Attachment Flashcards
Parental interactions and attachments
Reciprocity - How two people respond to each other’s actions and elicit another response
Interactional Synchrony - When a mother and infant respond to each other’s actions and emotions in a coordinated way
Feldman and Edelman found that Babies can have alert phases and these allow adults to pay attention to babies. They found that reciprocity is important in this interaction. Both people play an active role and the attachment can be perceived as a dance
Interactional synchrony was also found to occur between the baby and mother. When Meltzoff and Moore (1977) showed varying facial gestures to infants, they found that the expressions of adult reflected the action of the baby. This means that interactional synchrony is important in forming a better quality attachment.
Role of the father
It was found that 18 months in, the Baby formed secondary attachments with other family members such as the dad. The father’s role was also unique as it was found that the father was more important for adolescent children for playing and stimulation.
When the father was a primary carer, the father also showed characteristics of the primary caregiver such as smiling and imitating which shows that fathers can be nurturing as well suggesting that responsiveness is more important than gnder for an attachment relationship
Caregiver-infant attachments evaluations
The purpose of synchrony and reciprocity is still unclear from the observations. They may be robust phenomena however they don’t tell us their purpose - some evidence of it being used as a stress response or for development .
The strength of controlled observations is that they can be used to capture fine detail. The information can be analysed from multiple angles to pick up fine detail and is also valid in the fact that Babies are not aware of being observed or recorded
One limitation is that it only studies the behaviours from an observers standpoint - only identifies a change of expression but unsure what is going on from the infants perspective. Meaning it is unsure if the attachment between mother and infant is special
Attachment figure Evaluation
A limitation for the attachment figures is that psychologists study the father as a secondary and primary attachment figure which means fathers have been found to either take a distinctive roe for play or stimulation in adolescence or as more of a maternal role. This means the role of the father is contradictory and not a simple question
Another limitation is that if Fathers are important secondary attachments and play a distinctive role especially in the adolescent age, then why is it that families with same sex or single parent families don’t grow up differently.
- this suggests father role as a secondary attachment isn’t important
Another limitation is that the father may not become a primary attachment figure only because of social cues or the fact that woman have more oestrogen which means they are biologically more nurturing
Schaffer and Emerson’s study on attachment (1964)
Schaffer and Emerson (1964) did a longitudinal study in which they would analyse the attachment between the mother and infant. Hey identified Separation and stranger anxiety and also interviewed mothers on their experiences. In the results it was found that a specific attachment eventually developed with the most reciprocal figure.
Asocial stage - In the first few weeks, babies only show little preference of
humans over objects. No anxiety
Indiscriminate attachment - By 2-7 months Infants prefer humans and can identify familiar adults. The attachment is indiscriminate
Specific Attachment - At 7 months infants begin to form a primary attachment as they show signs of stranger and separation anxiety. The attachment forms the greatest with the adult that can respond to the baby’s signals with the most reciprocity
Multiple Attachments - By 7-8 months, secondary attachments with other family members can form and by age of 1 year majority had secondary attachments
Schaffer and Emerson’s study Evaluations
Schaffer and Emerson’s study was carried on families in their won homes. This means behaviour such as separation anxiety was done by parents. In addition, the babies were not affected by observers meaning they behaved naturally and thus it has good external validity
Schaffer and Emerson’s study was a longitudinal study meaning it was done over a period of time. By choosing a longitudinal study over a cross sectional study, it allowed them to negate the differences from participants allowing better internal validity
The study was done 60 babies done in the same district on people from the same social class. In addition it was done over 50 years meaning that it is hard to generalise to other social and historical contexts. IN addition child rearing may be different in other cultures.
Stages of attachment EVALUATION
Since the study was an observational study, the behaviour studied was only explicit behaviour. In the asocial stage, babies have poor co-ordination and this means that their behaviour can not be relied on evidence provided
Some psychologists argue that cultural contexts are very important and vary from the results collected. The babies from a collectivist culture could show multiple attachments from an earlier stage than the evidence suggests. This means the evidence is only limited to one specific culture and thus lacks validity
Lorenz’s research
Lorenz was an ethologist and conducted a study in which he established the periods of imprinting. Lorenz did this by being the first object a group of goose eggs saw when they hatched. Another group was a control in which the mother was the goose. He found that when they mixed the two groups of geese, the geese from the experimental group continued to follow Lorenz, whilst the control continued to follow the mother goose.
He established a critical period which was time period in which imprinting needed to take place or no attachment to the mother occurs.
