attachment Flashcards
what is attachment?
a close two-way emotional bond between 2 individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for the if own emotional security
what is reciprocity?
the infant and their caregiver are able to reliably produce responses in each other.
e.g. shown in Brazelton’s ‘frozen face’ study where the infant becomes distressed if the mother stops reciprocating with them and adopts a passive face.
what is interactional synchrony?
the infant and caregiver coordinate their activity to form a type of conversation without language. this is characterised by turn-taking and can include mirroring. e.g. caregiver smiles, baby smiles back.
e.g. Meltzoff and Moore conducted a study on interactional synchrony and reciprocity.
40 babies, less than 72 hours old. an adult model (unknown to the baby) displayed one of 3 facial expressions or a hand gesture towards the baby.
the child’s expression was filmed and observed. the observers didn’t know what behaviour the baby had seen.
16/40 did the behaviour consistently after the adult, 1/40 didn’t match at all.
infants as young as 3 days old showed interactional synchrony.
evaluate Melzoff and Moores study based on the question of it babies make attachments when they’re first born.
strengths:
- scientific procedure - single-blind study, so those judging behaviour didn’t know the behaviour that had been seen by the babies, making it objective and non biased.
- very controlled, e.g. counter balanced which reduces order effects and increases reliability and validity.
- could explain why some children don’t develop empathy or be psychotic.
- shows that there are good and neglectful parents and the importance of parenting and interactional synchrony.
limitations:
- used adult models unknown to the baby, so it isn’t a familiar caregiver, and so the baby could act different.
- can’t fully explain the baby’s behaviour - could have been for different reasons (babies can’t explain)
- cultural bias - these attachment behaviours aren’t seen in all babies in the world - e.g. Kenyan mums have very little interaction but the children still become securely attached. unlikely that interactional synchrony and reciprocity are the only ways to form attachments.
do babies make attachments when they’re first born? evaluation (are IS and R important in this)
one strength: research into caregiver-infant interactions has well controlled procedures due to scientific procedures being used. Meltzoff and Moores study used a single-blind trial, meaning the observer judging the babies behaviour didn’t see the adult models behaviour. this means that its objective and has little bias. Due to this controlling, we can establish the cause and effect more, so can be more certain that interactional synchrony and reciprocity are important in forming these early attachments.
One limitation: issues of using infants as a sample to study attachment formation. this is because babies can’t express what they’re thinking or the attachment to their caregiver or model. This means we have to infer. Infant’s mouths are constantly moving and expressions that are tested occur frequently. This makes it harder to distinguish between general activity and imitated behaviours.
However, you have to study babies to investigate early attachments, rather than children older (e.g. 5 years as you’ve been exposed to more environmental factors, so can’t see if the behaviour is innate or not. research has shown that by the age of 3, a child’s brain has reached almost 90% of the adult size, emphasising the need for early IS and R.
another limitation: IR and S aren’t likely to be the only way attachments form. These attachment behaviours aren’t seen in all babies across the world - e.g. Kenyan mothers have little interaction with their children, but the children still go on to form secure attachments. This shows that IS and R aren’t the only way babies make attachments when they’re first born. Despite this, researching early attachment has been useful in improving the educational system. Teachers are now more aware of IS, which can be seen when they teach children about turn-taking. Can also explain why some children develop to be psychotic.
describe Schaffer and Emerson’s study on the stages of attachment
longitudinal study of 60 newborn babies and their mums who lived in a working class area of Glasgow.
They were visited once a month in their homes for the first year and again at 18 months. the researchers conducted observations and interviewed the mums.
they measured the attachment by the amount of separation anxiety and stranger distress.
results:
found that strong attachments were developed between babies and mums when the mums were very responsive and sensitive to the babies needs.
at 18 months, 87% of babies had at least 2 attachments, with 31% having having 5 or more attachments.
for 39% of infants, the primary attachment was not to their mother.
describe the stages of attachment that Schaffer and Emerson created
Asocial/ pre-attachment (0-6 weeks):
- infants show little preference for humans, beh between humans and non-human objects are quite similar (at start), then show more interest in humans.
- happier in presence of humans than when alone
- prefer faces to non-faces
- smile at anyone.
indiscriminate (6weeks-6months)
- discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar faces - more social to familiar but still accept comfort from any adult.
specific (7months onwards)
- primary attachment to one particular individual (person who shows most sensitivity to their signals)
- shows stranger anxiety and separation anxiety.
- use familiar adults as security.
mutiple attachments (10/11 months onwards)
- form secondary attachments with familiar adults whom they spend time with (e.g. father, grandparents) but attachment to mum is still strongest.
evaluate Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment theory
👍- the longitudinal design of the study controlled for participant variables that might have effected the development of attachment.
- also used the same babies throughout the longitudinal study so no individual differences
👎- due to the nature of the data collection by observation and self-report, it’s possible that some elements of subjective bias affected the data (mothers being socially desirable to make themselves sound better)
👍- mundane realism and ecological validity - infants were monitored in their own homes, making their behaviour more natural than if observations were done in a lab.
👎- babies can’t explain their behaviour or why they are distressed. No proof of the attachment. just because they get distressed when the mum leaves the room doesn’t mean they’re attached - could just be that they don’t like being alone or are hungry.
👎- limited sample (same district and social class) child rearing changed across culture (e.g. Kenyan mothers have little physical interaction or contact with their children, but their children still go on to form secure attachments)
👎- Carpenter found that infants younger than six weeks (asocial stage) were able to distinguish their mums face and voice, going against Schaffer’s view that this didn’t occur until later.
