Attachment Ao1 Flashcards
Caregiver infant interactions
Babies have meaningful social interactions with their carers , these have important functions in the child’s social development. Good quality social interactions are liked with successful forming of attachments between babies and caregivers.
Reciprocity
Babies and mother spend a lot of time with intense, highly pleasurable interactions. This interactions would show reciprocity if each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them. Eg caregiver may see baby smile and say something which then elicits a response from the baby. This is also known as turn taking.
Alert phases
Babies have periodical ‘alert phases’ in which they signal (eg making eye contact) that they are ready for a spell of interaction. Research shows that mothers usually pick up on these alert phases about 2/3 of the time (Feldman and Eidelman 2007) though this varies based on the skills of the mother and either external factors such as stress (Finegood et al 2016)
From around three months interaction becomes increasing frequent and involves the mother an baby paying attention to each others verbal and facial signals (Feldman 2007)
Active involvement
Traditional views on childhood have portrayed babies in a passive role, receiving care from an adult. however babies and caregivers should take an equally active role. Both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions and should take turns doing so. T.Berry Brazelton et al (1975) described this interaction as a dance.
Interactional synchrony
Two people are synchronised when they carry out the same action in unison. Interactional synchrony is defined as ‘the temporal coordination of micro level of social behaviour.’ (Feldman 2007). It occurs when the baby and caregiver interact in a way in which their actions mirror each other.
Synchrony begins
Andrew Meltzoff and Keith Moore (1977) observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in babies as young as two weeks old. An adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures. The babies response was filmed and labelled by an independent observer. Babies expressions and gestures were more likely to mirror those of the adult than change would predict which shows significant association.
Importance for attachment
Interactional synchrony is thought to increase the quality of caregiver-infant attachment. Russell Isabella et al (1989) observed 30 mothers and their babies and assessed their degree of synchrony. The researchers also assessed the quality of their attachment. They found that high levels of synchrony was linked to better quality of mother-infant attachment.
Stages of attachment
Rudolf Schaffer and Peggy Emerson (1964) studied attachment behaviour in babies their findings lead them to develop an account of how attachment behaviour change with age. They proposed that there were four identifiable stages of attachment in sequence with all observed babies.
Stage one: asocial stage
In a babies first few weeks of life its behaviour towards humans and inanimate objects is fairly similar. There are signs they babies may slightly prefer humans. Babies also tend to show a preference for familiar people and are more easily comforted by them. At this stage the baby is forming bonds with certain people and later these will form the basis for their later attachment.
Stage two: indiscriminate stage
From 2 -7 months babies begin to show more obvious and observable social behaviours. They now show a clear preference for being with other humans rather than inanimate objects, They also recognise and prefer the company of familiar people. However at this stage they will usually accept cuddles and comfort from anyone, they do not usually show signs of stranger or separation anxiety.
Stage three: specific attachment
From around 7 months the majority of babies start to display the classic signs of attachment towards a particular person. This includes stranger anxiety and separation anxiety. At this point babies have formed a specific attachment to their primary caregiver, this is the person who offers the most interaction and responds to the babies signals with the most skill. This is mother in 65% of cases.
Stage four: Multiple attachment
Shortly after babies start to show attachment behaviour towards one person they usually extend this behaviour to multiple attachments with other people they regularly spend time with. These relationships are called secondary attachments. Schaffer and Emerson observed the 29% of babies formed secondary attachments within a month of forming primary attachments. By the age of one most babies have formed multiple attachments.
Schaffer and Emerson’s research
They based the above studies on an observational study of the formation of early infant-adult attachments.
Procedure: The study involved 60 babies- 31 boys and 29 girls, all from Glasgow most from working class families. The researchers visited babies and their mothers every month of the first year and then again at 18 months. The researchers asked the mother questions about the type of protest they showed on everyday separations. This was designed to measure the babies attachment and stranger/separation anxiety.
Findings: Schaffer and Emerson identified four distinct stages of developmental attachment of infants.
Attachment to fathers
Available evidence states that fathers are less likely to become the babes primary attachment figure compared to mothers. Schaffer and Emerson found that in only 3% of cases babies attached to the father was the sole object of attachment and 27% of cases the father was the joint object of attachment. 75% of babies studied by Schaffer and Emerson became attachment to their father by 18 months. This was determined by their protest when their fathers walked away.
Distinctive role of fathers
Klaus Grossman et al (2002) carried out a longitudinal study where babies attachment were studied until in their teens. The researchers looked at both parents behaviour and its relationship with the babies later attachment to people. Babies attachment with the mothers was shown to relate to attachment in adolescence but the fathers was not, this suggests the role of the father is less important however Grossman et al also found that fathers play with the baby was related to their adolescent attachment. This suggests father have a different role from mothers , one more to do with stimulation that emotional development.
