Attachment Flashcards
What is reciprocity?
when both infant and mother respond to each others signals and elicit a response from each other.
Feldman (2007)
from around 3 months oldreciporicty tends to be increasily frequent.
What is interactional synchrony?
mother and infact reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a c–ordinated way.
Meltzoff and Moore (1977)
observed the beginings of interactioncal synchrony in infants as young at 2 weeks old.
adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three gestures.
response of child filmed.
an assocation with the actions of the babies was found.
What is a parent-infant attachment?
Schaffer and Emerson found that the majority of babies have their mothers as their primary attachment figure, and within a few weeks formed secondary attachments to other members.
The role of the father
Grossman: longitudanal study looking at both parents behaviour and the quality of childrens attachments in their teens.
The quality of the fathers play with infants was related to the quality of adolesense attachments- father role is to do with play.
Fathers as primary care givers
Field- filmed 4 month old babies in face-to-face interactions with their primary care giver mothers and fathers, and secondary caregiver fathers.
the key to an attachment relationship is the level of responsivness and not the gender of the parent
Controlled observations
observations of mother-infant interactions are well-controlled
better validity
Observations don’t tell the purpose of synchrony and reciporcity
feldmen- describes behaviour occuring but not why these behaviours occurs
Inconsistent findings on fathers
some research says fathers can be maternal, some researchs suggests that fathers play a different role.
Children without fathers are not different
MacCallum and Golombok- found that children growing up in a single-parent or same-sex parent household do not develop any differently than those in a two-parent hetrosexual family.
Why do fathers not become primary attachments?
Female hormones, such as oestrogen create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically predisposed to be the primary attachment figure.
what are Schaffers stages of attachment?
asocial stage
indiscriminate attachment
specific attachment
multiple attachments
what is the asocial stage of the stages of attachment?
first few weeks
babies behaviour towards non-human objects and humans are similar.
babies show some preference for familiar adults
what is the indiscriminate attachment stage?
from 2-7 months
show a preference for people rather than objects
recognise and prefer familiar adults
do not show stranger or seperation anxiety.
what is the specific attachment stage?
from around 7 months
anxiety towards strangers, and anxiety when separated from a particular adult.
has a primary attachment figure
What is the multiple attachments stage?
shortly after babies start to show attachment to one adult, they usually extend this behaviour to other adults with whom they regulary spend time.
These are secondary attachments.
29% of children had secondary attachments within a month of forming a primary attachment.
Evaluation of Stages of Attachment
good external validity
carried out in homes
observation done by parents during ordianry activites.
Evaluation of Stages of Attachment
Longitudinal design
the same children used
better internal validity beause no participant variables
Evaluation of Stages of Attachment
limited sample characteristics
culturally bias
cannot generalise to other times or cultures
same social class and in the same city
Evaluation of Stages of Attachment
Measuring multiple attachments
Bowlby pointed out that children may have playmates as well as attachment figures and may get distressed when a playmate leaves the room but this doesnt signify an attachment.
Lorenz’s research
randomlly divided goose eggs, half with their mother, half hatched with him.
the experimental group followed Lorenz (imprinting)
What did Lorenz identify?
a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place.
What is sexual imprinting?
birds who imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans.
Harlow’s research
reared 16 baby monkeys with two mothers- a wire mother and a cloth mother.
the monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and sought comfort with the soft one when frightened regardless of which one dispensed milk.
Maternally deprived monkeys as adults
more dysfunctional, more aggressive and less sociable and unskilled at mating.
as mothers some neglected their young and other attacked and killed their babies.
Evaluations of Lorenz’s study
generlaisability to humans- mammalian attachment is different than birds- not appropriate to generalise to humans.
some observations have been questioned- the ideas that imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour disproved by Guiton et al- chickens who imprinted on a yellow glove would try to mate, but later change their preferences to othr chickens.
Evaluation of Harlow’s research
Theoretical value- attachment does not develop as a result of being fed. The importance of early relationships for later social development.
Practical value- helped social workers understand risk factors in neglect and when to intervene to prevent it.
Ethical issues- no protection from harm, no consent
