attachment Flashcards

Question

Deprivation

Answer 1

when a child has formed an attachment but the bond is broken. E.g. when parent dies or a divorce happens.

Answer 2

the situation where no attachment has been formed. Most common where a child has been institutionalised e.g. in an orphanage.

Answer 3

Proposed 1950s – beforehand it was widely believed that only physical care was necessary. Emotional care is just as important for development as physical care. Breaking bond with the child during early years will have serious effects on their intellectual, social & emotional development. If bond is broken child will have difficulty forming relationships later in life & would be at risk of developing behavioural disorders, Effects will be permanent & irreversible. A child denied maternal care because of frequent & prolonged separation would become emotionally disturbed if this happened before age 2 & a half and there is no mother-substitute. This is because of disruption to the IWM. Continuing risk up until age 5.

Answer 4

Bowlby interviewed children, and their families, who attended a child guidance clinic where he worked. He compared the backgrounds of 44 juvenile thieves (aged 5 -16) with the background of 44 other non-delinquent children.

Answer 5

14 of the 44 thieves were diagnosed by Bowlby as having affectionless psychopathy, the main symptom of which is lack of moral conscience. 86% of these had experienced separation for at least one week before the age of 5. The other 30 were not diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths & of these only 17% had experienced separations. Control group = no crime = no separation.

Answer 6

Findings could be biased because Bowlby himself diagnosed children as affectionless psychopaths. There could have been expectancy effects as he was supporting his own theory! This might cast doubts on the actual validity of MDH.

Answer 7

However, findings led to a positive change in infant childcare as physical care was no longer seen to be adequate without care of emotional needs. Care of children in orphanages has also been improved to take account of emotional needs including attempts to keep children with one foster family. Also, provisions were made for parents to be able to stay in hospital with their children plus an increase in visiting hours. Therefore this theory has important real life implications

Answer 8

During the war women assumed male jobs. It has been suggested that perhaps Bowlby’s theories were used to make women stay at home with their children, This would free up the workplace for the returning men. Bowlby’s work could therefore be considered to be socially sensitive as it may have impacted on the lives of many women

Answer 9

Argued Bowlby confused cause & effect with an association i.e deprivation is not the cause of later problems but the circumstances surrounding the separation cause the problems. Isle of Wight study. Over 2000 boys (9 & 11). It was found that: if separation was due to physical illness or death of the mother then there was no correlation with delinquency, if separation were due to discord e.g. divorce boys 4 x more likely to be delinquent. suggests it is discord rather than maternal deprivation that causes the problem.

Answer 10

Bowlby’s Attachment theory suggests that early relationships with our caregivers provide the basis on how we will conduct our later adult relationships. This idea is termed the continuity hypothesis. The attachment styles we learn as infants and young children become an internal working model for what we believe relationships should be like which provides us with a template for how to behave in future relationships. The internal working model shapes your expectations within relationships. Therefore, the expectations we have of relationships that form in childhood will continue into adulthood.

Answer 11

Bowlby's research suggests we develop an attachment style. An attachment style consists of two attitudes. First is an attitude about ourselves, termed self-esteem. Second is an attitude about other people - termed interpersonal trust. These two attitudes develop from our earliest interactions with caregivers. If our caregiver makes us feel highly valued and we feel that they are dependable and reliable we are likely to develop high self-esteem and trust other people. This is the basis of a secure attachment style. The absence of these conditions might result in the development of an insecure attachment style. According to continuity hypothesis, a child who has a secure attachment style will develop an Internal Working Model that will lead to positive interactions with their friends and romantic partners, and better parenting skills. But a child with an insecure attachment style will develop an Internal Working Model that will lead to negative interactions with their friends and romantic partners and they will struggle with their parenting skills. In other words, the effects of early attachment styles will continue into adulthood.

Answer 12

Support for the internal working model is provided by Hazan & Shaver who found that adult romantic styles were related to childhood attachment styles using a love quiz. This questionnaire consisted of 3 parts and asked Ps questions about current relationship experiences, attachment history & attitudes toward love in order to identify current and childhood attachment types. The researchers analysed responses from a cross section of the population who had volunteered to take part in the study.

