Attachment Flashcards
What is an attachment?
A strong, emotional, reciprocated bond between an infant and a caregiver
Role of infant caregiver interactions
Help to develop and maintain attachments
Includes:
Sensitive responsiveness
Interactional synchrony
Imitation
Reciprocity
What is sensitive responsiveness?
Where the caregiver responds appropriately to the infants needs
Makes them more likely to attach (not just to who feeds them)
What is interactional synchrony?
‘Mirroring’
Where the infant responds to the caregivers actions at the same time
Simultaneous and coordinated
Meltzoff and Moore, 2/3 weeks old, mirrored actions and imitated facial expressions
What is reciprocity?
Where the infant copies caregivers actions and behaviour
Turn taking - 2 way interaction
Meltzoff and Moore, 2/3 weeks old, mirrored actions and imitated facial expressions
Research for infant-caregiver interactions
Meltzoff and Moore
- babies from 2/3 weeks imitated facial expressions
- mirrored actions
Feldman and Eidalmen
- observation where mothers responded to babies in reciprocal way 2/3 of time
+ controlled observations
- hard to know babies intentions
- social sensitive, mothers stay home, interaction important
Schaffers stages of attachment
Asocial stage - 0-3 months
No preference to people, objects similar
Indiscriminate stage - 2-6 months
Can distinguish familiar and unfamiliar people
No strong preference or stranger anxiety
Specific stage - 7/8 months
Stranger and separation anxiety
Strong attachment to specific individual (65% mother) comforted by them
Multiple attachments - 8-9 + months
Form multiple attachments
By 18 months 32% had at least 5
Outline Schaffer and Emerson
60 Glaswegian babies
Longitudinal study
Observed at home
Birth - 18 months
Babies attached in stages
Sensitive responsiveness
Mother is primary 65% of the time
Evaluation of Schaffer and Emerson
+ ecological validity, observations by parents at home, more natural
+ no demand characteristics from infants
- mothers are biased observers, lacks validity
- lacks population validity, Glaswegian working class, 60
- lacks temporal validity, 1964, dads more common?
Role of the father
Primary attachment 1/3 of the time
Good for economy, mothers can work
Grossman
Studied infants to 16 years
Assessed okay sensitivity
Found fathers have a different role to mothers, play not nurture
Quality of father attachment didn’t effect later relationships
Field
fathers can be PCG
economic impacts of research into role of fathers
fathers stay home - not contributing to economy
but more mothers can return to work
changing laws on paternity leave - government funded
Outline Lorenz
Randomly divided geese eggs
Half hatched with mother and half with him in incubation
Found that geese automatically attach and follow the first thing they see when hatched
Known as imprinting
Found it must happen in a critical period (13-16 hours)
Lorenz evaluation
+ support for imprinting from Guiton
Chicks and gloves, sexual preferences
- generalises from birds
- unethical animal studies
Outline Harlow
Lab experiment where monkeys were raised in isolation with 2 surrogate mothers
One was wire with food and one was cloth but no food
Found they spent most time of the cloth mother
Only used to other to feed
When given a fearful stimulus, they used the cloth mother for comfort
Grew up to be disturbed and violent mothers themselves
Shows they formed an attachment to the one who provided them comfort not food
Evaluate Harlow
+ lab experiment, good control of variables
- can’t generalise to humans
- lacks ecological validity
- unethical isolation, can’t be repeated
2 explanations for attachments
Learning theory
Bowlby’s monotropic theory
What is learning theory of attachment
Developed by Dollard and Miller
- attachment is learnt - based on food (rather than innate)
Classical conditioning
Baby learns associations between mother and pleasure from food
UCS food gives UCR of pleasure
Mother becomes CS, learn to associative mother with pleasure
Operant conditioning
Negative reinforcement
Discomfort from hunger is removed when mother is present
Creates attachment behaviours, separation anxiety
Evaluation of learning theory of attachment
+ evidence from scientific
- reductionist, simple stimulus response
- Lorenz, imprinting innate, attachment not learnt
- Harlow - attached to mother than provided comfort not food
- support for others (Bowlby)