Ainsworth (Topic 5 Development of attachment (social))

Question 1

Theories of attachment

Answer 1

Learning/ behaviourist theory of attachment suggests attachment is set of learned behaviours.Infant will initially form an attachment with whoever feeds them. (classical conditioning)

Question 2

Operant conditioning in attachment

Answer 2

Certain behaviours bring desirable responses from others e.g crying, cooing, smiling, through operant conditioning babies learn to repeat these to get things they want.
E.g reinforced to cry as carer appears and removed something unpleasant, so learns to cry again (negative reinforcement)

Question 3

Evolutionary theory of attachment (Bowlby, Harlow, Lorenz)

Answer 3

Suggests children come into world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with others because this will help them survive.

Question 4

John Bowlby

Answer 4

Proposed evolutionary theory of attachment, believed children come into world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments to help survive. Also believed babies born with tendency to display innate behaviours (social releasers) which ensure proximity & contact with mother/ attachment figure e.g crying.
Mothers possess instincts to protect their babies. Bowlby saw attachment as 2-way process, both caregiver and infant ‘programmed’ to maintain proximity.
Bowlby believed first attachment formed is most important, suggested child would initially form 1 primary attachment (monotropy) and this figure acted as secure base for exploring world, disrupting this attachment can have severe consequences.

Question 5

‘critical period’

Answer 5

Bowlby suggested if attachment figure is broken/disrupted during 2 year ‘critical period’ child will suffer long term, irreversible consequences. Risk continues until child is 5.

Question 6

Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis

Answer 6

Loss/separation of mother as well as failure to develop attachment.
Hypothesis assumes continual disruption of attachment between infant & primary care giver could result in long term cognitive, social and emotional difficulties for that infant.

Question 7

4 attachment types

Answer 7

Secure
Insecure avoidant
Insecure resistant
Insecure disorganised

Question 8

Secure attachment

Answer 8

Baby actively seeks and maintains maternal proximity, may show distress at absence of mother & stranger anxiety. Show positive reunion behaviour. Result of sensitive and responsive care.

Question 9

Insecure avoidant attachment

Answer 9

Baby ignores caregiver in times of need, not distressed by absence or stranger presence. Result of insensitive and unresponsive care.

Question 10

Insecure resistant attachment

Answer 10

Baby simultaneously seeks and resists maternal contact, exaggerates distress and anger to ensure caregiver notices. Separation protest and stranger anxiety is high. Result of inconsistent care.

Question 11

Insecure disorganised attachment

Answer 11

Baby displays bizzare and contradictory responses to maternal separation and reunion, e.g freezing, pulling away. Caregiver responds to child’s distress with fear or frightening child.

Question 12

Harlow

Answer 12

His explanation was that attachment develops as result of mother providing ‘tactile comfort’ suggesting infants have innate, biological needs to touch/ cling to something for emotional comfort. He studied rhesus monkeys in 1950s & 60s. Reared monkeys in isolation, put them in with other monkeys to see what effect their failure to form attachment had on behaviour, clutched own bodies, scared of others, became aggressive, unable to socialise, communicate.
Harlow concluded privation (never forming attachment bond) is permanently damaging. The extent of abnormal behaviour reflected length of isolation period. Longer= more irreversible effects.
2nd monkey study- reared monkeys with fake,surrogate mothers separated from actual mothers immediately at birth, 2 surrogate mothers, one wire one cloth, monkeys spent longer with cloth mother despite having milk or not. ‘contact comfort’ and a safe base. Supports evolutionary theory of attachment that sensitive response and security of caregiver is important as opposed to provision of food.

Question 13

Rutter

Answer 13

1980s and 90s Romanian orphanage children with very little care discovered. Never experienced any form of sensitive care on emotional level. Those adopted older than 6 months old struggled to form attachments, had problems forming peer relationships.

Question 14

Aim of Ainsworth’s study into attachment, exploration & separation: behaviour of 1 year olds in ‘strange situation’:

Answer 14

Aim was to investigate attachment behaviours using strange situation, did this by observing A) use of mother as secure base for exploration and B) extent to which attachment behaviour overcomes exploratory behaviour when stranger anxiety occurs and C) separation and reunion behaviours.

