Attachment Flashcards
What is reciprocity?
Where the caregiver and the infant respond to each others signals and elicit a response from each other.
What are ‘Alert Phases’?
Where the infant signal they want to interact with you.
Eg: they make eye contact
mothers pick up on their baby’s alertness 2/3 of the time and this may be due to stress.
What is active involvement?
Where both the baby and the caregiver can initiate interactions.
Previously it was portrayed that babies have a passive role.
What is interactional synchrony?
Whereby the infant and the caregiver interact in such a way that they mirror each other.
‘Temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour.
-begins as young as 2 weeks old.
What is the procedure of Meltzoff and Moore’s procedure?
Observed beginning of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks old.
-Adults displayed one of three behaviours
-babies response were filmed and labelled
Evaluate Meltzoff and Moore’s study. (strengths)
- filmed the study therefore inter-rater reliability because more than one researcher can record data
-babies do not know they are being recorded so their behaviour does not change
-lab experiment so anything that may distract the baby wad controlled
Evaluate Meltzoff and Moore’s study. (limitations)
-hard to interpret a baby’s behaviour
-babies lack coordination- we cannot determine whether their action was triggered by the caregivers action or if it was purely random
Name the four stages of attachment.
asocial
indiscriminate
specific
multiple
Describe the asocial stage of attachment.
They show similar behaviour to both inanimate objects and humans.
0-6 weeks
Describe the indiscriminate attachment.
clear preference for humans rather than inanimate objects/prefer familiar people
2-7 months
Describe specific attachment.
separation anxiety
primary attachment figure is usually mother 65% of the time
-approx 7 months
Describe multiple attachments.
secondary attachments- make attachments they regularly spend time with
-schaffer and emerson observed that
What is imprinting?
Learning occurring at a particular age or at a particular life stage
How did Schaffer and Emerson’s conduct their research?
-observational study
-involved 60 babies (31 boys and 29 girls)
-researchers asked mothers what kind of protest the babies showed in 7 everyday separations.
Outline the findings of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
Identified 4 distinct stages
Explain the role of the father.
The father does not need to be biological, they can just be the closest caregiver.
only 3% of the cases that Schaffer and Emerson studied became the first sole object of attachment.
-By 18 months, 75% of the babies formed an attachment with their father & babies protested when their father walked away.
Explain the research and findings conducted into the role of the fathers.
Grossman conducted a longitudinal study where babies attachements were studied until they were teens
-Quality of a baby’s attachment to their mother but not their father was in relation to attachments in adolescence.
-suggests that attachment to fathers is less important but they play an important role for play and stimulation
Give a piece of evidence for fathers acting as primary caregivers.
Tiffany Field- filmed 4 month old babies having face to face interactions with their primary caregiver fathers and he found there was reciprocity and interactional synchrony.
Explain Lorenz’s procedure and findings.
-conducted a classic experiment
- half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose and half were hatched in an incubator and the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
- Incubator group followed Lorenz and those hatched in the presence of the mother followed the mother
-happens even when they’re mixed up.
-Imprinting only happens during the critical period which is a few hours after the hatching or birth.
What procedure was conducted during sexual imprinting and what was found?
Case study was conducted and first moving object peacock saw was a giant tortoise so as an adult they would only show direct courtship towards giant tortoises.
What was the procedure and findings to show the importance of contact comfort?
Procedure:
-reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’
-One condition milk was dispensed by plain wired mother
-one condition was dispensed by a cloth-covered mother.
FINDINGS:
-baby monkeys preferred cloth covered monkeys and sought comfort from them.
What is the procedure and findings of the strange situation?
Mary Ainsworth: controlled observation to measure security of attachment
-lab with 2-way mirror
-8 episodes lasting 3 minutes each
Evaluate the strange situation.
-good inter-rater reliability-(explain): Bick et al SS observers agreed on 94% of babies therefore no subjectivity
-may be culture bound: cultural differences so children may respond differently, for example this does not work in Japan as mothers are rarely away from children and this model was adopted in the UK and US.
-Kagan: argues that it is genetically influenced; anxiety levels can explain variations in attachment behaviour sp SS may not be measuring attachment.
What is secure attachment?
70% children explore freely but go back to caregiver regularly
-moderate stranger/separation anxiety
-require comfort at reunion
