Attachment Flashcards
Caregiver-infant interactions outline
- these are a two way process
- attachment is a strong, enduring emotional bond between 2 people, especially an infant and caregiver
Reciprocity: when baby and caregiver respond to and elicit responses from each other aka ‘turn taking’, alert phases are times for interaction (which mothers pick up on 2/3 time) babies have active role and from 3 months these interactions become intense and reciprocal
Interactional synchrony: interactions involve synchrony, carrying out actions simultaneously, ‘temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour’, Meltzoff and Moore showed interactional synchrony as soon as 2 weeks old (adult displayed 1 in 3 faces/gestures, baby mirrored more than chance would predict), Isabella high levels of synchrony associate with better quality mother-baby attachment observed 30 mothers
Caregiver infant interaction evaluate
Strength: filmed observations, multiple angles, fine details of behaviour can be recorded and analysed later, babies don’t know they are being observed so behaviour does not change in response to observation, more than one observer can watch, inter-rater reliability
Limitation: difficult to observe babies, not well coordinated, only small changes in expression/gesture, also hard to interpret meaning of babies’ movements eg deciding if a hand movement is a response to the caregiver or a random twitch, we cannot be certain if meaningful, inferences must be drawn
Limitation: difficult to infer developmental importance, simply behaviours that occur at same time, can be reliably observed but does not tell us their purpose, we cannot be certain that reciprocity or synchrony are important in development
Counter: Isabella suggests good levels of reciprocity and synchrony are associated with good quality attachments
Extra: practical application, parent child interaction therapy, improved intersectional synchrony for 15 in 20 low income mothers - counter, may be socially sensitive because can be used to argue that mothers should focus just on interacting with their baby and not return to work.
Schaffer’s stages of development evaluate
Strength: Schaffer and Emerson’s study has external validity, observations made by parents during ordinary activities, alternative would be researchers observe at home but this may have distracted babies or made them more anxious, highly likely that the participants behaved naturally while being observed
Counter: mothers may have been biased in reporting eg may not have noticed baby showing signs or misremembered it, may not have been accurately reported
Limitation: evidence is poor for asocial stage due to physical development poor coordination and fairly immobile, difficult for mothers to accurately report signs of anxiety. May be actually quite social but appear asocial due to subtle movement
Strength: real life application, day care, more informed decisions, early stages babies can be comforted by any skilled adult but if starts daycare later can cause distress and long term problems
Extra limitation: culturally bound, collectivist vs individualist
Role of the father stats
- Schaffer and Emerson: majority of babies attach to mother first, only 3% was this the father, but 27% father joint object of attachment with mother
- 75% babies eventually form secondary attachment to father by 18 months
- Grossmann, longitudinal study, quality of attachment with father less important for adolescent attachment compared to mother so fathers may be less important for emotional development
- Grossmann also found however, that quality of fathers play with babies was related to quality of adolescent attachments, so fathers have different role more to do with play than emotional care
- Fathers can be primary attachment figures, when fathers take on role of being main caregiver they adopt behaviours more typical of mothers, Field filmed 4 month old babies and found that primary caregiver fathers spent more time smiling and holding babies than 2nd caregiver fathers (interactional synchrony)
- McCallum and Golombok found that children without father do not develop differently
The role of the father evaluation
Limitation: confusion over research question, some research looks into fathers as primary attachment figure, others as secondary attachment figure, different findings, no simple answer
Limitation: conflicting evidence, Grossmann suggests fathers have distinct role in children’s development, involving play but McCallum and Golombok found children without a father do not develop differently
Counter: May not be in conflict. May be distinct role for fathers when present but families adapt to not having one.
Strength: findings in parenting advice, mothers may feel pressure to stay home and fathers to focus on work, not always best solution, research on flexibility of role of father can be used to offer reassuring advice to parents, parental anxiety about role of fathers can be reduced and parenting decisions made easier.
