Attachment Flashcards
What is attachment?
A close two way emotional bond between individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security.
From what age do interactions between babies and parents become increasingly reciprocal?
From the age of about 1 month interactions between babies and parents become increasingly reciprocal.
What does reciprocity mean?
Babies respond to parents’ behaviour and increasingly matching their actions.
Who demonstrated the importance of reciprocity?
Tronick et al (1979)
What did Tronick et al do?
They asked mothers who had been in a dialogue with their baby to stop moving and maintain a static, unsmiling expression on their faces. Babies would try to tempt the mother into interactions by smiling themselves, and would become puzzled and increasingly distressed when their smile would not provoke the usual response. Thus, babies expect and anticipate reciprocal responses to their smiles.
Explain what is meant by interactional synchrony?
Interactional synchrony: Two people are said to be ‘synchronised’ when they carry out the same action simultaneously.
Explain interactional synchrony between mother and child.
For mother and infant, it is when their actions and emotions mirror the other. Interactional synchrony is important in the development of an attachment bond between mother and infant.
What did Melzoff and Moore do?
Melzoff and Moore observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants as young as two weeks old. Using independent researchers they found that babies could imitate both facial and manual gestures of an adult. Melzoff and Moore argued that the ability to imitate serves as an important building block for later social and cognitive development.
What did Isabella et al find?
Isabella et al (1989) found that securely attached mother-infant pairs had shown more of interactional synchrony in first year of life.
What were the problems with testing infant behaviour?
One weakness with the findings from studies looking at reciprocity and interactional synchrony is that there is difficulty in reliability testing infants’ behaviours. Infants’ mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently (eg. Tongue sticking out, yawning, and smiling), so it makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviour.
What did Melfzoff and Moore find during testing infant behaviour?
Melfzoff and Moore measured infant responses by filming infants and then asking an observer to judge the infant’s behaviour from the video. The person doing the judging had no idea what behaviour was being imitated and this increased the internal validity of the data. You can also argue that babies do not demonstrate demand characteristics or changes in their behaviour due to being observed, which again is a strength that increases validity.
What did Feldman suggest during testing infant behaviour?
Observations do not tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity - Feldman (2012) suggests that synchrony (and by implication reciprocity) simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time but we do not know their true purpose. However, there are some evidence that mother-infant attachment, as well as helpful in stress responses, empathy, language and moral development.
What did Abravanel and DeYoung (1991) discover during testing infant behaviour?
Abravanel and DeYoung observed infant behaviour when ‘interacting’ with inanimate objects, one stimulating tounge movements and the other mouth opening/closing. It was found the infant’s ages 5-12 weeks made little response to the objects. This suggests that it is a specific social response to other humans.