Question 15

Research method

Answer 15

Controlled observation, not a lab experiment because there was no iv.
Ps were observed through one-way mirror from adjoining room as they participated in a ‘strange situation’. (covert observation)

Question 16

Sample

Answer 16

56 babies just under 1 yr old & their mothers.
Mothers enacted standardised procedure of ‘strange situation’.
All white
All middle class
Opportunity sample, families contacted via their paediatricians who worked in private practice.

Question 17

Procedure

Answer 17

Room arranged standardised way: location of chairs & toys.
Both mother & female stranger instructed in advance to roles they would play.
Each of 8 strange situation stages lasted 3 mins each but was cut short if baby was distressed.

Question 18

‘Strange situation’ composed of 8 discrete episodes:

M= mother
B= baby
O= observer
S= stranger

Answer 18

Ep1: M, accompanied by O carried B into room, O left.
Ep2: M put B down in specified place, sat quietly in her chair, only participated if B sought attention.
Ep3: S entered, sat quietly, conversed with M, gradually approached B, showing toy.
Ep4: M leaves room, B engaged happy in play, S was non-ps and just sat there, if child inactive S tried to interest B with toys, if distressed, S tried to distract or comfort, if unsuccessful, ep cut short.
Ep5: M entered, paused to give B opportunity to spontaneously respond, then S left, once B was settled in play again, M leaves, pausing to say ‘bye-bye’.
Ep6: B left alone unless distressed episode cut short.
Ep7: S entered, behaved same as ep4 for 3 mins unless distress shown.
Ep8: M returned, S left and after reunion observed, situation terminated.

Question 19

What was the situation designed to do?

Answer 19

To encourage exploration of an unfamiliar environment whilst not being too distressing for baby.

Question 20

Episodes measures several different behaviours via 7-point scale of intensity for items such as:

Answer 20

Proximity & contact seeking behaviour
Contact-maintaining behaviour
Interaction-avoiding behaviour
Interaction resisting behaviour
Searching behaviour.

Question 21

1. Proximity and contact-seeking behaviours

Answer 21

approaching, clambering up, active gestures like reaching, intention movements like partial approaches and vocal signals including directed cries.

Question 22

2. Contact-maintaining behaviours

Answer 22

after baby gained contact with mother- clinging, clutching etc; resisting release by intensified clinging, if contact lost baby turns back, protesting vocally.

Question 23

3. Proximity and interaction-avoiding

Answer 23

when trying to engage baby attention-ignores adult, avoiding looking, turning away/moving away.

Question 24

4. Contact and interaction resisting

Answer 24

behaviours like angry attempts to push away, hit or kick adult seeking to make contact, throwing/ pushing toys away when adult attempt to mediate interventions.

Question 25

5. Searching

Answer 25

follow mother to door, trying to open, banging on door, glancing at shut door, going to empty chair mother was sat in and staring at it.

Question 26

Reliability of observations

Answer 26

between 2 observers watching through adjoining room through one-way mirror scored high concordance rate of 0.99.

Question 27

RESULTS: Exploratory behaviour

Answer 27

Babies used mother as secure base to explore strange situation, once mother left, was decline in all forms of exploratory behaviour.

Question 28

RESULTS: Attachment behaviours

Answer 28

Crying was most prominent in episodes 4 & 6 when mother left room, crying did not increase significantly with stranger presence- suggests absence of mother caused most distress.

Question 29

RESULTS: Search behaviour during separation

Answer 29

All but 4 babies either cried, searching or both when left alone.

Question 30

RESULTS: Proximity-seeking and contact-maintaining behaviours

Answer 30

Contact-maintaining behaviour increased in first reunion (episode 5) and rose even more in second reunion (episode 8). Proximity-seeking and contact-maintaining behaviours displayed much less frequently and less strongly to stranger than mother.

Question 31

RESULTS: Contact-resisting behaviour

Answer 31

In reunion episodes, some babies resisted contact with mother, most did not.

