1 - Attachment Flashcards
Define attachment
And emotional mutual time between two people shown in their behaviour, such as proximity-seeking, separation distress and secure base behaviour. It serves the function of protecting an infant.
Explain interactions in attachment.
When does this develop?
What is the relationship between sensitivity and relationship?
From an early age influence of meaning for social interactions which are believed to have important functions in the child’s development. One function is the development of attachment.
These interactions happened before children learn speech, usually in the first year of life.
The most sensitive each is to the other’s signals, the deeper the relationship.
Define reciprocity.
What did Brazleton et al (1975) describe reciprocity as? What does this mean?
What did they also suggest? What does this mean?
A key element of the interaction between the infant and caregiver. An interaction is reciprocal when each person responds to the other and elicit a response from them.
They describes the interaction as adults. This means that the partners respond to each other’s moves. The baby takes an active role and the parent and baby take turns in doing so. The infant will initiate the behaviour of the caregiver.
They also suggested the basic rhythms of the interaction is important to later communications. This means that The deeper the attachments now, the deeper the attachments later in life.
Define interactional synchrony.
What did Meltzoff and Moore (1977) find and how?
What did Isabella et al (1989) observe and find?
A key element of the interaction between the infant and caregiver. The mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other in a synchronise way.
They found, using an observation, that interactional synchrony could be seen in infants as young as two weeks old. They found an association between the adult’s and infant’s expressions and actions.
They observe 30 mums and their influence to assess the degree of synchrony. They found that higher levels of synchrony led to a better quality of mother-infant attachment. Eg: emotional intensity of the relationship.
What evidence is there for/against the following statements:
The father plays the role of secondary attachment figures?
The key factor in establishing the principal caregiver role is the amount of time spent with the infant?
Biological factors may explain why men are less equipped?
Research suggests that fathers are less playful, less active and less likely to provide challenging situations for their children?
Schaffer and Emerson supports.
Schaffer and Emerson opposes.
Female hormones create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically better to be the primary attachment figure supports.
Grossman (2002) opposes.
Evaluate infant interactions
+ controls observations capture details through cameras and other means. Babies don’t understand being observed. Recordings can be made for analysis - internal validity.
+ application - mothers shouldn’t go straight back to work. Isabella et al found it decreases intersectional synchrony and impact the development of infant - caregiver attachment.
- impossible to know what infants are thinking or why they do something. We don’t know if parent-child interactions have a special meaning - internal validity.
- observations don’t explain the purposes of synchrony and reciprocity, but they are seen to be helpful in mother-child development, stress responses, empathy, language and morals.
Evaluate the role of the father
+ they are not as nurturing, either due to traditional gender roles - the mother looks after the child, or females have more oestrogen, meaning they could be biologically pre-disposed to be the primary attachment figure.
- researchers are investigating different questions, as a primary (acts as a maternal role) or secondary (different role to mother) attachment figure. Psychologists can’t answer “what is the role of the father?”
- Grossman studied and concluded that they are important in a child’s development. But MacCallum and Golombok studied same sex and single-parented children and found no difference to normal kids. This counteracts Grossman and shows they are not important - reliability.
What was the aim of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
To find out when babies developed attachments to their parents
Explain Schaffer and Emerson’s method?
Include the year.
1964 60 infants in working-class homes in Glasgow, 31 male, 29 female. They observe the development of attachments during the babies’ first years. They visited the mothers every four weeks then again at 18 months. The mother reported the infant’s response in 7 every day situations including adult leaving the room which measures separation anxiety. They also measured the infants’ response to others which measured stranger anxiety. It was a longitudinal experiment.
Explain Schaffer and Emerson’s findings
Infants developed a specific attachment around 7 months.
65% of cases showed first specific attachment towards the mother and only 3% of cases was towards the father.
Multiple attachments develop soon after.
Large individual differences in strength of attachment is formed. Babies did not necessarily for no attachments to the person who carried out the most physical care (eg. feeding, changing nappies etc.).
They attached to the person who was the most interactive and sensitive to infant signals and facial expressions (eg: reciprocity).
How many stages are there in Schaffer and Emerson’s development of attachment?
List them.
4.
Asocial, indiscriminate attachment, specific attachment, multiple attachments.
What is Schaffer and Emerson’s first stage in the development of attachment?
At what age does this occur?
Describe the behaviour seen at this stage.
Asocial - 0-8 weeks.
Recognise specific faces,
Happier in presence of humans than when alone,
Preference for familiar individuals,
Smile at anyone,
Prefer faces to non-faces,
Behaviour between humans and non-human objects is quite similar.
What is Schaffer and Emerson’s second stage in the development of attachment?
At what age does this occur?
Describe the behaviour seen at this stage.
Indiscriminate attachment - 2-7 months.
Recognise and prefer familiar people,
Smile more at familiar than unfamiliar faces,
Accept comfort from any adult comfort,
Preference for people rather than inanimate objects.
What is Schaffer and Emerson’s third stage in the development of attachment?
At what age does this occur?
Describe the behaviour seen at this stage.
