Attachment AO1 Flashcards
Just the knowledge
What is attachment?
A close two-way emotional bond between two individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for emotional security.
- may seek comfort, reassurance
Define reciprocity
A description of how two people interact in a turn-taking manner. Each party responds to the others signals which elicits a response from the other.
What did Brazelton describe reciprocity as?
A dance because it is just like a couple’s dance where each partner responds to the other person’s moves
What is the ‘alert phase’?
Babies have periodic alert phases in which they signal that they are ready for interaction
What did Feldman and Eidelman conclude about mothers’ resposiveness?
Mothers picked up and responded to the baby’s alertness around 2/3 of the time
What affects the mother’s resposiveness?
External factors such as stress and the skill of the mother according to Finegood.
What is interactional synchrony?
The temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour (Feldman). Takes place when a caregiver and a baby react in such a way that their actions and emotions mirror the other.
What did Meltzoff and Moore observe in interactional synchrony?
- Observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in babies as young as two weeks old.
- adult displayed one of 3 facial expressions/ gestures
- babies’ expressions are more likely to mirror the adults’ more than chance would predict.
Describe the findings of Isabella <3
- Observed 30 mothers and babies and assessed the degree of synchrony
- also assessed quality of attachment
- found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality attachment
Describe the Asocial stage!
- first few weeks of life
- observable behaviour towards humans and objects are similar
- not entirely asocial, believed that babies show signs of preferring to be with people/ familiar people
Describe the Indiscriminate stage!!
- 2-7 months
- more observable social behaviours
- clear preference for being with other humans rather than objects
- recognise and prefer the company of familiar people
- accept comfort, cuddles from any person
- No separation anxiety or stranger anxiety
Describe the Specific attachment stage!!!
- 7 months
- Stranger anxiety, separation anxiety
- Said that the baby has formed a specific attachment (PAF)
- PAF is the one who offers most interaction and responds to baby’s signals
Who responds to the baby’s signals and offers most interaction?
The mother in 65% of cases
Describe the Multiple attachment stage!!!!
- After the first attachment is formed they extend this behaviour to multiple attachments with other people
- Secondary attachments
- 29% of children formed secondary attachments within a month of forming a PAF
Describe the procedure Schaffer and Emerson used
- 60 babies, 31 boys and 29 girls from glasglow (skilled working class families)
- researchers visited babies and mothers in their homes every month for the first year and again at 18 months
- asked mother questions about the protest their baby showed in seven everyday separations
- assessed stranger anxiety
What did Schaffer and Emerson’s research find?
- 4 distinct stages in the development of infant attachment behaviour
How often was the father the first sole object of attachment? (Schaffer)
3% of cases
How often was the father the joint object of attachment with the mother? (Schaffer)
27% of cases
Who did babies form an attachment with by 18 months? (Schaffer)
75% of babies formed an attachment with their father
Explain the likelihood of attachment to fathers
Fathers are much less likely to become the babies first attachment figure compared to mothers
Describe Grossmann’s longitudinal study
- Carried out a longitudinal study where babies’ attachments were studied until they were into their teens
- looked at parents’ behaviour and the relationship of their baby’s later attachments
What did Grossmann’s study conclude (2 things)
- Quality of attachment with mothers, not fathers was related to adolescent attachments.
- Suggests attachment to fathers is less important
- The quality of fathers’ play with babies was related to the quality of adolescent attachments.
- Fathers have a different role from mothers
What does a baby’s relationship with their PAF determine?
The basis of all later close emotional relationships
What did Field research?
- Filmed 4 month old babies in face to face interaction with primary caregiver mothers (PC fathers, Secondary caregiver fathers too)
What did Field’s research conclude?
- PC fathers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding babies than the secondary caregiver fathers
- Part of reciprocity and IS which is part of attachment formation
- Fathers have the potential to be more emotion-focused as they can provide responsiveness
Explain Lorenz’s animal study procedure
- Randomly divided 12 goose eggs
- Half hatched in a natural environment where the first moving object they saw was the mother goose
- Half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
What did Lorenz’s animal study discover?
