Attachment Flashcards
What is attachment
Attachment is an emotional relationship between two people characterised by proximity seeking and resulting in the feeling of security when in the presence of each other
What is separation anxiety
Visible distress when an attachment figure leaves
What are the two key feataures of attachment
- reciprocity
- interactional synchrony
- reciprocity: How infants and caregivers respond to each other’s actions, movements and words/noises. Mothers typically pick up and respond to the infants alertness. This develops by about three months by an interaction that is reciprocal, where each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them. The behaviour of one triggers a response in the other eg a caregiver picking up the baby when it cries.
- interactional synchrony: Infant and caregiver being in tune with one another and following the same patterns of interaction. Simultaneous action. Behaviour is mirrored eg. The caregiver and the infant maintaining eye contact or smiling
Evaluation of caregiver - infant interactions
✅ tronick et al
✅ controlled no social desirability bias
✅ helpful in development
❌ tronick and Cohn
❌ inferences
❌ socially sensitive
✅ tronick et al - had mothers maintain an emotionless, static face at smiling infants. Infants became distressed showing that infants are hard wired to expect reciprocity
✅ research into this field is generally well controlled as it captures whole sequences of behaviour and is filmed and infants don’t change their behaviour when recorded
✅ reciprocity and interactional synchrony are helpful in the development of mother infant attachments as well as in stress responses empathy, language and moral development
❌ tronick and Cohn - they looked at how common interactional synchrony was and it only occurs 30% of the time
❌ babies can’t talk so inferences have to be made eg is the infants imitation of adults signals deliberate or unconscious
❌ can be socially sensitive as it suggests children may be disadvantaged by mothers who return to work before attachment has been fully developed
Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - research into stages of attachment
- 60 ? Babies
- three measures recorded
Schaffer and Emerson investigated if attachment develops through a series of stages by studying 60 Glaswegian babies in their own homes at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life. Their interactions with their carers were observed and carers were interviewed.
Three measures were recorded
- stranger anxiety: response to arrival of a stranger
- separation anxiety: distress level when separated from carer, degree of comfort needed on return
- social referencing: degree that a child looks to carer to check how they should respond to something new (secure base behaviour)
Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment
- asocial
- indiscriminate
- specific
- multiple
asocial stage (0-6 weeks)
- start to distinguish humans from non humans
- show a preference for things that look like humans
indiscriminate stage (2-7 months)
- babies become more sociable preffering human company
- don’t have stranger anxiety and don’t prefer specific people
specific attachments (7-10 months)
- begin to form a main attachment with primary caregiver
- start to show stranger and separation anxiety
multiple attachments (10-11 months onward)
- babies start to form other attachments
- the attachments serve different purposes
- 29% of infants had formed multiple attachments one month after forming their primary attachment
Schaffer and Emersons stages of attachment AO3 evaluation
✅ ecological validity
❌ social desirability bias
❌ temporal
❌ culture bias
✅ high ecological validity as particpants were tested in their natural environment (their homes). Behaviour is likely to be more representative of everyday life than what it would be if in a lab setting
❌ social desirability bias - participants want to be seen in a good light so might act unnaturally (demand characteristics)
❌ temporal validity - research was carried out in 1960’s where mothers were the primary caregivers and fathers were considered the breadwinners
❌ culture bias - only studied Glaswegian particpants. Cannot be certain that these stages apply to other cultures eg. Collectivist cultures form multiple attachments much earlier than individualist cultures
Role of the father in psychology
- there is conflicting research concerning the importance of the father
- some researchers argue that men are not equipped to form attachments both psychologically and socially. Others argue that father are not caregivers and instead provide a playmate roll
- however it does appear that the father can be considered just as important as the mother when considering attachment
- advances in gender equality has seen fathers play a more active role in a child’s upbringing
Research into role of the father
- Schaffer and Emerson
- rohner and veneziano
- verissimo et al
- Gottman and Katz
- Geiger
- golombok et al
- schaffer and Emerson (1964) - 1/3 of infants preferred father to mother
- rohner and veneziano - ‘father love’ is just as important as ‘mother love’ and can contribute particularly to social competence and academic achievement
- Verissimo et al - attachments depend on the quality of the attachment, rather than who it is with. There is a positive correlation between a quality father attachment and the number of friends an infant has at preschoo
- Gottman and Katz - father attachment can contribute to friendships, social competence and academic achievement. Found that involved fathers had children who were more popular, less aggressive and had high quality friendships
- Geiger - father attachment is not a replication or replacement of the mother attachment. The father provides different things to the mother. Mother attachments are more nurturing, father attachments are more focused around play
- golombok et al - the best predictor of whether the child was well adjusted was the quality of the relationship experienced
Why do we use animals to study attachment
- they have been used to look at the formation of early bonds between non human parents and their offspring spring
- psychologists are interested in this because attachment like behaviour is common to a range of species and so animal studies can help us to understand attachment in humans
- for ethical reasons
Konrad Lorenz - Gosling experiment
- 2 groups
- imprinting
- critical period
Method - split a number of goose eggs into two groups: group 1 who stayed with their mother, and group 2 who were placed in an incubator. Lorenz ensured the first moving thing the goslings in group 2 saw was him. After hatching, the goslings were mixed up and released.
