Attachment AO1 Flashcards
Define Attachment
A close, two-way, emotional bond between two individuals. These bonds are needed for emotional security, social development and intellectual development. People with attachments develop behaviours of proximity, separation distress and secure-base behaviours.
Define Reciprocity
The process in which a behaviour is responded to during an interaction. They elicit a response from each other.
Define Interactional Synchrony
Refers to how a parent’s speech and infant’s behaviour become finely synchronised so that they are in direct response to each other. Feldman defined it as “temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour” and as “symbolic exchanges between parent and child”.
Why did Brazleton describe mother infant interactions as a “dance”?
Because when a couple dance together they respond to each other’s movement and rhythm.
Describe Meltzoff + Moore study on interactional synchrony
- Controlled Observation
- Adult model displays 1 of 3 facial expressions or hand movements.
- Dummy placed in infants mouth initially to prevent response.
- Dummy then removed and child’s expression filmed.
- Association found between infant behaviour and adult model behaviour.
What did Isabella et al find?
Securely attached mother-infant pairs show more interactional synchrony in 1st year of life. High levels of synchrony show that the mother and infant have a secure attachment relationship.
What did Schaffer + Emerson find about role of the father?
- Father is primary attachment figure in 3% of families.
- Attachments form at 18 months in 75% of families.
What did Grossman find about role of the father?
Quality of father’s play with infants was related to quality of adolescent attachments. Fathers have different role in attachment - more stimulation, less nurturing.
What did Field find about role of the father?
- Primary caregiver fathers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers.
- Key to quality of attachment is level of responsiveness, not gender of parent.
What did Freeman et al find about role of father?
- Male children more likely to prefer father as attachment figure than female children.
- Children more likely to be attached to father during late childhood to early adolescence.
What did Manlove find about role of father?
Fathers less likely to be involved with infant if infant has difficult temperament.
Describe Schaffer + Emmerson study on formation of early attachment.
- Longitudinal study on 60 glasgow infants from working class homes at monthly intervals until 18 months old.
- Interactions with caregivers observed, caregivers interviewed and mothers asked to keep diary of infant’s response to separation in 7 everyday situations.
- Direct observations of infants reaction when approached by researcher.
- Attachments develop in stages.
- Attachments most likely to form with those who respond accurately to baby’s signals.
Describe Asocial stage of attachment
- 0-6 weeks old.
- Infants can form bonds with any person or object.
Describe Indiscriminate stage of attachment
- 6 weeks - 6 months old.
- Infant shows preference to humans. Their behaviour is not different towards any one person.
Describe Discriminate (Specific) stage of attachment
- 7 months old
- Forms strong bonds with primary caregiver (usually mother) and will show major separation/stranger anxiety.
Describe Multiple stage of attachment
- 10-11 months.
- Can form attachments with multiple individuals who are called secondary attachment figures.
Define imprinting
An instinctive process where an extremely close and dependent bond is formed with the first thing they see after birth. It must take place in the critical period.
Describe Lorenz’s study of imprinting
- Randomly divided large clutch of greylag goose eggs into 2 groups.
- Group 1: Eggs hatched naturally with their mother
- Group 2: Eggs hatched in incubator where first moving object they encountered was Lorenz.
- Both groups placed under upturned box and then box removed.
- Group 1 geese followed mother, group 2 geese followed Lorenz.
- Formation of attachment has instinctive survival component as geese did not learn behaviours.
- Crucial period of between 12-17 hours where imprinting takes place.
Describe Harlow’s monkeys experiment
- Monkeys released into cage with 2 surrogate mothers.
- Surrogate on left made from block of wood, covered in sponge and rubber and a cotton cloth, providing contact comfort.
- Surrogate on right made of wire mesh which dispensed food from a bottle.
- Monkeys spent 17-18 hours with cloth mother and less than 1 hour with wire mesh mother.
- We have need for contact comfort to cope with fearful situations.
- There is a critical period of 90 days.
