Attachment Flashcards
What is international synchrony?
When a caregiver and infants synchronise together
What is reciprocity?
When a mother picks up on baby’s signals and interacts back with them, or baby’s responds to mother’s signals
What is attachment?
A two way emotional tie to a specific other person
When can an attachment be recognised in an infant?
Stranger anxiety
Separation anxiety
What are alert phases?
After three months the baby starts to frequently signal they want interaction
Who is Meltzoff and Moore (1977)?
Conducted the first systematic study of interactional synchrony
What are the findings if Meltzoff and Moore study?
Infants as young as 2/3 week old imitated specific facial and hand genstures
Who does the baby attach to first and at what age?
Mother and around 7 months
Who is the secondary attachment?
Father most babies attach by 18 months
Is a fathers attachment beneficial in a child’s life?
No, children growing up in single/sex families do not develop differently
Why aren’t fathers usually primary attachments?
Mother’s have a nurturing side that fathers don’t, can also be due to gender roles
What are social releases?
Features of a a baby/baby animals that make us want to care for them
What are the four stages of attachment?
Asocial stage
Indiscriminate attachment
Specific attachment
Multiple attachment
What is the asocial stage?
Baby’s behaviour towards humans and faces are just similar. This happens in the first few weeks of their life
What is indiscriminate attachment?
Babies now display more observable social behaviour with a preference for people rather than inanimate objects
Happens towards 2-7 months old
What is specific attachment?
Baby is said to have formed a specific attachment with the primary attachment figure
Happens from around 7 months
What is multiple attachments?
Secondary attachments with other adults form by one year of life
What did Schaffer and Emerson study?
The stages of attachment 60 babies from Glasgow mostly from working class families. Separation anxiety were measured by asking mothers about their children’s behaviour during everyday separations. Stranger anxiety was measured by asking mothers questions about their children’s anxiety responses to unfamiliar adults
What were the findings of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
50% of babies showed separation anxiety towards a particular adult between 25 and 32 week of age. Attachment tended to be to the caregiver who was most interactive and sensitive to the infants signals and facial expression
What did Lorenz study?
Imprinting
Randomly divided 12 goose eggs, half hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment and the other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object was Lorenz. They mixed all the goslings together to see who they would follow. Lorenz also observed birds and their later courtship behaviour
What were the findings of Lorenzs imprinting study?
Incubator group followers Lorenz and the control group followed their mother.
What were the conclusions of Lorenzs study?
Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place.e.g few hours after hatching. If imprinting didn’t occur within that time, chicks didn’t attach themselves to the mother figure.
Sexual imprinting also occurs whereby the birds acquire a template of desirable characteristics required in a mate
What did Harlow study?
Importance of contact comfort
What was the procedure of Harlow study?
Reared 16 rhesus monkeys with two wire model mothers
In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother and the other condition it was dispensed by the cloth mother. As a further measure of attachment like behaviour, the reactions of the monkey to more frightening situations were observed. Harlow and his colleagues also continued also continued to study the monkeys who had been deprived of their real mother into adult hood
What were the findings of Harlow study?
Baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and regardless of which dispensed milk. This suggests that contact comfort was of more importance than food when it came to attachment behaviour
Who came up with the learning theory of attachment?
Dollard and Miller (1950)
What does the learning theory of attachment suggest?
It emphasises the importance of food in attachment formation. Children learn to love whoever feeds them
What does classical conditioning have to do with the learning theory of attachment?
UCS (food)leads to UCR (a feeling of pleasure). A caregiver (mother)starts as a NS this person over time becomes associated with food so the NS becomes a CS. Once conditioning has taken place, the sight of the caregiver produces a CR of pleasure.
What is operant conditioning got to do with the learning theory of attachment?
It explains why babies cry for comfort, with negative and drive reduction
Why is negative reinforcement involved with attachment?
At the same time as the baby is reinforced for crying, the care giver receives negative reinforcement because the crying stops
This interplay of negative reinforcement strengthens an attachment
What is drive reduction?
Hunger is a primary drive, and innate biological motivator. We are motivated to eat to reduce the hunger drive.
Attachment is a secondary drive learned by an association between the satisfaction of a primary dive and the care giver.
What are the weaknesses of the learning theory of attachment?
Animal studies provide evidence against food as the basis of attachment
Human research also shows that feeding is not an important factor
Ignores other links with attachment
