The impact of teachers’ mental representations of dyadic teacher-child relationships on social information processing: New insights from affective priming research

The extended attachment perspective on teacher-child relationships states that teachers internalize
experiences with specific children into a mental representation of the dyadic relationship. These
mental relationship representations are believed to shape cognitive-affective and behavioral
responses towards children. According to this perspective, understanding teachers’ mental
relationship presentations (MR) is of critical importance for the understanding of teacher sensitivity
in interactions with children. However, the idea that teachers internalize experiences with specific
children into MR is largely speculative. Indirect evidence comes from two studies using in-depth
interviews to tap into MR of teachers. To our knowledge, there is no evidence from experimental
research. We propose two affective priming experiments to address this issue. Teachers will be
primed with photographs of faces of different children to automatically activate MR and to examine
differences in priming effects on teachers’ affect (experiment 1) and on teachers’ cognitive
responses to ambiguous child behavior (experiment 2). Overall, the research is expected to improve
and refine contemporary understanding of the nature of dyadic teacher-child relationships as an
antecedent of teacher sensitivity. Moreover, it will offer an innovative research method to promote
new exciting research on this topic.