Specific attachment - 7-12 months. Show separation anxiety, Use familiar adults as secure bases, Primary attachment to one particular individual (the person who shows more sensitivity to their signals), Show stranger anxiety.
What is Schaffer and Emerson’s fourth stage in the development of attachment?
At what age does this occur?
Describe the behaviour seen at this stage.
Multiple attachments - 1 yr onwards.
Form secondary attachments with familiar adults with who, they spend time (eg. father, grandparents).
Evaluate Schaffer and Emerson
+ babies were observed in their own homes. This is a familiar environment so they will act more naturally - ecological (external) validity.
- the babies all come from working-class families in Glasgow, in which the mother stayed at home with the children. Parenting in Glasgow can be different to parenting in other countries. Parenting could be different among classes - generalisability.
- the study was conducted in the 1960s. Parenting in the 1960s was drastically different to parenting today, so many not apply to modern children (nuclear families are now less common).
- one of the measures used was to interview the mothers about the children’s responses to situations in order to measure the attachment. This could cause stress to the mother and possibly the child as it is less likely to be reciprocated - ethics.
- can’t tell what the real cause of distress is in a child. Bowlby pointed out kids have playmates and get distressed when they leave. Is the distress due to attachment separation or not? This isn’t considered in Schaffer and Emerson’s model - to distinguish behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and shown towards playmates - interval validity.
Who are the 2 psychologists that created animal studies of attachment?
Lorenz and Harlow
State Lorenz’s aim
To observe the phenomenon of imprinting and see if it will occur on non-geese.
Explain Lorenz’s procedure.
Include the year the experiment took place.
1935.
He divided goose eggs into two groups. Half hatched with the mother and the other half in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
Explain Lorenz’s findings
The incubator group followed Lorenz, the natural group followed the mother goose. This demonstrated imprinting.
Explain sexual imprinting.
Give an example.
Birds that imprinted on humans show courtship.
Eg: A peacock first saw a tortoise. As an adult the peacock only directed courtship towards tortoises.
State Harlow’s aim
To investigate where the monkeys attach for comfort or food
Explain Harlow’s procedure.
Include the year the experiment took place.
1959.
8 rhesus monkeys were studied over 165 days. Harlow created 2 wire mothers; one was covered in cloth. For 4 monkeys, the wire mother had the food. For the other 4, the cloth mother had the food.
Explain Harlow’s results
All 8 monkeys spent most time with the cloth mother, regardless of the feeding bottle. When frightened, monkeys always went to the cloth mother.
However, they were messed up as they grow older. These monkeys throws around other monkeys, had abnormal mate and behaviours and some killed their own babies LOL.
Evaluate animal studies of attachment
- our own brains and bodies are more developed than monkeys - we are cognitive and emotional. Mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young than in birds. Mammals can make attachments at any time - generalisability.
- Harlow to the animals. They developed abnormally. They didn’t crazily young, they killed their own kids LOL and they had abnormal mating behaviours LOL me. This created a chain of damaged monkeys. This suffering was very human-like, they are considered similar to humans ethics. Counter-argument - Harlow’s research was sufficiently important to justify the effects.
+ Harlow had practical value. He helps social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and how to intervene and prevent it - Howe (1998). He also helped monkeys in zoos and breeding programs in the wild - application. - Lorenz’s observations have been questioned. Guiton et al (1966) challenged the idea that imprinting has a permanent affect on mating behaviour. They found that chickens imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try to meet with them - this was Lorenz’s theory applied. However, with experience, the chickens learnt to prefer meeting with other chickens. This suggests that the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.
What are the 3 features of the learning theory of attachment?
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Attachment as a secondary drive
Who developed the learning theory of attachment?
What type of people proposed it?
Why?
What do they suggest?
Dollard and Miller - 1950
Behaviourists.
They prefer to focus their explanations solely on behaviour (what people do rather than what is going on in their minds).
They suggest that everything, including attachment, is learnt through operant conditioning and classical conditioning.
What does the learning theory of attachment believe?
At birth, we are born with a tabula rasa and consequently all behaviour is learned rather than innate.
Explain classical conditioning
Essentially, it’s learning by association.
When 2 stimuli occur together, we learn to associate them.
The response to one may transfer to the other.
Use Pavlov’s dogs to explain how, through classical conditioning, the mother becomes associated with pleasure because she provides milk to the baby.
Before conditioning: Un-conditioned stimulus: milk. Un-conditioned response: pleasure. Neutral stimulus: mother (primary caregiver). During conditioning: UCS and NS = un-conditioned response: pleasure. After conditioning: Conditioned stimulus: mother. Conditioned response: pleasure.
Explain operant conditioning
BF Skinner worked with rats and cars. He developed the idea that learning occurs through reinforcement (positive reinforcement). If a behaviour is positively reinforced it becomes more probable you will repeat it in future.
How can operant conditioning be applied to the learning theory of attachment
Hungry infant feels uncomfortable and is driven to reduce their discomfort.
The mother receives negative reinforcement as she prevents the baby crying.
The baby receives positive reinforcement as it cries for food.
Attachment happens because child seeks person who supplies reward.
