Attachment Flashcards
What is the definition of attachment?
An emotional tie between 2 people
What is attachment needed for?
- Needed for survival
- Physical, cognitive, neurological, emotional and psychological development
Who discovered the 4 behaviours which shows that two people are attached and when?
Maccoby (1980)
What are the 4 behaviours which shows that two people are attached?
- Seeking proximity
- Separation distress
- Joy on reunion
- General orientation
What are the two further behaviours which show 2 people are attached?
- Reciprocity
- Interactional Synchrony
What is the definition of seeking proximity?
Desire to be physically close
What is the definition of Separation Distress?
Upset or anxiety at separation
What is the definition of Joy on Reunion?
Happy and excited before and on being reunited
What is the definition of General Orientation of Behaviour?
Effectively attempts and maintains the attachment
What is the definition of Reciprocity?
Interactions between parent and offspring are a two-way process
Mother and Infant respond to each other’s signals, and each elicits a response from the other
What is the definition of Interactional Synchrony?
Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other (biologically in sync)
Why are care giver interactions important?
- Allows positive relationships to be formed
- Physical development
- Psychological development
- For survival
- For socially
Why aren’t care giver interactions important?
- Learning can take place via other forms
- Learning can take place without interactions
- Can lead to greater independence
- Relationships with others are more important
Why are infant interactions important?
- Take place straight from birth so infants can signal their needs
- They help form how good or bad the attachment is
- The more sensitive everyone is to each other, the deeper (positive) the relationship
- Helps with development
Why aren’t infant interactions important?
- There is evidence of individuals who lack a parent and infant relationship with no adverse effects, i.e., feral children
- Children can have other significant figures in their lives, and these are not always their caregivers
Which psychologists came up with how attachments are formed and when?
Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
Where did the Schaffer and Emerson research take place?
Glasgow
What research methods did Schaffer and Emerson use in their study and how long did they go on for?
Interviews and observations
What were the 4 main stages Schaffer and Emerson discovered about how attachments occur?
- Indiscriminate of attachments (A-Social)
- Beginning of attachments (Indiscriminate)
- Discriminate attachments (specific)
- Multiple attachments
What happens within the first stage of attachment (indiscriminate of attachments)?
- Occurs from birth - around 2 months
- Infants produce similar responses to animate (real people) and inanimate objects (toys)
- Infants are more content around people
- Interactional Synchrony and Reciprocity are key in playing a role in the formation of the attachment
What happens within the second stage of attachment (Beginning of attachments)?
- Occurs around the age of 2-4 months
- Infants are much more social
- Prefer human company to company of inanimate objects
- Can distinguish between familiar people and unfamiliar people but comforted by anyone
What happens within the third stage of attachment (Discriminate attachments)?
- Occurs around 4-7 months
- Has formed an attachment to one primary attachment figure
- Shows separation anxiety from PAF
- Shows joy on reunion
- Shows stranger anxiety
What happens within the fourth stage of attachment (Multiple attachments)?
- Occurs from 7 months to 12 months
- Starts to develop multiple attachments with other consistent people in their lives
- Starts to have Separation Anxiety from Secondary/Multiple Attachment Figures
What are the positives of the stages of attachment proposed by Schaffer and Emerson?
+ Stages were identified from the research conducted in the real world with Mothers and Infants over 12 months
+ Used to see the different developmental milestones an infant will go through, highlights expected behaviours
What are the negatives of the stages of attachment proposed by Schaffer and Emerson?
- Stages are not generalisable as the formation of attachment is open to individual differences
- Stages are open to the blurring of age boundaries meaning it is hard to distinguish the actual stage a child is in
- Doesn’t represent infants globally
- Stages can be criticised for being reductionist as we are simplifying the complexity of attachment to a fixed stage process
What did psychologists writing in the 1940s - 1950s suggest about the tole of the Father?
ignored the role of a Father and only saw the role of the mother as crucial, superior and needed for attachment
What did Bowlby argue in relation to the role of the Father?
- Bowlby (1944) argued that maternal deprivation (lack of care by a mother) in the first 2 to 3 years of life would lead to irreversible consequences
- He discarded the role of a father and focused solely on the relationship between a mother and an infant
What does research suggest referring to the role of the Father being important?
Research shows there are also consequences for those who face paternal deprivation, particularly for boys with no male role model
What did Schaffer and Emerson find out about the role of the Father?
- Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that fathers were less likely to be the primary attachment figure but that fathers were joint attachment figures in around 1/3 of infants - Father is important
What was the role of the Father like in the pre-1990s?
- Breadwinner - less time with children
- Sole disciplinarians
- Children not seen or heard
- Sons wanted to pass down wealth and follow into employment
- No physical care
- Lack of emotional care
What is the role of the Father like in 2024?
- Much more active - emotional and physical care
- Paternity leave now shared
- Quality time is important
- House husbands
- Not a disciplinarian
- Some families, two significant Father figures (same-sex families)
What are the 3 key factors psychologists state when looking at the role of a Father when forming attachments?
- Interaction - engagement with infant
- Accessibility - is the Father emotionally and physically accessible?
- Responsibility - Does the Father take responsibility for caregiving?
What is imprinting?
- A reciprocal mental image in the animal kingdom between mother and infant based on sight and smell
What is the idea held by imprinting?
