to determine whether and how early transitional phenomena are linked to later patterns of behavior.

The findings of the study suggested that the early use of transitional objects is associated with higher levels of separation from the mother at bedtime and failed to support the notion that they protect the child from impingements. The findings also served to generate a taxonomic framework within which transitional objects can be identified with a wider field of transitional phenomena. The variations in these phenomena were attributed to three factors, namely, the external nature of the associated object, the texture of the object, and the availability of the object. In view of these factors, it was suggested that the importance of the mother at bedtime may lie in her status as an ideal transitional object and that other transitional phenomena do not necessarily symbolize the mother. No clearcut link was found between early and later transitional phenomena. It was proposed that all transitional phenomena be defined according to their use in falling asleep and that so-called secondary transitional phenomena be distinguished by virtue of their involvement of imaginative processes, in contrast to the sensorimotor routines characterizing early transitional phenomena.