He also found that imprinted geese showed later courtships with humans which shows sexual imprinting
Harlow’s research
Harlow established the importance of contact comfort. He set up two models of baby mothers for rearing a baby monkey. One was covered in a soft cloth and dispensed milk and the other was a wire frame and only dispensed milk.
He found that monkeys preferred the soft object when hungry or frightened. However, the monkeys that were maternally deprived showed ages I’ve and less sociable characteristics when they grew up and raised their own children meaning they were unskilled. The critical period for monkeys was then established to be 90 days.
Lorenz’s research Evaluations
Lorenz research was done on animals how er was generalised to humans however it is seen that mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young than birds meaning it is not appropriate to generalise
When some geese were imprinted with yellow washing up gloves, they would mate with the gloves later on however the experience made them learn to mate with chickens again meaning the imprinting was not as permanent as previously believed
Harlow’s Research Evaluations
Harlow studies’ showed us the importance of early relationships for later social development and a also the idea that attachment does not rely on the mother feeding the infant only but contact comfort as well
Harlow’s studies also have real life applications as they enable social workers to determine child neglect/abuse and to prevent it from affecting later relations. In addition we have also understood the importance of proper attachment in zoos and breeding programmes
However one jarring limitation is that Harlow used monkeys that were the closest genetically to humans. Since many monkeys suffered from these studies, it is believed that the monkeys possibly felt human like pain. A counter argument for this is that it was sufficiently important to justify the effects.
Bowlby’s monotropic theory + releasers and working model
Monotropy is the belief that one adult holds a great emphasis on the attachment with the infant. A monotropic figure is determined by the two factors
- Law of continuity meaning the more constant and predictable a child’s care the better the quality of attachment
- Law of accumulated separation means that that safest dose of separation is zero
Bowlby found innate behaviours called social releasers which allowed the baby to encourage attention from an adult which in turn increases the chance of attachment
Internal working model is the belief that a child’s future relationships depend on the relationships with their primary caregiver. E.g. a Loving relationship with a reliable caregiver will bring these qualities into future relationships and vice versa. People are also more likely to model their parenting style depending on the parenting they received from their parents which explains why functional families have similar families themselves
Bowlby’s Theory EVALUATION (MIXED EVIDENCE+ SUPPORT FOR SOCIAL RELEASERS + SUPPORT FOR INTERNAL WOKING MODEL)
One limitation of Bowlby’s idea of monotropy is that it goes under the assumption that a primary attachment must form first. Counter evidence from Schaffer and Emerson shows evidence of children forming secondary attachments at the same time as primary. This is then weakened by doubts from psychologists debating if a primary figure is somehow unique to a secondary attachment as Bowlby suggested.
A strength of Bowlby’s theory is that there is strength for social releasers. This is shown through Brazleton et al who conducted studies on interactional synchrony and found that when primary attachment figures ignored the babies signals, some babies eventually curled up and laid motionless showing evidence for the importance of caregiving
Another strength is of the internal working model which found that when Bailey et al 2007 conducted a study on 99 mothers with 1year old babies, it was found that mothers who reported bad attachments with their parents also had children who had poor attachments suggesting attachment was passed down. A counter argument is that what may have been observed is temperament which is genetic but is not linked to attachments meaning Bowlby may over emphasise the importance of the quality of atttachment
Learning theory (conditioning and drives)
Dollars and Miller (1950) established the learning theory in which being fed allows children learn how to love. (Cupboard love)
In classical conditioning, being fed is an unconditioned response as we don’t have to learn it as a source of pleasure. The caregiver is a neutral stimulus and when the caregiver feeds the infant, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus. This means the infant associates the caregiver with pleasure - akin to love
Operant conditioning is when the infant cries, the caregiver pays attention to the infant and this is a source of negative reinforcement. Eventually the crying becomes reinforced and therefore it is a two way process. More commonly referred to the IMRS - the interplay of Mutual reinforcement which strengthens the attachment
Infants have a primary innate drive to reduce hunger and psychologists suggest that as caregivers supply food, the association of the caregiver and the satisfaction of a primary drive means attachment is a secondary drive.
Learning theory evaluations
In animal studies such as Lorenz’s study, it was observed that animals did not imprint on to whoever fed them and in Harlow’s study, the animal had preferred contact comfort rather than being fed
In human studies, the study from Schaffer and Emerson showed that even though nurses fed the infants, the infants still formed a primary attachment figure with their mother. This challenges the idea of conditioning and suggests that there is no primary drive involved
Unlikely that attachments formed only as a result of feeding as that would man there is no use for complex interactions between the caregiver. Instead Isabella et al 1989 argues that it depends on picking up infant signals and responses skilfully
