Attachment Flashcards
In van Ijzendoorn’s cross-cultural investigations which 2 countries had the highest percentage of insecure avoidant children?
West Germany
In van Ijzendoorn’s cross-cultural investigations which country had the highest percentage of insecure resistant children?
Japan
In van Ijzendoorn’s cross-cultural investigations which attachment type was found to be the most common in all the countries investigated?
Secure
What is type A attachment?
Insecure avoidant
What is type B attachment?
Secure
What is type C attachment?
Insecure resistant
What are the characteristics of type A attachment?
- Do not look to mother for comfort when distressed
- Do not see the mother as a safe base when exploring environment
- Low stranger anxiety and separation anxiety
- Do not experience joy upon reunion
What are the characteristics of type B attachment?
- Look to their mother for comfort when distressed
- Confidently use mother as safe base when exploring environment
- Moderate stranger anxiety and separation anxiety
- Experiences joy upon reunion
What are the characteristics of type C attachment?
- Overly clingy to mother for comfort when distressed then quickly rejects them
- Hesitant to leave mothers side to explore environment
- High stranger and separation anxiety
- Experiences joy on reunion, then quickly rejects mother.
What did Feldman and Eidelman (2007) suggest about the importance of reciprocity in caregiver-infant interactions?
- Babies have periodic ‘alert phases’ that signals they are ready for interaction
- Mothers pick up on this 2/3 times.
- Frequency increases from 3 months
- Focuses on verbal signals and facial expressions.
How did Meltzoff and Moore (1977) investigate the importance of interactional synchrony in caregiver-infant interactions?
- Argued that mother and infant interact in a way that their actions and emotions mirror each other
- Observed infants observing their CG do 1 out of 3 distinctive actions e.g. frowning, sticking out tongue
- Positive correlation was found between CG and infants actions.
What did Isabella suggest about Meltzoff and Moore’s (1977) investigation into interactional synchrony?
Found that better synchrony was shown by infants who had high levels of attachment to their PCG
What did Schaffer and Emerson find out about parent-infant attachments?
- Most infants become attached to their mother first (7 months)
- Later form secondary attachment to other CGs
- By 18 months 75% infants formed secondary attachments to their fathers
What did grossman conclude about the role of the father in parent-infant attachment:
- Father attachment is less important than mother attachment
- Positive correlation between quality of fathers play and adolescent attachments
Explain Fields investigation and findings of fathers as the primary caregiver:
- Filmed 4 month old infants in face-face interactions with PCG mothers, PCG fathers and secondary CG fathers.
- PCG fathers, like PCG mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than the secondary CG fathers.
- Fathers can be the PCG; attachment is formed from the level of responsiveness not gender of PCG.
Evaluate and explain Fields investigation into the research of fathers as the primary caregiver:
1) Inconsistent findings on fathers role - different researchers are interested in different research questions; cannot conclude the actual role of the father
2) Inconsistent findings on consequences of absent SCG father- Grossman found fathers as SCG were important, other studies found that absent father SCG made no difference to child’s development
3) Fathers are not usually the PCG- consequence of traditional gender roles VS women being biologically predisposed to becoming PCG
Explain Schaffer and Emerson’s investigation and findings on attachments in infancy:
- Observed 60 infants from Glasgow each month for a year then at 18 months
- Measured separation anxiety and stranger anxiety
- Found that around 7 months 50% infants displayed separation/stranger anxiety
- Infants were most attached to individual who was most responsive to their needs
- By 10 months 80% infants had multiple attachments
Evaluate and explain Schaffer and Emerson’s investigation and findings on attachments in infancy:
1) Good external validity - Same environment
2) Longitudinal study - Same Infants
3) Limited sample characteristics - Large sample from the same area
According to Schaffer and Emerson how many stages of attachment are there?
4
Explain stage 1 of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment:
- 0 to 2 months
- Observable behaviour between infants and objects
- Infants have a preference for being with familiar people
Explain stage 2 of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment:
- 2 to 7 months
- Infants display more social behaviour
- Shows separation/stranger anxiety
- Will accept comfort from anyone
Explain stage 3 of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment:
- 7 months
- Show significant stranger anxiety, especially when not with attachment figure
- Have formed primary attachment
Explain stage 4 of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment:
- After 7 months
- Have multiple attachments
- After 1 year most babies have formed secondary attachments
Evaluate and explain Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment:
1) Problem studying the asocial stage - difficult to study very young infants
2) Conflicting evidence on multiple attachments - unknown when babies can form multiple attachments
3) Problem measuring multiple attachments- difficult to distinguish if experiment is causing distress or other factors
Explain Lorenz’s research and findings into animal imprinting:
- Randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs
- Half of the eggs were returned to mother goose and natural environment
- Half pf the eggs were hatched in an incubator where the first moving thing they saw was Lorenz
- Control eggs followed mother goose, incubator eggs followed Lorenz
- When the 2 groups were mixed the hatchlings divided into their original groups
- Lorenz concluded that the birds attached to the first moving thing they saw within the critical period
Explain Lorenz’s research and findings into animal sexual imprinting:
- Hatchling peacock saw a giant tortoise as its first moving thing
- Adult peacock would only display courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises.
