Attachment Flashcards
What is infancy?
The period of a child’s life before speech begins
Define reciprocity
- Responding to the action with another similar action, where the action of one partner elicit a response from the other partner
- the regularity of an infants signals allows a caregiver to anticipate the infants behaviour and respond appropriately
What is an attachment?
-An emotional bond between two people
A
- two way be that endures over time
-serves the function of protecting the infant
- leads to certain behaviours such as proximity seeking
What is interactional synchrony?
- mirroring that occurs during the interaction between infant and caregiver in terms of facial and body movements
Who studied interactional synchrony?
Meltzoff and Moore (1977)
How did Meltzoff and Moore study interactional synchrony?
1) adult model displayed 1 of 3 facial expressions or hand movements
2) a dummy was placed in the infants mouth to prevent any response
3) following the display the dummy was removed and the child’s expression was filmed on a video
What were Meltzoff and Moore able to conclude?
Young infants were displaying this behaviour showed that those behavioural responses must be innate
Evaluation: what are some problems with testing infant behaviour?
- infants mouths are in constant motion
- the expressions that were tested occur frequently
- difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific behaviours
•problems with internal reliability
How did Meltzoff and Moore overcome problems with testing infant behaviour?
They measured infants responses by filming infants and then asking an observer to judge the infants behaviour from the video.
The person judging the behaviour had no Idea what behaviour was being imitated.
This increases the validity of the data
Evaluation: failure to replicate
- other studies have failed to replicate the study
- Koepke failed to replicate the study but Meltzoff and Moore counter argued as it was less carefully controlled
- Marian found that infants couldn’t distinguish between videotaped interactions with their mother (not actually responding to the adult)
- problems with lie within the procedure not he infants ability to imitate their caregivers
Evaluation: the value of the research
- imitative behaviour forms the basis for social development
- Meltzoff developed a ‘like me hypothesis’ based on research on interactional synchrony:
1) connection between what the infant sees and their imitation
2) infants association of their own actions and their own underlying mental states
3) infants project their own internal experiences onto others
4) acquire an understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling, fundamental for conducting social relationships - explains how others think and feel
Define multiple attachment
Having more than one attachment figure e.g. Siblings, grandparents etc
Define primary attachment figure
Person who has formed the closest bond with the child (usually the child’s mother)
What is separation anxiety?
Distress shown by an infant when separated from their caregiver
What is stranger anxiety?
The distress shown by an infant when approached or picked up by someone who is unfamiliar
What are the stages of attachment?
Stage 1: indiscriminate attachments
Stage 2: the beginnings of attachment
Stage 3: discriminate attachment
Stage 4: multiple attachment
Outline Schaffer and Emerson’s study on the development of attachments
- sixty infants from working class families in Glasgow were studied
- initial ages from 5-23 weeks of age studied until the age of 1 year
- visited every 4 weeks
- at each visit each mother reported reported their infants to separation in seven everyday situations
- mother asked to describe the intensity of protests
- 4 point scale
Evaluation: Schaffer and Emerson’s study (based on unreliable data)
- based on mothers report of their infants behaviour -> social desirability bias
- some mothers may have been less sensitive to their infants protests therefore less likely to report them
- creating systematic bias which challenges the validity of the data
Evaluation: Schaffer and Emerson’s study (biased sample)
- working class population-> finding may apply so some social groups but not others
- sample was fro the 1960s -> parental care haschanged (more women go out to work and fathers stay at home)
- number of fathers staying at home has quadrupled over past 25 years
- if a similar study was conducted today the findings would be very different
•low historical validity
Evaluation: Schaffer and Emerson’s study (cultural variations)
- two different types of culture ( individualist and collectivist)
- Individualist-> Britain and USA needs of the individual focused upon
- collectivist-> people focus on the needs of the group
- sagi compared attachments in infants raised in communal environments with infants raised in fairy based sleeping arrangements
- closeness of attachments in family based arrangements twice as common than in communal environments
•stage model focuses primarily on individualist cultures
Define imprinting
An innate readinesses to develop a strong bond with the mother (takes place during a specific time of development)
Describe the procedure Lorenz carried out to investigate attachment
1) clutch of goslings divided into two groups
2) one group left with natural mother and the other eggs placed in an incubator; when hatched the first thing they saw was Lorenz
3) Lorenz marked the two groups and placed them together with their natural mother
Describe the findings of Lorenz’ study of attachment
- goslings divided themselves up into groups one following their natural Mother and the other following Lorenz
- imprinting restricted to a very definite period of the young animals life (critical period)
- process that binds a young animal to a caregiver in a social relationship
What are some of the long lasting effects that Lorenz discovered?
- imprinting is irreversible and long lasting
- early imprinting had an effect on later mate preferences
- animals will usually choose to mate with the same kind if object of which they were imprinted on