attachment Flashcards
what is attachment?
a strong connection formed between two people
what is reciprocity?
an exchange principle that involves giving and receiving actions between people
what is interactional synchrony?
when the mother and infant mirror each others actions and emotions
what is psychosocial development?
when children form relationships, interact with others and understand their feelings
what are the different methods of communication between the carer and infant?
-interational synchrony
-reciprocity
-mimicking
-bodily contact
-caregiverese
what is caregiverese?
a modified vocal language that carers use to speak to the infant
what are the names of the two people who conducted research for interactional synchrony?
Meltzoff and Moore
what did Meltzoff and Moore discover?
discovered that infants aged two to three weeks imitated adults’ facial expressions and hand movements
what is a negative about Meltzoff and Moore’s research?
-the difficulties in reliably testing infant behaviours
-infants mouths are constantly moving and the expressions that are tested occur frequently
-this makes it difficult to distinguish between imitated behaviour and normal behaviour
who conducted the monkey experiment?
Harlow
what was the procedure of Harlow’s study?
-He separated newborn monkeys from their mothers.
-Each monkey was presented with two mothers.
-One mother was made out of wire mesh, and she could dispense milk.
The other monkey was softer and made from cloth: this monkey did not dispense milk.
what did Harlow find?
-the monkeys preferred the soft cloth monkey, even though she did not provide any nourishment (spent 23/24 hours with cloth mother)
-only went to the wire monkey when they needed to be fed.
-Harlow concluded that there was more to the mother-child bond than food.
who studied the effect of imprinting on geese?
Lorenz
what is imprinting?
when an animal ‘attaches’ to a moving thing, usually after they hatch
What was the procedure of the Lorenz study?
-there’s 2 groups of geese
-Half of the geese he incubated and the other half he left with their mother
-the geese that he had incubated followed him around however the other group of geese followed their natural mother around.
-the incubated geese imprinted on Lorenz
What were the conclusions of Lorenz’s research?
-there is a critical period in which imprinting must take place (first 2 days)
-If the animal did not imprint during this critical period, imprinting did not happen.
-the imprinting is irreversible (they will choose a mate that looks similar to what they imprinted on)
-the animal and caregiver form a special relationship
what is a positive of imprinting?
-research supporting imprinting :
-Guiton found that chicks imprinted on the yellow glove that was used to feed them
-also influenced their reproductive behaviour - the chicks tried to mate with the yellow glove
what is a negative of imprinting?
the effects can be reversed:
over time Guiton’s birds stopped trying to mate with the glove
what are negatives of Harlow’s experiment?
extraneous variables:
the heads of the mothers were different and this could have affected the results
ethics: created long lasting harm to monkeys
what is a positive of Harlow’s experiment?
Generalises to humans:
we do find similar results in human studies e.g. effects of neglect