👎- fathers have been shown to have a role in the development of attachment, showing support for the idea of the development of multiple attachments rather than just one with three mum.
give research for the role of the father being important in forming attachments.
Field- primary caregiver fathers spend more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers, showing that attachment is to do with the level of responsiveness rather than the gender of the parent
Frodi showed video tapes of infants crying and found no differences in the physiological responses of men and women, so maybe fathers are equally able to display sensitive responsiveness and form secure attachments. however society is still behind in treating parents equally, e.g. men aren’t permitted to sit next to non-related children on a plane, and mothers have longer maternity time off than fathers.
(Grossman)
however the quality of the fathers play with infants have a different role in attachment - more to do with okay and stimulation and less to do with nurturing.
Lamb found that when children are happy, they prefer interacting with their dads, but mums are preferred when they’re not happy, suggesting different roles for each parent.
Research by Geiger (1996) found that fathers’ play interactions were more exciting in comparison to mothers’. However, the mothers’ play interactions were more affectionate and nurturing. This suggests that the role of the father is, in fact, as a playmate and not as a sensitive parent who responds to the needs of their children. These results also confirm that the mother takes on more of a nurturing role.
give research criticising the role of fathers in attachment
Biological differences: the female hormone oestrogen underlies caring and nurturing behaviour, so women tend to be better caregivers than men as it increases their level of responsiveness. men lack this hormone, but in place have testosterone which is linked to aggression, making them seem less sensitive and nurturing. (grossman for point - however, fathers may have a different role within attachment besides nurturing - Grossman found that fathers role was was more to do with play and stimulation which can be argued to increase the child’s happiness. this shows that they are still important, just for diff reasons)
Schaffer and Emerson found the majority of babies become attached to their mothers as the primary attachment, then formed secondary attachments to other family members.
Grossman - quality of infant attachment with mothers but not fathers was related to children’s attachment in adolescents - suggesting father attachment is less important. (Grossman for point)
MacCallum and Golombok (2004) found that children growing up in single-parent (or same-sex) families do not develop any differently from those who grow up in more ‘conventional’ families, suggesting that the role of the father is not significant in attachment.
what are the 2 animal studies of attachment?
Lorenz (geese)
Harlow (Rhesus monkeys)
describe Lorenz’s study
Lorenz split a clutch of Goose eggs and divided them into 2 groups. One group were left to hatch under their mother and the other eggs were placed in an incubator.
when the incubator eggs hatched, the first moving thing they saw was Lorenz and he initiated the noise made by a mother goose. they soon started following him around.
to test the effect of imprinting, Lorenz placed them together to see which ‘mother’ they would go to. the geese split into two groups and returned to the goose mum and Lorenz. Lorenz’s group shown no recognition of their natural mother.
Lorenz concluded that geese imprint on the first most obese that they see during a 7-12 hour critical period after birth. This suggests that attachment is innate.
However, lorenz did find that imprinting to humans doesn’t occur in some animals, e.g. Curlews will not imprint on a human.
describe the long lasting effects of lorenz’s study.
the process of imprinting is irreversible and long lasting. Lorenz described one of the geese who imprinted on him used to sleep on his bed every night.
also noted that this early imprinting had an effect on later mate preferences, called sexual imprinting. Animals will choose to mate with the same kind of object upon which they were imprinted.
evaluate Lorenz’s study.
👍A number of other studies have demonstrated imprinting in animals.
for example, Guilin (1966) demonstrated that leghorn chicks, exposed to yellow rubber gloves while being fed during their first few weeks, became imprinted on the gloves. This supports the view that young animals are not born with a predisposition to imprint on a specific type of object but on any moving thing that is present during the critical period of development. He also found that the male chickens later tried to mate with the gloves, showing that early imprinting is linked to later reproductive behaviour. Therefore, Guiton’s findings provide clear support for Lorenz’s research and conclusions.
👎However, one criticism is that imprinting is actually not as permanent as lorenz supposed. Lorenz believed that imprinting was irreversible and ‘stamped’ on the nervous system permanently on the first object encountered. Now, it is understood that imprinting is ‘plastic’. for example, Guitton found that he could reverse the imprinting of chickens by getting them to spent time with their own species, they then engaged in normal mating behaviour with other chickens. therefore, Lorenz may not have given the goslings enough time to mix with their own species. this means that there may not be a fixed and critical period as Lorenz assumed. This suggests that imprinting may not be that different from other kinds of learning. learning can also take place rapidly with little conscious effort and is fairly reversible.
imprinting is more important in animals due to a need for survival (nature), but attachments in human more commonly form through language or expression (nurture)
describe Harlow study
procedure
eight newborn rhesus monkeys (studied for 165 days) were placed in individual cages with surrogate mothers. One was made of wires and the other was made of cloth. For four of the moneys, the cloth mother lactated, and the wire monkey for the other 4. attachment was measured in terms of the amount of time spent with the mothers. Observations were also made of the monkeys responses when frightened by, e.g. a mechanical teddy bear.
findings
all 8 monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth mother, even if it didn’t have the feeding bottle. when frightened, all monkeys climbed to the cloth mother.
these findings suggests that infants do not develop an attachment to the person who feeds them (goes against learning theory) but to the person offering them comfort.
long lasting effects
They were socially abnormal, they froze or fled when approached my other monkeys, also didn’t show normal mating behaviour or cradle their own babies. They were also self destructive e.g. teared their own hair out, bit their own arms and legs and become aggressive.
