Attachment Flashcards
What 4 behaviours are commonly used to identify attachment?
Separation anxiety
Stranger anxiety
Reunion behaviour
Willingness to explore
What is meant by the term reciprocity?
A two-way process by which each party responds to the others actions
What is meant by the term interactional synchrony?
The way in which two people imitate or mirror what the other is doing
Who investigated interactional synchrony?
Meltzoff and Moore (1983) had an adult display facial gestures which often resulted in imitation.
Conclusion: higher levels of interactional synchrony means better quality attachment
What is a problem with Meltzoff and Moore’s experiment (1983) ?
The baby may just be doing pseudo imitation, a form of ‘response training’ by getting a reward, or a good reaction from the mother as a result of doing a certain action, its more unconscious imitation.
What did Isabella and Belsky (1991) suggest about interactions?
The differing interactional behaviours helped to predict attachment quality (secure and insecure attachment interactions)
What evidence is there to support reciprocity?
Murray and Trevarthen (1985) found that infants shown a smiling woman were also happy, but when shown a sad/straight face the baby began to cry.
What was done to overcome the problem of children being active compared to imitation?
M+M has an external judge look at the baby’s behaviour without knowing what was being imitated
Children also sleep 12-16 hours, this can’t be helped, often creates small samples
Who failed to replicated experiments on reciprocity and interactional synchrony?
Oostenbroek et al (2016) and Koepke et all (1983) both showed that the baby did not really have any response to the facial gestures of the researchers
What was the Schaffer and Emerson (1964) experiment?
60 infants from majority working class families observed every 4 weeks over 18 months
They were measured on separation protest and stranger anxiety
What is stage 1 of attachment?
Indiscriminate Attachment : 0-8 weeks
Comfort from any adult or any object
Smiles at everyone
Happier in presence of humans
What is stage 2 of attachment?
Beginnings of attachment : 2-7 months
Recognise and smile more at familiar people
Preference for people rather than objects
What is stage 3 of attachment?
Discriminate attachments : 7-12 months
Primary attachment to one person
Show separation and stranger anxiety
Uses familiar adults as a secure base
What is stage 4 attachment?
Multiple attachments : 1 year +
Form secondary attachment with familiar adults which they spend time with
What are the strengths of the schaffer and emmerson findings?
- identifies clear stages of attachment
- bowlby and ainsworth research supports this idea
What are the weaknesses of the schaffer and emmerson findings?
- timings of stages not clear
- studies of orphans contradict this
- difference in quality of attachment
What are the strengths of the schaffer and emmerson methodology?
- longitudinal study
- naturalistic setting
- large sample size
What are the weaknesses of the schaffer and emmerson methodology?
- longitudinal have drop outs
- lots of extraneous variables (baby may become familiar with researcher)
- sample may not be representative
- behaviour from mother may not be recalled correctly
What is the traditional role of the father?
- not likely to be primary C-G
- women often have hormones associated with care for a child that men don’t have
- time is not correlated to attachment tho
- men sometimes less sensitive to infant cues
^ but men and women had the same psychological response to a video of an infant - fathers generally more playful and mentally challenging (problem solving positivity)
What is the traditional role of the father?
- not likely to be primary C-G
- women often have hormones associated with care for a child that men don’t have
- time is not correlated to attachment tho
- men sometimes less sensitive to infant cues
^ but men and women had the same psychological response to a video of an infant - fathers generally more playful and mentally challenging (problem solving positivity)
smthg about mothers and fathers working after giving birth and who cares for the child
page 13
What 2 parts are there to the learning theory as an explanation for attachment?
Classical conditioning - mum is conditioned stimulus with a conditioned response for food
Operant conditioning - food is primary reinforcer and mum is secondary
known as the cupboard love theories
What evidence contradicts the cupboard love theory?
In Schaffers and emmerson, 39% of people who fed, changed and bathed was not the primary caregiver
What was Lorenz (1952) animal study?
He looked at geese and their attachment. They imprinted within a few hours.
Would not recognize biological mother.
Affected later mating preferences
What was Harlow (1958) animals study?
One wire mother that fed monkey and another cloth.
Monkey preferred cloth mother ‘contact comfort’ (17-18 hours but 1 hour with wire)
All monkeys didn’t have normal social behaviour (more aggressive and less sociable)
What 6 things were included in Bowlby’s theory of attachment?