It’s the idea that some animals will follow the first moving objects they see
Who devised the idea of imprinting?
Konrad Lorenz
What was Lorenz?
An ethologist
What is ethology?
Ethology is the study of animal behaviour in their natural environment
What does imprinting ensure?
- Imprinting ensures a bond between mother and infant in the animal world is made and increases the chance of survival
Why do animals need to imprint?
- Animals need to imprint on one another to survive
What did Lorenz’s study demonstrate?
- It demonstrated that animals are not born with a ready-made image of their parents
Which year did Lorenz’s study take place and what experiment was used?
- 1952
- Field experiment
What was the procedure of Lorenz’s experiment?
- Lorenz took a clutch of gosling eggs and divided them into two groups
- One group was left with their natural Mother, while the other eggs were placed in an incubator
- When the incubator eggs hatched, the first living (moving) thing they saw was Lorenz and they started following him around
- To test the effect of imprinting, Lorenz marked the two groups to distinguish them and placed them together
- The goslings quickly divided themselves up, one following their natural mother and Lorenz’s brood followed him
- Suggest an animal infant imprints on the first moving object seen
Where was the notion of imprinting also studied?
Also tested in laboratory/controlled conditions
What was the replication test of Lorenz’s ideas?
To see if imprinting could occur via inanimate objects
When did Harlow’s study take place and what type of experiment is used?
1959
Lab experiment
What did Harlow’s study aim to do?
- Examined whether food or comfort was more important when forming an attachment
What animals did Harlow use in his study?
- Examined how long 8 rhesus monkeys spent with a ‘wire or cloth ‘mother’.
Harlow’s study - Which Mother did all 8 monkeys spend the most time with?
Cloth mummy
What type of experiment was Harlow’s study?
Lab experiment
Over what time period did Harlow’s study take place?
165 days
Harlow’s study - On being frightened, which mummy did the monkeys return to?
Cloth mummy
What did Harlow’s study suggest?
- Suggested comfort/security is much more important than food when forming an attachment
- Food only deals with the biological need of hunger
What are the positives of Harlow’s study?
:) Lab experiment - variables controlled
:) Highlights that comfort and security are important
:) Complements Schaffer and Emerson (1964) – quality of care and comfort are essential
What are the negatives of Harlow’s study?
:( Ethical issues
:( Used rhesus monkeys, inapplicable to humans and their attachment behaviour
:( Lab experiment so artificial and can’t be applied to RLA
What are the similarities between human and animals in attachment behaviour?
- Critical period
- Needed for survival
- Needed for Learning
- Connection/bond
- Care is important
What are the differences between human and animals in attachment behaviour?
- Animals can imprint on inanimate objects
- Humans attach
- Animals imprint
- Human attachment is longer
- Quality of attachment is essential in humans
Who proposed the learning theory of attachment?
Dollard and Miller (1950s)
What does the learning theory focus on?
Focuses on the idea of food and being fed allows for attachment to occur
What did Dollard and Miller suggest happens in the first year of life?
Estimated that in the first year of life, a child is fed on average 2000 times (most likely PCG)
How do we learn to love/attach according to Dollard and Miller?
They argued that we learn how to love because love is paired with the food that we are given, which comes from cupboards (cupboard love theory)
What does attachment occur by according to Dollard and Miller?
Operant and Classical Conditioning
How does operant conditioning work within Dollard and Miller’s Learning Theory?
- Hungry infant = distress so infant cries to signal hunger
- Mum motivated for infant to stop crying (NR)
- Feeding infant = pleasurable and rewarding as hunger is gone (+ reinforcement for an infant and Mum)
- Food = primary reinforcer, it stamps out the hunger and discomfort
- Mum = secondary reinforcer, as a child learns to associate food with a person
- Happy mum + Happy Infant = Attachment!
How does classical conditioning work within Dollard and Miller’s Learning Theory?
- Food (US) = Infant (UR)
- Mother (NS) + Food (UCS) = Infant (UR)
- Mother (CS) = Infant (CR)
What are the positives of Dollard and Miller’s Learning Theory?
:) Food is needed to survive - plausible that attachments will occur because of food
:) Contradictory evidence i.e., Harlow showing care is more important – disproves the theory
:) Universal as all infants will be fed – feeding is why attachment occurs
What are the negatives of Dollard and Miller’s Learning Theory?
:( Disregards the importance of comfort by only focusing on food
:( Written in the 1950s at a time when females met their offspring’s needs via staying at home
:( Limited/no supporting evidence
What viewpoint does Bowlby’s theory take?
Evolutionary
When was Bowlby’s theory written?
Mid 20th century
What does Bowlby’s theory suggest?
- Believed that attachments are formed because of evolutionary advantages as attachments/imprinting is seen in a variety of species
What is the other name for Bowlby’s theory and why?
Monotropic theory because it emphasises the one special relationship a child has with its PAF
Which psychologists were used to form the theory?
- Lorenz
- Freud
What ideas did Bowlby take from Lorenz in his monotropic theory?
- The critical period - The time in which imprinting must take place (3-30 hours)
- Proximity Seeking - The desire to be physically close
What ideas did Bowlby take from Freud in his monotropic theory?
- The idea that the main carer (Mother) is very important in development
- The quality of the first relationship (mother-child) would affect the quality of all future relationships (monotropic) - serves as a prototype for IWM