Answer 13

Supporting evidence for the Continuity hypothesis affecting friendships comes from the Minnesota parent-child study. This followed Ps from infancy to late adolescence & found continuity between early attachment & later social behaviour. For example, those classed as securely attached in infancy were rated higher in social competency in later childhood, were more popular and more empathetic. This therefore supports the theory that early attachment influences later childhood relationships.

Answer 14

Mothers brought up in care were found to interact poorly with their own children.This is because they had no IWM to provide a template for how to look after their own children effectively. Further support come from Harlow’s motherless monkeys who did not cradle their own babies as they did not know how to.

Answer 15

Continuity hypothesis implies that early attachments WILL determine future relationships. However, many children with insecure attachments CAN experience happy adult relationships. According to the theory who is to blame if you have problems in your adult relationships? Mother. The deterministic nature of this theory therefore makes it socially sensitive as it blames parents for any later relationship problems. Essentially, the theory argues that the behaviour of the caregiver WILL cause later relationship issues.

Answer 16

An innate readiness to develop a strong bond with the mother. Takes place during a specific time in development, most likely the first few hours after birth or hatching.

Answer 17

Lorenz took a clutch of gosling eggs and divided them into two groups: One group was left with their biological mother, The other eggs were placed in an incubator. When the incubator eggs hatched the first living (moving) thing they saw was Lorenz. They soon started following him around. To test this imprinting further, Lorenz marked the two groups of goslings to distinguish them and placed them together. Both Lorenz & the biological mother were present.

Answer 18

He found the goslings he looked after had imprinted on him despite their biological mother being present. Lorenz also noted that this early imprinting had an effect on mate preferences, This is called sexual imprinting: Animals (especially birds) will choose to mate with the same kind of object upon which they were imprinted. Lorenz noted the process of imprinting is limited by a critical period. If a young animal is not exposed to a moving object during this early critical period (usually the first 2 days), the animal will not imprint and form an attachment.

Answer 19

Support for imprinting comes from a study by Guiton, Found that leghorn chicks exposed to yellow rubber gloves when being fed during their first few weeks, imprinted on the gloves. This shows that young animals imprint on any moving object that is present during their critical period. Guiton also found that male chickens later tried to mate with the gloves showing that early imprinting is linked to later reproductive behaviour.

Answer 20

Animal studies cannot generalise to humans. Humans are born much more helpless & ‘incomplete’ with a very immature brain compared to birds (who can quickly learn to be independent). In humans bonding & growing takes place over longer periods of time leading to more complex relationships & eventual brain development. Humans are consequently capable of more complex thought processes. Therefore our behaviour is governed by conscious decisions which birds are not capable of.

Answer 21

Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers at birth & put in a cage with two artificial ‘mothers’ with different heads. One was made of wire and the other was covered in soft cloth, One of the ‘mothers’ fed the monkey with a feeder bottle. The other versions of the ‘mother’ had no feeder bottle. Eight infant Rhesus monkeys were studied for a period of 165 days. For 4 of the monkeys the milk bottle was on the cloth covered ‘mother’ and for the other 4 monkeys the milk bottle was on the wire ‘mother’. The amount of time each monkey spent with the two different mothers was measured. Observations were also made of the monkeys’ responses when scared by a mechanical teddy bear.

Answer 22

All 8 monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth-covered mother whether or not this had the feeding bottle. Those monkeys who fed from the wire monkey only spent a short amount of time getting milk and then returned to the cloth-covered mother. When frightened, all monkeys clung to the cloth-covered mother . Also, when playing with new objects the monkeys often kept one foot on the cloth-covered mother for reassurance. Conclusion: these findings suggests infants do not develop an attachment to the person who feeds them but to the person offering comfort.

Answer 23

One criticism is that the wire monkeys varied. The two heads were different which may act as a confounding variable. Perhaps the reason the infant monkeys preferred one mother to the other was because the cloth covered mother had a more attractive head. Therefore the conclusions lack internal validity

Answer 24

The study created lasting emotional harm as the monkeys later found it difficult to form relationships with their peers.Therefore monkeys were not protected from psychological harm. However, it could be argued that these animal studies are necessary as they could never be carried out on humans. A human baby can’t be removed from its mother just for the sake of an experiment. Instead we have to rely on very rare cases of extreme neglect such as the case of Genie who was abandoned in a room for the first 13 ½ years of her life. As these cases happen so infrequently, we need to use experiments such as Harlow’s to understand certain aspects of behaviour.