Social releasers
Monotropy
Innate predisposition
critical period
internal working model
adaptive
page 19
page 21
si
What was the ainsworth experiment (1970)
100 child mother pairs
3 minute episodes with 15 second record times
cargiver sits and watches child play - wte
stranger enters
caregiver leaves and returns
leaves again and stranger interacts
returns
What are the 3 types of attachment?
Insecure- avoidant (Type A) 22%
Secure attachment (Type B) 66%
Insecure-resistant (Type C) 12%
page 24
What was the 4th attachment style and who proposed it?
Main and Soloman (1986)
Insecure Disorganized (Type D)
What does GRAVE stand for in evaluation?
Generalisability
Reliability
Applicability
Validity (internal)
Ethical issues
G evaluation of ainsworth research :
Lacks ecological validity - artificial environment (Smith and Noble 1987 found it linked to life tho)
Lacks population validity - mostly white Americans (ethnocentric)
R evaluation of ainsworth research?
Interobserver reliability - he found there was almost perfect agreement in rating the child’s behaviour
A evaluation of ainsworth research
Caregivers taught to understand thier infants cues reducing disorganised caregivers from 60 to 15% and increase in securely attached from 32 to 40%
V evaluation of ainsworth research?
demand characteristics - display socially acceptable behaviours
E evaluation of ainsworth research?
protection from harm and informed consent
Who conducted the cross cultural variations of the Ainsworth experiment?
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)
What were in the cross cultural variations?
32 different studies
1990 pairs of mother-child attachments
What were the findings of the cross cultural variations?
Japan 5% 68% 27%
UK 22% 75% 3%
What was the Takahashi (1990) experiment?
60 middle class Japanese infants
0% (A) 68% (B) 32% (C)
but they had to remove the separation stage due to extreme distress
Evaluation of the cross cultural variations
- designed accoring to american standards of a secure attachments
- japnese collectivist culture
- lacks population validity
- categorised differently by researchers?
-mover half are US studies - some experiments had small sample sizes
What are the 3 main strands to Bowlby’s thoery of maternal deprivation?
- The value of maternal care
- Critical period (2 1/2)
- Long-term consequence
What are the 4 main long-term consequences of maternal daprivation?
emotional maladjustment
mental health problems
intellectual development
later social relationship ( interal working model)
What was Bowlby’s 44 thieves study?
1944
14-44 thieves were affectionless psychopaths
12/14 Ap’s had experiences motherly deprivation for at least a week before the age of 5 years old
5/30 of the toher thieves this was only true for
What were the methodological critisisms of Bowlby’s 44 thieves?
Retrospective only - data collected from mother in memory form
Experimenter bias - Bowlby conducted it himself, he knew wether they we thieves or not
What study supported Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation?
Goldfarb (1947)
30 teenagers, half adopted before 12 months, some after 3 1/2 years
Longer in the institution = less well on tests of intelligence, independence, self-control and language and were likely to be hyperactive, aggressive, deceitful and emotionally insecure.
What study contradicted Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation?
Lewis (1954)
Large sample of 500
No link to prolonged separation and criminality (criminality caused by other factors such as poverty)
What is privation in the context of maternal privation?
A child fails to form an attachment in the first place
Results in long term emotional development problems
What is deprivation in the context of maternal deprivation?
A child’s attachment is broken or lost
Less likely to result in long term emotional developmental problems
page 43 has further evaluation of bowlby if you want
:)
What is the Rutter study?
Began in 1998
Studied 165 Romanian Orphans
What 3 groups did Rutter study?
Adopted before the age of 6 months
Adopted between 6 months and 2 years
Adopted after the age of two (late adoptees).
What were Rutter’s findings in intellectual development?
Adopted earlier : Mean IQ of 102
Adopted later : Mean IQ 86 for 6m-2y and 77 for 2y+
What were Rutter’s findings in emotional development?
Adopted earlier : by age 6 they were making good recoveries
Adopted later : often developed disinhibited attachment (friendly to everyone) with other behavioral disorders
What are some strengths to Rutter’s study?
- longitudinal
- range of measures (reliable)
- natural experiment (no ethical issues)
What are some weaknesses to Rutter’s study?
- children have prior history (lacks internal validity)
- high drop out rates
- pressure on families to take part in research (ethical issues)
What did Hazer and Shaver (1987) study?
‘love quiz’
similar to childhood
Why can’t you use childhood to assume later relationships?
- retrospective only
- correlation =/ causality