Question 32

CONCLUSIONS

Answer 32

- Absence of mother or attachment figure heightens attachment behaviour and lessens exploration of new, unfamiliar situation. - Attachment behaviour heightens in situations seen as frightening. - Incidence of contact-resisting and proximity-avoiding patterns of behaviour in reunion episodes are reflection of fact that attachment relations are qualitatively different from one attached pair to another. (individual differences in quality of attachments).

Question 33

Methodological issues (pos & neg)

Answer 33

Highly reliable, controlled lab situation, 8 standardised episodes, same order for all children. 2 observers collected data pre-operationalised checklist of behaviours (high inter-observer reliability) Procedure been replicated in many countries, replicable method in investigating attachment. High internal validity- controlled observation, researchers could measure aspects of situation stimulating exploration & attachment behaviours, could test hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory. Strange situation was unfamiliar to mothers & babies- scripted, contrived, artificial- mother may have acted different to at home (lack ecological validity), yet brief separation quite realistic to baby daily life.

Question 34

Ethical issues

Answer 34

8 episodes prompted stress and anxiety to babies under 1 year old, unnecessary stress most likely not encountered daily life. Could not debrief experience of strange situation, procedure could have affected relationship with mothers after testing. Infants would not understand purpose of test, or know when they would be reunited with mother- could have caused psychological trauma.

Question 35

Sample - weaknesses

Answer 35

Not representative All white , middle class babies & mothers Parents have similar cultural values and parental styles, findings hard to generalise to attachments formed by other babies and mothers in other cultures. Fathers were not studied- decreases generalisability more. Numerous modern-day families have fathers as primary care giver.

Question 36

Ethnocentrism

Answer 36

Findings may not be replicable for collectivist culture where child has more than 1 attachment figure. Strange situation based on western ideas of what constitutes attachment, some cultures children encouraged not to explore away from mothers. In such cultures babies & mothers behave different in strange situation, show less exploration and greater distress from separation?

Question 37

Nature vs Nurture

Answer 37

Bowlby's evolutionary theory of attachment= nature side, biologically determined to form attachment, social releasers given off e.g smiling, helps attachments form, mothers naturally bond with child for them to survive. Quality of attachment developed through nurturing environments, behaviourists argue nurture is reason for formation of attachments. Babies will form attachment with who feeds them, food is rewarding & strengthens relationship. Attachment also forms via classical conditioning (caregiver associated with food). Bowlby & Lorenz support innate view of development of attachments- evolutionary theorists.

Question 38

Free will vs Determinism

Answer 38

Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis seen as deterministic-suggests impact of failure to form or loss of attachment is irreversible. (deterministic) He argues lack of attachment in early life has consequences socially, cognitively and emotionally e.g in the case of Genie. Development of disorganised attachments caused poor relationships, aggression and academic deficits regardless of free will. Rutters findings suggest this view too deterministic- he found romanian orphans were able to achieve normal developmental outcome.

Question 39

Psych as science

Answer 39

Attachment is hard to measure and quantify. However controlled observation was designed to test hypotheses derived from evolutionary theories of attachment. Standardised procedures controlled for some aspects of novel, unfamiliar situation. Could isolate influences of separation, reunion and stranger presence on attachment and evolutionary behaviours. Study was replicable, allowed researchers to confirm or challenge conclusions drawn.

Question 40

Usefulness

Answer 40

Useful. Strange situation still used in current research, further investigations of attachment types in diff cultures & countries improve knowledge of behaviours. Results & conclusions can help parents and childcare practitioners in changing attitudes towards parenting. Separation from attachment figure can cause anxiety and distress; to minimise effect of separation anxiety childcare providers can be responsive to needs and be affectionate and sensitive to needs. However Bowlby's encouragement of the 'sensitive mother' puts pressure on mothers to be highly responsive and consistent, attributes guilt to mothers wanting to return to work and mothers may face depression, loss of identity and anxiety if leave children with carers. Ethical responsibility of researchers, results can be misrepresented and used to justify restricting women to home and raising children. Bowlby's theory of attachment implies mothers should stay home.