attachment Flashcards
what did Maccoby find was the characeristics of attachment?
proximity
separation distress
pleasure when reunited
secure base behaviour: when away from attachment figure people keep contact with attachment figure
what are the two forms of caregiver infant interactions?
Reciprocity
interactional synchrony
what is Reciprocity?
this is when each person will respond to the other and elicit a response from them.
how much of the time do mothers respond to a babies “alert phases”
2/3rds of the time (Feldman and Eidelman 2007)
when do these alert phases become more frequent and involves close attention to each others verbal signals and expressions?
around 3 months old (Feldman 2007)
does the baby take an active role?
yes, it seems the baby takes an active role and the caregiver and infant take turns in initiating interactions.
what is reciprocity described as by Brazelton et al 1975?
a dance
what is interactional synchrony?
when an infant and caregiver’s behaviour is in sync with each other.
what did Feldman define as”“the temporal coordination of micro level social behaviour.”
interactional synchrony.
what did Meltzof and Moore 1977 observe?
interactional synchrony as young as two weeks.
an association was seen between the expressions or gestures displayed by the adult and the actions of the baby.
how did Meltzof and Moore observe interactional synchrony ?
An adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures. Child’s response was observed and identified by independent observers.
what did Isabella et al 1989 find?
high levels of synchrony better quality attachment.
what did Schaffer and Emerson 1964 find?
Babies usually create an attachment with their mother at 7 months and form a second attachment after a view weeks or months with the father
what did Grossman 2002 find about the role of the father in attachment?
the father is more important for play than the mother is. the quality of play with the infants was related to the quality of adolescent attachments.
what did Field 1978 find?
that the key to attachment of the relationship is the responsiveness not the gender.
what are the strengths of caregiver interactions
usually well controlled. this eamsn tatht ehre is no extraneous variables to invalidate results
what are the weaknesses of caregiver interactions
Feldman points out that synchrony describes behaviours that happen at the same time, not explanation for why it is important for attachment. May not be useful as it does not tell us their purpose.
hard to know
what are the weaknesses of the role of the father
Is confusing because different researchers are interested in different questions. . cannot answer the question what is the role of the father
Weakness
Maccallum and Golombok oppose Grossman’s ideas
Maccallum and Golombok 2004 found that children who grow up in same sex parent families or single parent do not develop different
This would suggest that the fathers role as a secondary attachment figure is not important
Weakness
The fact that the fathers do not become the primary caregiver could be the result of traditional gender roles. On the other hand, it could be that female hormones create hinge levels of nurturing therefore women are predisposed to be the primary attachment figure. Unclear why fathers don’t generally become primary caregivers.
who proposed the stages of attachment
Schaffer and Emerson 1964
what are the stages of attachment
asocial
indiscriminate
discriminate
multiple attachments
what happens during the asocial stage of attachment?
Behaviour between humans and non-human objects similar
Happier in presence of humans
Sometimes show preference to familiar individuals(can tell difference between familiar and non familiar faces)
Prefer faces to non faces
Smiles at anyone
what happens during the indiscriminate stage of attachment?
Recognises and prefers familiar people
Smile more at familiar faces than non familiar faces
Preference for people rather than inanimate objects
Accepts comfort from any adult
what happens during the discriminate stage of attachment?
Primary attachment to one particular individual (whoever shows the most sensitivity to their signals
Shows stranger anxiety and separation
Use familiar adults as secure base
when does each stage of attachment happen according to Schaffer and Emerson
asocial 0-8 weeks
indiscriminate 2-7 months
discrimnate 7-12 months
multiple stage 12 months onwards
what happens during the multiple attachment stage of attachment?
what procedure of Schaffer and Emerson’s study
60 children 29 girls 31 boys
all working class from Glasgow
visited every 1 month and again at 18 months
asked about protest babies would show when separated
what was the findings of Schaffer and Emerson’s study
25 to 35 weeks of age about 50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adults. tended to be towards adult who showed the most attention
By the age of 40 weeks 80% of the babies had a specific attachment and 30% showed multiple
what are the strengths of Schaffer and emerson’s study
An advantage of Schaffer and Emerson’s study is its research methodology. They used a naturalistic observation conducted in the child’s own environment. a longitudinal study as they used 60 babies over the course of 18 months. are no demand characteristics and that there can be patterns shown . This is an advantage because they will get more valid results.
study had a large sample, including both genders. They studied 60 infants which are almost even distributed in gender. is representative of the different genders. it can be generalisable to both male and female infants. not fully representative of class
Schaffer and Emerson were able to carry out a scientific study on attachment
because they used simple, operationalised behaviours. they used the distress which the baby had shown in situations to see how attached the baby was.This is useful as it can be used as a reliable indicator for how attached the baby is because the more stress when separated the more attached
what were the limitations of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
It is difficult to study the asocial stage. This is because babies cannot vocalise their thoughts and feelings about objects and people. we cannot get valid results
Van Ijzendoorn found that babies reared in collectivist cultures who are raised by several caregivers form multiple attachments early on and do not need to form a single attachment first. This means that the information is culturally relative society.This is a problem because it means that it isn’t a definitive theory for all societies
There is problems measuring multiple attachments. For example, a child crying or getting distressed doesn’t indicate the strength of an attachment. Children cry when their playmates leave the room too (Bowlby, 1969). This means that we cannot be sure what is being found. This is a problem because it limits the certainty of their findings
what was the aims of Harlow’s study?
to find the purpose of attachment
what was the procedure of Harlow’s study?
harlow gathered 16 rhesus monkeys and allocated them either to a cloth mother which didn’t provide food and a mother which provided food but not comfort
the amount of time which the monkeys spent with each mother
they were also frightened to see their responses
what was the findings of Harlow’s study
the monkeys would prefer the comfort which the cloth mother would give rather than the food and that they would stretch other the cloth mother to reach the food .
what was the conclusions of Harlow’s study?
the conclusions of Harlow’s study is that contact comfort is more vital for attachment
what was the strengths of Harlow’s
fairly generalisable(DNA)
profound effect on understanding of infant caregiver interactions.As Harlow found that contact comfort has a greater role in forming attachment rather than food.
has practical applications. such as social workers being able to identify factors in neglect.
what are the weaknesses of Harlow’s study
highly unethical because monkeys put in distress and as they are similar to human so distress is similar
what were the aims of Lorenz’s study?
to find out how Goslings attach
what were the procedure of Lorenz’s study?
Lorenz separated a group of 12 eggs into two groups one where they would see the mother first and the other were they would see the father.
what were the findings of Lorenz’s study
the group of Goslings which saw Lorenz first attached to him and had no bond with the mother.
it was found that4 to 25 hours is the critical stage for imprinting
what was the conclusion of Lorenz’s study?
imprinting is a type of attachment which occurs in birds. they attach to the first large moving object they see.
what were the strengths of Lorenz’s study
highly controlled
what were the weaknesses of Lorenz’s study
There are many differences in attachment in Mammals and birds for example mammals show more compassion to their young Inappropriate to generalise this behaviour to humans.
Some theories criticised. For example Guiton et al found that imprinting doesn’t have a permanent effect of the preferred mate of birds as chickens which imprinted to gloves eventually preferred to mate with other chicken
what does the learning theory of attachment believe?
the learning theory of attachment believes that attachment is based off the provision of food alone.
also that attachment is aquired and maintained due to the principles of classical and operant conditioning.
how does the learning theory of attachment believe attachments are formed.
they believe it is formed with the association of the the unconditioned stimuli of food and the unconditioned response of being happy with the mother. this then means that the baby will learn to associate the mother with the positive feeling of getting food.