Attachment Flashcards
What are the characteristics of caregiver and infant interaction?
- Bodily/eye contact
- Mimicking
- Caregiverese
What is meant by caregiverese?
A high pitched, slow and repetitive vocal language that people generally use to communicate with babies
What did Papousek (1991) find about caregiverese?
- The tendency to use this voice was shown in all cultures
- This suggests it is a biological responses to facilitate the formation of attachments
What is attachment?
An emotional bond between 2 people, this bond is reciprocated and endures over time
How might attachment be characterised?
By seeking proximity to the object of attachment and potential distress on their separation
Why do infants form attachments?
- Survival, humans require care and protection
- They are born at an early stage of development (altricial)
What did Johnson and Morton (1991) do to study whether forming attachments is innate?
- Studied babies who were less than an hour old
- Showed the babies 3 faces: featureless face, schematic (normal) face and a scrambled face
- Babies spent more time looking at the schematic face
What did Johnson and Morton (1991) conclude about attachments being innate?
They concluded that the babies had an interest in the face-like stimuli with minimal opportunity for learning, implying that forming attachments is innate (not learnt
What did Klaus and Kennell (1976) do?
Infant-caregiver interactions
- Compared 2 mothers in the first 3 days after birth
- 2 conditions: - mothers who had extended physical contact with their babies for several hours a day
- mothers who only had physical contact with their babies during feeding
What did Klaus and Kennell (1976) find in their observations of infant-caregiver interactions?
1 month later
- Mums with greater physical contact were found to cuddle their babies more and make greater eye contact with them than the mums who only had contact during feeding.
These effects were still noticeable a year later
What did Klaus and Kennell (1976) conclude in their observations of infant-caregiver interactions? What practical application does this have?
- They concluded that more physical contact leads to stronger and closer attachments
- The practical application is that hospitals now put mothers and babies together from the moment of birth to encourage attachment
What is reciprocity? (reciprocal)
Mutual, returned, two-way feelings
How is caregiver-infant interaction reciprocal?
The infant and the caregiver are both active contributors in the interaction. Both the infant and the caregiver respond to each other’s signals and each elicits a response from the other
What did Meltzoff and Moore (1983) find and conclude about caregiver-infant interaction being innate?
- Studied 3 day old babies
- Infants as young as 2/3 weeks old would imitate hand gestures and facial expressions
- This is not much time to learn which suggests it is innate
What did Piaget say about caregiver-infant interaction being innate? (Pseudo imitation)
Piaget believed that true imitation only developed towards the end of the first year and anything before this was ‘response training’. The infant is repeating behaviour that is rewarded. It is pseudo imitation and not an innate reaction because the infant has not consciously translated this
What did Murray and Trevarthen (1985) find about caregiver-infant interaction being innate?
Infants showed expressions to a video of their mother who is not responding, this shows they are interacting by trying to attract the attention of their mother and it is not pseudo or learned through reward
What are the problems with trying to study and test infant behaviour?
- Infants are constantly in motion, this makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours
- Studies are more difficult to control and harder to replicate making them less reliable
What are the 3 types of cry that Woolf (1969) identified?
Basic cry
Angry cry
Pain cry
What is a basic cry?
Signals hunger and consists of half second rhythmic cries interspersed with short silences
What is the angry cry?
Crying with shorter periods of silence in between
What is a pain cry?
A loud initial cry followed by breath holding
How do parents interact with infants when they are crying?
They respond with nurturing, soothing and distracting behaviours such as feeding, rocking and stroking
What did Mehler (1978) find that shows reciprocity in attachment being innate?
Month old babies would suck faster on a dummy (feel more comforted) in response to their mothers voice compared to a strangers
What is Tronick’s (1979) still face experiment?
He asked mothers who had been enjoying exchanges with their babies to stop moving and maintain a static unsmiling facial expression. He then observed the responses to this
What did Tronick find and conclude from the still face experiment?
- Babies would try to tempt the mother into interactions by smiling themselves, they would become puzzled/distressed when their smile did not provoke the usual response
- Tronick concluded that babies expected concordant responses to their smiles which suggests reciprocity is innate
What did Le Vine (1994) say about cultural differences within reciprocity and interactional synchrony?
It is not found in all cultures which suggests that it is not necessary to the formation of attachments. Kenyan mothers have little physical contact and interaction with their children however can still form secure attachments
What are the 3 stages of attachment?
- Indiscriminate attachment
- Beginnings of attachment
- Discriminate attachment
What are the behaviours that indicate attachment?
- Proximity seeking
- Separation distress
- Stranger anxiety
- Pleasure with reunion
What are some of the important factors that affect the relationship and security between a father and child?