Results - upon release those in group 2 went straight to Lorenz and group 1 back to their mother. Found that the goslings followed him as though he was their mother.
imprinting - The belief that the first moving thing they see is their mother
critical period - A time frame for things to happen (or they won’t). Lorenz argues that the cut off for imprinting is 32 hours.
Harry Harlow - food vs comfort
- 2 mothers
- cloth and wire (food)
- rhesus monkey speparated from mother at birth
- put in cage with 2 “mothers”
- they preferred the cloth mother (even though she didn’t provide food)
- spent around 18 hours a day with the cloth mother and only 2 hours a day with the wire mother
- therefore comfort is more important than food
Harry Harlow - monster mothers
- list of violent things they did
- did they go back?
Monkeys were exposed to ‘monster mothers’ who:
- expelled blasts of cold air
- catapulted objects
- shook violently
- contained metal spikes
The monkeys were distressed when the mother turned but always went back. This is replicated when victims of child abuse try to maintain a bond with their caregiver.
Evaluation of Lorenz’s research AO3
❌ not generalisable
✅ Kendrick et al
✅ guiton
❌ not generalisable as humans are not a precocial species
✅ Kendrick et al - supports concept of imprinting as goats fostered by sheep imprinted onto ‘mother ewe’ later showed a preference for socialising and mating with sheep.
✅ guiton - chicks imprinted onto a yellow rubber glove
Evaluation of Harlow’s research AO3
✅ generalisable
✅ influential
❌ different faces
❌ ethical concerns
✅ research was generalisable as studies on Romanian orphans produced similar results to harlows isolation studies
✅ The findings changed how we think about attachment.Previously the importance of comfort and emotional care was undervalued. Now, skin on skin contact with the mother is encouraged as soon after birth as possible. Has good application
✅ research is reliable as it follows standardised procedure do could be replicated
❌ the mothers had different faces so maybe they were doing to the mother whose face they preferred do lacks internal validity
❌ ethical concerns - Harlow was interviewed and stated that ‘he fight really care for animals’ On the other hand, Harlow’s research is credited as kick starting the animal liberation movement in the US due to his level of cruelty
Explanations of attachment - learning theory
- linked with behaviourism
- behaviourists argue that aside form a few instincts, behaviours are learnt
- your behaviour is based upon what observed as you were growing up
- in relation to attachment it is often referred to as ‘cupboard love’ theory as the approach assumes that food is the key driver (babies attach to caregivers because they are provided with food)
- forming attachments is not something that infants are preprogrammed to do but they learn to attach to their caregivers
- 2 elements are classical and operant conditioning
Classical conditioning and operant conditioning in attachment
- learning through ?
classical conditioning
- learning through association
- the child will form attachments on the basis of primary care provision (feeding etc)
- attachment behaviour should increase steadily from birth
- the strongest attachments will be with those who provide the most primary care
operant conditioning
- learning through consequences
- dollard and miller came up with a similar theory, this theory suggests that we learn through reinforcement and punishment
- the body had a number of drive states eg. Hunger that can be reduced by initiating contact with the caregiver
- baby communicates with the care giver eg by crying to reduce these
- this forms the basis of an attachment bond
How is operant conditioning linked to attachment
- the infant communicates with the caregiver for attentions
- contact with the caregiver was positively reinforcing so the infant will continue to seek out its caregiver for more positive outcomes
- this leads to an attachment forming as a result of these consequences
- when the baby sops crying this is also negative reinforcement for the caregiver (feeding the infant removes the negative consequences of the baby crying)
- this means there is something positive to gain from both parties in forming an attachment
Evaluation of learning theory AO3
✅ Dollard and miller
❌ Harlow
❌ Schaffer and Emerson
✅ dollard and miller - estimated that mother feeds infants more than 2000 times within the first year, whilst ensuring warmth and hydration. Conditions are in place for the attachment bond to form.
