Attachment Flashcards
What is Attachment?
Close emotional bond between two people that is characterised by key behaviours such as proximity seeking and serves the function of protection of the infant.
What is Reciprocity about?
-Co ordination
-Eliciting responses
-Important for later communication -> carer learns about needs for infant
-Foundation for later attachment
e.g. infant kicking legs and carer tickling there legs after or talking to them etc
What is Interactional Synchrony?
-Imitation
-Meltzoff & Moore
-Innate (not learned)
What did Schaffer and Emerson find about the role of fathers?
They found that fathers are a lot less likely to be the primary attachement figure than mothers
->however they were out at work so couldn’t form relationship.
How might the Findings of Schaffer and Emerson on the role of the father be explained?
It may be because they spend less time with thei infatns so don’t have as many opportunities to form the primary attachment.
What did Lamb (1997) say about the spending less time idea?
Lamb said that studies have shown that the quality of the interactions between an infant and caregiver is more important than quantity.
How could biology explain the differene between male and female attachments to infants?
The female hormone oestrogen and oxytocin which are both care giving hormones so women are usually more oriented towards interpersonal goals than men.
How might ‘cultural expectations’ explain the difference between male and female attachments to infants?
Culturally, there are sex stereotypes that effect male behaviour, like being sensitive to the needs of others being seen as feminine.
What evidence has research provided about the role of the father?
There is evidence that men are less sensitive to infant cues than mothers. However, Frodi et al showed videos of babies crying and found no psychological difference between men and women.
Research also found that in two-parent families where the father is the primary caregiver, both parents show the primary attachment figure.
What did Geiger (1996) find?
Geiger found that fathers’ play interactions are more exciting and pleasurable than mothers’, as mothers’s are more nuturing and affectionate, supporing the idea that fathers are more like playmates.
What was the Aim of Meltzoff & Moore’s study?
To investigate interactional synchrony systematically -> first systematic study of its kind.
What was the Procedure of Meltzoff & Moore’s study?
-Used infants aged two-three weeks old.
-They were presented with stimuli (sticking tongue out, raising hand etc) from models that stood above the baby.
-It was videotaped, judges watched, not being able to see the models (no bias) and had to write down what they say the baby do.
What were the Findings of Meltzoff & Moore’s study?
The babies imitated the babies behaviour.
What was the Conclusion of the Meltzoff Moore study?
That interactional synchrony is an innate behaviour as they repeated it for 2-3 day old infants ( because Jean Piaget suggested that imitation only developed towards the end of the first year and before this, any imitation was learned behaviour) meaning it wasn’t learned behaviour.
What are is a problems in testing infant behaviour?
-Babies are often moving so it is hard to tell whether they are actually responding to the stimuli or not (are they just wriggling anyway). This poses a threat to internal validity of the study/ research.
-However, Meltzoff and Moore controlled for this problem by getting independent judges to measure the babies behaviour, without being able to see the model, and they didn’t know what it was for, removing bias.