Evaluate and explain Lorenz’s research and findings into animal imprinting:
1) Generalisability to humans- cannot extrapolate findings onto humans
2) Some of Lorenz’s observations have been questioned- significant contradicting data has been found
What did Harlow say about the critical period for attachment in his monkey study:
- Attachment must form within 90 days
- After this attachment is impossible and damage done by early deprivation is irreversible
Explain Harlow’s research and findings into the importance of contact comfort:
- Reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model mothers
- 1 mother dispensed milk, 1 mother was covered in cloth
- Monkey was frightened and cuddled cloth-covered mother over milk-dispensing mother
- Contact comfort is more important than food in attachment
Explain Harlow’s research and findings into maternally deprived monkeys as adults:
- Followed monkeys who had been deprived of a real mother until adulthood
- Found monkeys who were reared with the wire mother were more dysfunctional, aggressive and less social than monkeys reared with cloth-covered mother.
- Wire mother monkeys were unskilled at mating so bred less, showing behaviour of neglecting their young.
Evaluate and explain Harlow’s research and findings into the importance of contact comfort:
1) Theoretical value = showed importance of early relationships to psychologists
2) Practical value = Important in real world application e.g. child abuse
3) Ethical issues = Severe criticism as monkeys suffered.
Explain classical conditioning through an infant and milk:
- Unconditioned stimulus (food) = unconditioned response (pleasure)
- Neutral stimulus (caregiver) = no response
- Unconditioned stimulus (food) + Neutral stimulus (caregiver) = unconditioned response (pleasure)
- Conditioned stimulus (caregiver) = Conditioned response (pleasure)
Evaluate the learning theory of attachment (2 points):
1) Schaffer and Emerson - babies developed a primary attachment to their biological mother even though others did most of the feeding
2) Harlow - Distressed monkey went to the cloth-covered monkey over the milk-dispensing mother for comfort
What are the 4 main points of Bowlbys monotropic theory of attachment?
Monotropy
Social releasers
Critical period
Internal Working Model.
Which psychologists stated why reciprocity is important in caregiver-infant interactions?
Feldman and Eidelman
Evaluate Bowlbys monotropic theory of attachment:
1) Meta-analysis supports internal working model - Bailey et al found that mothers who had poor attachments with parents had poor attachments with their children
2) Idea is socially sensitive - Discourage mothers to work as they dont want to harm children’s attachment
3) Overestimated impact of attachment - not taking into account temperament
Explain Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenbergs investigation and findings into cultural variations in attachment:
1) Located 32 studies similar to the strange situation
2) Meta-analysed data
3) Most common attachment type is secure
What did Bowlby believe about maternal deprivation?
- Maternal love and care is as important as food and shelter
- Maternal deprivation occurs when infant experiences separation from PCG
- Separations are cumulative and irreversible
- Will have a permanent negative impact on child’s development
Evaluate bowlbys theory of maternal deprivation:
1) Evidence is flawed - Bowlby himself carried out interviews and assessments - Bowlby was influenced by Goldfarbs research - confounding variables
2) Critical period is a sensitive period. - Evidence that goes against Bowlby saying the critical period isnt the end all be all - Koluchova twins study
Explain Rutters investigation and findings of the Romanian Orphanage study:
- 165 Romanian children who had spent most of their early lives in institutions were observed
- Proportion of Romanian children were adopted (before age of 3.5 years) were adopted and studied at 4, 6, 11 and 15
- Control group of 52 adopted children were studied
- Proportion of children adopted after 6 months experienced difficulties e.g. inattention
- Some children were significantly more impacted e.g. autism like qualities
- Follow ups at 15 showed persistent issues
Explain physical underdevelopment as an effect of institutionalisation:
- Usually small
- Due to lack of emotional care over physical care
- Deprivation dwarfism
What are the 4 effects of institutionalisation:
- Physical underdevelopment
- Intellectual under-functioning
- Disinhibited attachment
- Poor parenting
Explain intellectual under-functioning as an effect of institutionalisation:
- Poor intellectual development
- Can be recovered quickly if adoption occurs before 6 months
Explain disinhibited attachment as an effect of institutionalisation:
- Form of attachment where children do not discriminate between who they choose as attachment figures
- See strangers with inappropriate infamiliarity
Explain poor parenting as an effect of institutionalisation:
- Children raised in institutions are poor parents
- Quinton found 50 women who experienced difficulties in childhood compared to 50 women who hadnt
Evaluate the roman orphanage study:
1) Fewer extraneous variables than other orphanage studies = possible to study institutionalisation without confounding variables e.g. loss, trauma
2) Real life application = can improve psychologist understanding and the effects of institutionalisation
3) Lack of adult data = Dont know long term effect of institutionalisation
Explain Ainsworths investigation of the strange situation:
- Sample of American middle class infants and mothers were used
- Infants aged from 9 to 18 months
- Infants were encouraged to explore (tests exploration and safe base)
- Stranger comes in (tests starnager anxiety)
- CG leaves and baby and stranger are together (tests stranger and separation anxiety)
- CG returns and stranger leaves (tests reunion behaviour, exploration, safe base)
- CG leaves baby alone (Tests separation anxiety)
- Stranger returns (Tests stranger anxiety)
- CG reunites with baby (tests reunion behaviour)
Evaluate Ainsworths strange situation:
1) Methodolical procedure = controlled observation = good predicatability
2) Replication = Assessed using inter-rather reliability
3) Culture bounds = Test does not mention same thing in 2 countries outside of Western society = cannot generalise findings
Define reciprocity:
Where an infant responds to the actions of another person.
Define interactional synchrony:
Where an infant mirrors the actions of another person in turns, such as their facial expressions and body movements.