❌ Harlow - learning theory assumes that the attachment bond is based on the presence of food. However harlows research showed that monkeys preferred comfort to food
❌ Schaffer and Emerson - reductionist - less than half of children in their study had attachments to those that fed them. A professional childcare provider may be in charge of taking care of them but attachment is still strongest with parents. Theory is reductionist as it offers an explanation of attachment that is too narrow to be able to explain all family circumstances.
Bowlby’s Evolutionary monotropic theory - explanations for attachment
- biological instinct to form attachments
- critical period
- social releases
- monotropy
- internal working model
- continuity hypothesis
- evolutionary theories highlight the adaptive value of behaviours and how this would have helped our ancestors’ survival
- bowlby was inspired by Lorenz’s work and believed babies are born with the biological instinct to form attachments
- he believed that attachments develop as human babies rely on caregivers for survival
- critical period: attachment has to from within 2 and a half years to it never will
- social releasers: babies have tricks to make the caregiver interact with them
- monotropy: infant attaches to one caregiver more than the others
- internal working model: early attachment provides a blueprint for later relationships
- continuity hypothesis: later relationships mirror early attachment patterns
Conclusion: infants form monotropic arrangement usually with the mother in 2.5 years. To facilitate this infants cry to receive things for survival. How infants attach provides them with an internal working model helping to form attachments in the future
Evaluation of Bowlby’s Evolutionary monotropic theory
✅ hazan and shaver
✅ mccarthy
❌ focussed on the mother
✅ hazan and shaver: published love quiz and found that early attachment styles were similar to attachment styles in later relationships
✅ mccarthy: found women who were secure as infants had better friendships and relationships
❌ focussed on the mother: mother as a monotropic figure, Schaffer and Emerson found that 1/3 preferred their dad
Ainsworth and Bells strange situation
- they said that not everyone has the same attachment styles so they developed a technique to identify different types if bond
the experiment - aim: to observe attachment behaviours between an infant and caregiver as a way of determining quality of attachment
- method: 100 US middle class infants 12-18 months put through the strange situation, they measured separation/separation anxiety, reunion behaviour and willingness to explore. There were 8 stages: caregiver and infant put in room caregiver sat in corner and infant is free to explore, stranger enters and talks to caregiver, stranger approaches child with toy, caregiver leaves stranger alone with child, caregiver returns and stranger leaves, caregiver leaves child is alone. Stranger returns and tries to interact with the child, caregiver returns and stranger leaves
- results: 66% secure, 22% insecure avoidant (overly independent), 12% insecure resistant (clingy)
Strange situation attachment types
- secure, insecure resistant, insecure avoidant
- stranger/separation anxiety, reunion behaviour, willingness to explore
secure
- Separation anxiety: subdued when left, not overly distressed
- Stranger anxiety: moderately avoid when alone, friendly when caregiver present
- Reunion behaviour: positive greeting
- Willingness to explore: independent exploration, return periodically
insecure resistant
- Separation anxiety: intense distress when left
- Stranger anxiety: anxiety whether or not caregiver is present
- Reunion behaviour: reach out on return then rejects any attempt to be soothed
- Willingness to explore: will not explore, cling to caregiver
insecure avoidant
Separation anxiety: unconcerned when caregiver leaves
Stranger anxiety: avoid whether or not caregiver is present
Reunion behaviour: little interest in caregiver on return
Willingness to explore: independent exploration
What makes an infant secure or insecure?
- caregiver sensitivity hypothesis
- temperament hypothesis
- caregiver sensitivity: blames mother for not being sensitive enough to childs needs, can be too suffocating or rejecting, Dewolf + van Ijzendoorn found a correlation between secunty of attachment and parental sensitivity
- temperament: blames infant, some are just difficult in terms of level of activity, emotionality and sociability. Thomas and chess found just under half were considered easy (secure), 10% slow to warm up (avoidant), 15% struggled to cope with new expeniences (resistant)