Extra limitation: bias in research, stereotypes can create observer bias and lead to inaccurate observations
Animal studies of attachment evaluate
Lorenz (1952):
Strength: support for concept of imprinting, Regolin and Vallortigara exposed chicks to simple shape combinations that moved, followed original shapes in preference to later shown shapes, and followed moving shapes in preference to still ones - suggests young animals are born with innate mechanism to imprint on moving object that is present in critical window
Limitation: generalising from birds to humans hard. Mammalian attachment system is quite different from imprinting in birds, eg mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young
Counter: maybe can be generalised, ‘baby duck syndrome’, become attached to first computer
Harlow (1958):
Strength: has real world value, helped social workers understand risk factors in child abuse, and helped understand importance of attachment figures in zoos
Limitation: generalising from monkeys to humans hard, better than goslings but still not human, human behaviour and mind more complex
Limitation: ethics
Explanations for attachment: learning theory
Limitation: counter evidence from animal studies, Harlow saw monkeys go to cloth mother irrespective of which mother gave food and Lorenz saw goslings imprint on first moving object
Limitation: counter evidence from human studies, Schaffer and Emerson saw many babies first attachment was not necessarily person that fed them but person that responds to babies cues most skill fully, Isabella found interactional synchrony to be more important for attachment
Strength: some elements of conditioning could be involved eg choosing attachment figure due to association with comfort and warmth
Counter: but baby also takes active role, so might not be relevant at all as learning theory sees baby as passive, simply responding to associations with reward
Extra limitation: social learning theory might be better, modelling attachment behaviour, parents reward babies when they display their own attachment behaviour
Explanations for attachment: Bowlby’s theory (evolutionary explanation, MUSICS)
Limitation: monotropy lacks validity, bowlby belueved primary attachment is different in quality, might just be stronger cause babies seek same qualities in multiple attachment figures eg secure base and comfort
Strength: evidence to support social releases, brazelton still face study, when parents ignored social releases baby’s curled up and lay motionless
Strength: support for internal working model, Bailey 99 mothers, those with poor attachments to own parents were more likely to have poor attachment with own child
Counter: other influences eg temperamental characteristics, important in social behaviour and later parenting style, bowlby May have overexaggerated importance of IWM for future development
Extra: feminist concerns, female oppression due to ‘law of continuity’ and ‘law of accumulated separation’ can be guilt tripping
Types of attachment evaluate (CONTROLLED OBSERVATION)
Strength: predictive of later development, secure greater school success, not involved in bullying (Myron-Wilson and Smith), insecure avoidant likely to be bullied, insecure resistant likely to be the bullies (IR also adult mental health problems)
Counter: May be measuring genetic differences in anxiety and not attachment
Strength: good Inter-rater reliability, 94% agreement in one team, strange situation takes place under controlled conditions, behavioural categories easy to observe
Limitation: culture bound, May not mean same thing in other cultures, cultural differences in children’s experiences mean they respond differently eg Japanese babies not used to being left by caregiver, difficult to know what the Strange Situation is measuring in some countries/cultures
Extra limitation: Solomon identified 4th category of attachment- disorganised type D mix of resistant and avoidant but very rare and have usually experienced severe neglect or abuse
Cultural variations in attachment evaluate
- meta-analysis of 32 studies of attachment
- 15 in USA
- 8 countries
- 1,990 children
Strength: use of indigenous researchers, better communications, increases validity
Counter: not true for all, Americans investigated Efé in Zaire
Limitation: confounding variables, studies in different countries can be mismatched for sample characteristics eg different age, social class and environmental variables eg size of rooms
Limitation: imposed etic, meaningless to impose test designed in one culture, eg in Germany lack of affection at reunion sign of independence not insecurity
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation evaluate
Limitation: evidence flawed, 44 thieves bad due to investigator effects and retrospective recall and studies often on children who are also traumatised, confounding variable
Limitation: Bowlby confused deprivation with privation, privation has more serious effects, 44 thieves May have been prived not deprived, thus may be exaggerating effects of deprivation
Limitation: critical period is more of a sensitive period, case study done on twin boys isolated from age 18 months, locked in cupboard, but seen to recover after looked after by 2 loving adults
Extra limitation: conflicting evidence, 44 thieves has not been replicated
Romanian orphan studies: institutionalisation evaluate
Strength: real world application, led to improvements in childcare eg avoid large numbers of caregivers for each child, instead one or two ‘key workers’
Strength: fewer confounding variables, did not experience loss or trauma before institutionalisation, could observe effects of institutionalisation in isolation rather than neglect, abuse, grief, high internal validity
Counter: new confounding variables as conditions so poor
Limitation: lack of data on adult development, too soon to say, permanent effects?, only have development as far as 20s, romantic relationships too early to say
Extra limitation: social sensitivity, late adopted children shown to have low IQ, can lead to self fulfilling prophecy, could affect how teachers or parents treat them
Influence of early attachment on later relationships evaluation
Strength: strong research support that insecure attachment leads to disadvantage for children’s development
Counter: some studies show no continuity of attachment type from age 1-16 years
Limitation: validity issues with retrospective studies, using questionnaires or interviews rely on honest answers, also problem as assume attachment has stayed the same since infancy
Limitation: confounding variables, some studies do follow up but can be affected by confounding variables, eg parenting style and personality can affect both attachment and later development
Extra: balance between opportunities to intervene and self fulfilling prophecy/ overly pessimistic expectations
