Attachment Flashcards
Caregiver-Infant Interactions
Seek proximity
Distress of seperated
Pleasure when reunited
General Orientation (Independency)
Caregiver-Infant Interactions:
Interactional Synchrony
Mirroring of micro-level behaviour and emotions.
Is important for development of attachment, higher synchrony = higher quality attachment.
Caregiver-Infant Interactions: Reciprocity
From three months.
Each person reponds to the other.
Involes close attention to behaviour and happens when the baby is active.
Caregiver-Infant Interactions: AO3
May not be reliable to study children.
Hard to know what is actually happening when observing. Conscious or deliberate, or by chance - reduces validity?
Methodological problems: possibility of observer bias, more than one observer to examine inter-observer reliability.
Socially Sensitive: children may be disadvantaged, mother who return to work.
Stages of attchment:
1) Indiscriminate Attachment - 2 months
2) Beginnings of attachment - 2-7 months
3) Discriminate Attachment - 7-9 months
4) Multiple Attachments - 9+ months
Stages of attachment: Key study
Schaffer and Emerson - Glasgow study.
Studied 60 infants, from 5-23 weeks old for year. Checking every four weeks and reported infant’s response to 7 everyday situations.
Found quality is more important than time. 65% first specific attachment was mother. (Stage 3)
1 month after first attachment, 29% of infants had multiple attachments - secondary attachments. By 1, majority had.
Schaffer and Emerson AO3
Sample bias - may not apply to other social groups, temporal validty: different in 60s.
Stage theories suggest inflexible and fixed development of attachment. Standardised = abnormal.
Culture bias - collectivist cultures focus on group so more likely to form multipe attachments earlier. Imposed etic.
Role of the father.
Only 3% of infants had father has first specific attachment. 75% eventually form secondary attachments with father.
Farther’s play is important, more to do with play and stimulation than nurturing.
Role of father AO3
Important economic implications - mothers may feel less pressure.
Undermining evidence - single or same sex marriages don’t develop differently. McCallum 2004.
Unclear nature vs. nurture. Soical biases or hormonal biological factors?
Animal Studies: Lorenz
Divided gosling eggs into two groups, one with natural mother, other in incubator and first thing they saw was Lorenz. Goslings started to follow around. To test the effect of imprinting Lorenz marked goslings and returned them to mother.
Showed no sign of recognising mother and continued to follow Lorenz. Concluded imprinting has to happen in a criticial period (up to 2 days).
Imprinting is irreversible and long lasting.
Imprinting
The innate readiness to develop a strong bond with attachmnet figure which takes place in a specific time.
Animal Studies: Harlow
Two wire monkeys. One bare wire, other in soft cloth. 8 monkeys studied for 165 days. Milk bottle placed on different mother for two groups of 4 monkeys. Time spent with each mother was measured and responses when frightened.
All monkeys spent most the time with the soft cloth wire mother, regardless of feeding bottle. All clung to soft mother whem frightened.
Suggest infants form attachments with person offering comfort rather than person feeding.
Grew up to be socially and sexually abnormal
Animal Studies AO3
Lorenz supporting evidence - Guiton (1966), chicks + gloves used to feed. MIAD - characteristics of imprinting, more forgiving, reverible.
Cannot be generalised to humans.
Unethical.
Explanations of attachment: The leanring theory of attachment
Suggest attachment behaviour is learned through either classical or operant conditioning.
Mother = conditioned stimulus
Mother = secondary reinforcer
Explanations of attachment: The learning theory of attachment AO3
Harlow - contact may be more important than food. MIAD - inferred from animal studies.
Schaffer and Emerson reported attachments to those not involved in basic care.
Envrionmentally reductionist - attachment behaviour is complex, disregards parenting style, temperament.
Explanations of attachment: Bowlby’s monotropic theory of attachment
Evolutionary theory.
Attachments are adaptive, meaning they give us a adaptive advantage to survival.
Attachment to caregiveer ensures shelter, food and warmth.
Babies have social releasers which ‘unlock’ adults innate tendency to care for them, e.g. physical ‘cuteness’ and behavioural.
Has to form during critical period between birth + 2.5 years old. If not. long term damage - socially, emotionally, intellectually.
Monotropy - form one special attachment to mother.
Through monotopic attachment, infant forms a interal working model which a special mental schema that all future relationships will be based on.