- Degree of sensitivity to child’s needs
- Type of attachment with own parents
- Marital intimacy
- Supportive co parenting
What did Schaffer and Emerson (1964) do?
- Conducted a longitudinal study upon 60 newborns and their mothers
- First 18 months of life, in participants homes
- Observations/interviews assessing attachment patterns
- Measured by separation protest and stranger anxiety
What did Schaffer and Emerson (1964) find?
- Most infants started to show separation protest when parted from primary attachment figure between 6-8 months
- Most infants developed multiple attachments, 87% having more than one, 31% more than 5
- 39% of infant’s prime attachment was not the main carer
What can be concluded from Schaffer and Emerson’s experiment?
- The formation of attachments is innate
- Attachments are more easily made with those who display the most sensitive responsiveness rather than the most time spent w the infant
- Multiple attachments are normal and of similar quality, challenges Bowlby
What are some strengths of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
- Longitudinal, more reliable
- Mundane realism, conducted in an everyday environment
What are some weaknesses of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
- Observations made by mothers are prone to bias and demand characteristics
- Subjective
What are the general differences between the role of the mother and father with the infant?
Mother: more sensitive to needs (Hardy), more nurturing and affectionate (Geiger), more comforting.
Father: more physical and playful (Bowlby/Geiger)
Each parent fulfils different needs of the infant which enables strong, secure attachments to be made to both of them
What is the biological reasoning for mother’s being more sensitive to infant’s needs?
The female hormone oestrogen underlies caring behaviour so women are generally more orientated towards interpersonal goals than men
What did White and Woollet (1992) suggest about a lack of sensitivity from fathers being positive for the infant?
It fosters problem solving by making greater cognitive and communicative demands on children thus making them more resilient individuals
What is the first stage of attachment and when does it occur?
Asocial Stage (show preference for all humans) occurs 6 weeks after birth. At this stage, the infant can not distinguish between people but enjoys human stimuli
What is the second stage of attachment and when does it occur?
Indiscriminate stage occurs between 6 weeks and 6 months. This is when the infant can tell people apart, has general sociability and does not show stranger anxiety
What is the third stage of attachment and when does it occur?
Specific stage occurs from 7-9 months. They begin to form specific attachments to a primary figure and have separation anxiety when away from this person
What is the fourth stage of attachment and when does it occur?
Multiple attachments stage occurs from 10-11 months and infants are able to become attached to a wider social circle
How does Schaffer and Emerson support the multiple attachments stage?
- 29% of secondary attachments also displayed separation anxiety from that person
- 1/3 of participants at 1 year had several strong secondary attachment
What are some of the general advantages of using animal studies for attachment?
- No demand characteristics
- Similarities with humans
- Shows the relationship between survival needs (food source) and the primary attachment figure
What are some of the general disadvantages of using animal studies for attachment?
- Unethical
- Different brains/survival needs, harder to generalise to the human population
- Animals have differences in attachment, e.g) they tend to have specific not multiple attachments
What did Lorenz (1935) do?
- Divided gosling eggs into 2 groups
- One group left with their natural mother, one group put in an incubator
- When the incubator eggs hatched the first living thing the saw was Lorenz
What did Lorenz (1935) find?
- G1 followed their natural mother and G2 followed Lorenz
- Lorenz had been imprinted on the goslings during their critical period, after this period the animal will not imprint (4-25 hours)
What did Lorenz (1935) conclude?
- Keep close contact with first large moving object
- Imprinting is a form of attachment
What is meant by imprinting?
An innate readiness to develop a strong bond with an attachment figure. Only occurs during the critical period
What is meant by the critical period?
A biologically determined period of time during which certain characteristics can develop and attachments can be made (Geese, 4-25 hours)
What are some key strengths for Lorenz’ study?
See notes for further depth
- Influence on Bowlby’s work, created applications useful to human psychology
- Hess (1958) supported idea of critical period
- Immelmann (1972) finches imprinted on each other supports Lorenz. Shows imprinting has a significant impact on future social development similar to humans
- Guiton (1966) rubber gloves
What are some key weaknesses for Lorenz’ study?
See notes for further depth
- Guiton suggests imprinting is reversible and is learnt with little conscious effort, suggests it is not innate
- It is difficult to draw conclusions about human attachment due to different survival needs, less valid and reliable when generalising to the human population
What did Harlow (1959) do?
- Created 2 wire mothers, one plain, one wrapped in soft cloth
- 8 infant monkeys were studied for 165 days
- There was a milk bottle attached to each of the mother t different points (varied who was the food source)
- Measurements were made of the amount of time each infant spent with the 2 mothers
- Observations were also made of their responses when frightened