attachment Flashcards
What are Schaffer’s stages of attachment?
Asocial stage, Indiscriminate stage, specific attachment, multiple attachments.
What is reciprocity?
mutual process of turn-taking where each persons response elicits another response from the other. This sensitivity lays the groundwork for later attachment.
What is interactional synchrony?
When a caregiver and infant reflect each others actions. They mirror each other in a coordinated way.
What was Schaffer and Emerson’s (1964) study?
- Sample of 60 babies from Glasgow from working class families. Observations and interviews were used. They also assessed stranger and separation anxiety. Attachment tended to be to the caregiver who showed reciprocity. Fathers were rarely the sole object of attachment. By 40 weeks 80% had formed a specific attachment. This suggests that there is a pattern of attachment to all infants which is biologically controlled.
What is undermining evidence for the asocial stage?
Babies are mostly immobile in their first weeks so we cannot know that they do not want to socialise, we can only observe that they don’t, which is not reliable.
Strength of Schaffer and Emerson as supporting evidence?
The behaviour of the babies was unlikely to be affected by the presence of the observers. The study was carried out in the families’ own homes and most of the observation (other than stranger anxiety) was actually done by parents during ordinary activities and reported to researchers later. This suggests that the behaviour of the participants was likely to be natural while they were being observed.
Undermining evidence for stages of attachment (culture)?
One difficulty with stage theories is that they suggest that development is inflexible. In this case, it suggests that normally specific attachments come before multiple attachments. In some situations and cultures, multiple attachments may come first.
What does caregiver-infant interaction form?
The basis of attachment
What was Lorenz’s study?
(1952) he divided a clutch of goose eggs, hatching half with their mother goose and half in an incubator by him. He found the Geese who saw him as their first carer followed him, and vice versa with the mother. This is called imprinting, which Lorenz found a critical period for.
What was Bowlby’s theory of attachment? (When does it have to form? Else?)
That there is a critical period of about two years for developing attachment, which if not formed results in irreversible developmental consequences.
What is the supporting -> undermining evidence for Lorenz’s study?
When chickens were exposed to rubber yellow gloves when young, they would try and mate with them as adults. However, with experience they eventually learnt to prefer other chickens.
What is a strength of Lorenz’s study?
He had a control group, making cause and effect more clear.
What is a weakness of Lorenz’s study?
There are issues with generalising results about birds to humans - low external validity.
What was Harlow’s 1959 study?
Monkey 106 was reared on a wire mother and cloth mother, but when in distress would run to the cloth one. This showed ‘contact comfort’ was more important to the baby than food. Suggested the critical period for this was 90 days.
What is a real-world application of Harlow’s study?
Helps social workers understand the risks of child neglect and so try and prevent it. Also relevant to care of captive monkeys.
What is a weakness of Harlow’s study?
The two mothers had different shapes, which acts as a confounding variable, making it hard to establish cause and effect.
Outline the role of the father…
- Research shows role may differ depending on the gender of the child.
- If father is single parent he will adopt maternal role.
- Father takes the role of play and adventure instead of nurturing the child.
- The father is the main male caregiver.
What did Grossman find about the role of the father?
(2002) found in his longitudinal study that only quality of attachment to mother was important in the child’s adolescence. However, quality of the fathers play was relevant, showing their role.
Why might mother and father roles be different?
men are less emotionally sensitive than women (biological or social factors) which could be due to not having oestrogen.
What evidence is there that fathers can take on the nurturing role?
Field (1978) filmed babies in face-to-face interactions with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers and primary caregiver fathers. Primary caregiver fathers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers.
What is Schaffer and Emerson’s research on the role of the father?
- Found the majority of babies did become attached to their mothers first.
- In 75% of babies studied, an attachment was formed with the father in the first 18 months.
- Fathers are therefore usually secondary attachment figures.
What is a weakness of the claim that fathers do not play a distinct role?
Socially sensitive, as suggesting fathers are unimportant could distress them and impact legal proceedings.
What research suggests that the father can play an important role?
Freeman et al. found that sons often prefer the father as the attachment figure.
What is a culture?
A set of norms, traditions beliefs and values shared by a large group of people.
What were the findings of van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)
- found wide variations between proportions of attachment types in different studies.
- In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification. However the proportion varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China.
What was the procedure of van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) study?
- researchers found 32 studies of attachment which used the strange situation to investigate attachment types.
- results of studies were combined and analysed together, weighting each for sample size.
What was Jin et als. 2012 study procedure?
conducted a study to compare the proportions of attachment types in Korea to other studies. The Strange Situation was used to assess 87 children.
What did Jin et al. 2012 find?
- The overall proportions of secure and insecure babies were similar to those in most countries, with most children being securely attached. More of those who were insecurely attached were resistant; only one was avoidant.
What is a strength of both Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s studies?
Combining results of attachment studies leads to very large and varied sample, which increases internal and external validity.
What is a weakness of Ljzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s studies?
While they claimed to study cultural variations, they actually studied variations between countries, which is very different.
When does Schaffer’s asocial stage occur and what does it present?
A baby’s first few weeks of life - a preference to the company of familiar people, forming bonds with certain people to form the basis for attachment.
When does Schaffer’s Indiscriminate attachment stage occur and what does it present?
- 2 to 7 months
- Babies display more observable social behaviours, clearing preferring humans to inanimate objects. Accepts comfort from familiar people particularly.
When does Schaffer’s specific attachment stage occur and what does it present?
- Around 7 months
- displays classic attachment to primary attachment figure, and stranger anxiety when they are absent.
When does Schaffer’s multiple attachments stage occur and what does it present?
- after 7 months
- relationships with secondary attachment figures begin.
What is separation anxiety?
When people are distressed when primary attachment figure leaves.
What is stranger anxiety?
The infant is distressed when in close proximity to people they don’t know.
What is the difference between primary and secondary attachments?
A primary attachment happens with an infant and their main caregiver, a secondary attachments happens between the infant and other caregivers, such as grandparents (called multiple attachments)
How does classical conditioning work?
Unconditioned stimulus -> unconditioned response
Neutral stimulus -> no response
unconditioned + neutral response -> unconditioned response
conditioned stimulus -> conditioned response
How does operant conditioning work?
When a behaviour is reinforced through either punishment, negative reinforcement, positive.
What is the critical period?
The time within which an attachment must form, after which it is much more difficult to form an attachment.
What is an internal working model?
Our mental representations of the world, based on our relationship with our primary attachment figure, affecting what our future relationships will be like.
What does monotropic mean?
Indicates that one particular attachment is different from all others and more important.
What is Bowlby’s monotropic theory?
That we have an innate tendency to form an attachment for survival. It is a reciprocal attachment which has biologically developed through natural selection.
