6: Attachment Flashcards
What is attachment?
Seeking and maintaining proximity to another individual, the tendency for humans to be emotionally and physically close to caregiver.
According to Bowlby, what are the six phases of attachment?
Indiscriminate.
Discriminate.
Specific attachment behaviour.
Stranger anxiety.
Separation anxiety.
Goal-corrected partnership.
Though attachment to caregivers in childhood appears to be a universal human (and often, animal) phenomenon, the _____ can produce notable variations in attachment.
Environment.
Failure to develop a _____ to a caregiver can result in different types of attachment styles.
Attachment bond.
What are the three types of infant attachment? How do they react to their mothers?
Secure: react positively to strangers; distressed when mother leaves, happy when returns.
Avoidant: don’t display strong attachment behaviours; don’t seek contact when mother leaves, avoid/reject mother when returns.
Resistant: fearful when mother present, demands attention; distressed when mother leaves, not soothed when returns.
What is disorganized/unresolved attachment? What are the child’s impulses like?
Demonstrates odd, ambivalent behaviours towards parent (e.g., runs up to them, immediately pulls away).
First impulse to seek comfort, but as they approach parent they become afraid.
Bowlby thought that attachment style in childhood sets a _____ for relationships that carry over into adulthood
Working model.
A representation of the caregiver is built up in the mind of the infant. This representation results in what?
Unconscious set of expectations about caregiver’s behaviour, serves as one of the earliest templates for human love.
What are the two factors in the 2-factor model of adult attachment?
Avoidance and anxiety.
Per the 2-factor model, what are the four attachment styles related to high/low anxiety and high/low avoidance?
Secure (low anxiety, low avoidance): comfortable with intimacy and autonomy.
Preoccupied (low avoidance, high anxiety): people can’t seem to get “close enough.”
Fearful-avoidant (high avoidance, high anxiety): fearful of intimacy, socially avoidant.
Dismissing-avoidant (high avoidance, low anxiety): dismissing of intimacy, strongly independent.
What was the result of a longitudinal study by Waters et al.?
Most participants kept same attachment style they had as an infant 20 years later.
What is the “distressing room” task?
Build expectation for distressing task, present list of faces and slider bar to move between frames. First picture is “angry,” last is “neutral,” rest are in between. Goal is to determine when change in emotion occurred.
List two results from the “distressing room” task.
The better a person is at detecting emotions, the earlier they will say the change occurred.
Under distress, fearful individuals more sensitive to anger, thought more faces were angry.