- Incubator group followed Lorenz
- Control group followed the mother
- When groups were mixed, control group still followed mother
- Imprinted on first moving object they see
What did Lorenz identify?
- A critical period in which imprinting needs to take place, if imprinting does not occur within a certain time chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.
What else did Lorenz investigate?
- Sexual imprinting
- Birds imprinted on a human would later display courtship behaviour towards humans
Explain Lorenz’s peacock
- Reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving objects they saw were giant tortoises
- as an adult the peacock would direct courtship towards giant tortoises
Explain Harlow’s procedure (animal study)
- 16 baby monkeys with two wire model mothers
- One condition, milk was dispensed by plain-wire model.
- Second condition, milk was dispensed by cloth covered model.
What did Harlow find from his study?
- Baby monkeys cuddled/ sought comfort when frightened from the cloth covered mother in preference to the plain wire mother
- Showed that contact comfort was of more importance than food
What did Harlow et al discover about early maternal deprivation?
- Monkeys reared with plain-wire mothers only were most dysfunctional
- Monkeys reared with cloth covered mother did not develop normal social behaviour either
Describe deprived monkeys’ behaviour
- More aggressive, less sociable, bred less, unskilled at mating
- When they became mothers some neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them
What was the critical period for normal development in monkeys?
90 days, after this time attachment was impossible and damage had been done.
What is classical conditioning?
Involves learning to associate two stimuli together so that we begin to respond to one in the same way as we already respond to the other
What does a caregiver start as?
Neutral stimulus
What is food and why?
It is an unconditioned stimulus that gives us pleasure which we don’t have to learn.
What happens when caregiver provides food?
Eventually the caregiver will be associated with food, when the baby sees them there is an expectation of food
What is the caregiver after being associated with food?
A conditioned stimulus that produces a conditioned response
What is operant conditioning?
Involves learning from the consequences of behaviour; negative/ positive reinforcement.
What does operant conditioning help explain?
Why babies cry for comfort, crying leads to a response from the caregiver (feeding).
The baby then directs crying for comfort towards the caregiver who responds with comforting social surpressor behaviour
What does the caregiver receive when the baby is reinforced for crying?
Negative reinforcement because the crying stops
What did Bowlby propose?
An evolutionary explanation that attachment was an innate system that gives a survival advantage.
Describe the term monotropic
A child’s attachment to one particular caregiver
What are social releases and what do they do?
Babies are born with a set of innate ‘cute’ behaviours like smiling, cooing and having big eyes that encourage attention from adults.
Purpose is to activate adult social interaction
How long is Bowlby’s critical period?
6 months is when the attachment system is most active. Later was extended to 2 years.
What are the consequences of not forming an attachment within the critical period?
It will be much harder to form one in the future
What are the two principles of monotropy?
Law of continuity= care should be constant and predictable to aid attachment.
Law of accumulated separation= the negative effects of separation add up. ‘the safest dose is zero dose’
Describe what the internal working model is
Bowlby monotropic theory
Infants form a mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver. This serves as a template for future relationships.
What is the strange situation?
Types of attachment/ strange situation
A controlled observation procedure designed to measure the security of attachment a baby displays towards a caregiver.
What are the 5 behaviours that are used to judge attachment in the strange situation?
Types of attachment/ strange situation
Proximity seeking (staying close)
Exploration and secure base behaviour
Stranger anxiety
Separation anxiety
Response to reunion
Describe key features of secure attachment
Types of attachment/ strange situation
- Explore happily, go back to caregiver regularly
- Moderate separation anxiety+ stranger anxiety
- require and accept comfort from caregiver
- 60-75%
Describe key features of Insecure avoidant attachment
Types of attachment/ strange situation
- Explore freely, do not seek proximity or secure base behaviour
- little or no reaction when caregiver leaves
- little stranger anxiety
- little effort to make contact when caregiver returns
- 20-25%
Describe key features of Insecure resistant attachment
Types of attachment/ strange situation
- seek proximity more
- explore less
- high levels of stranger and separation distress
- resist comfort when reunited
- 3%
Describe Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s procedure
cultural variation
- Located 32 studies of attachment where the strange situation had been used to investigate babies with different attachment types.
- conducted in 8 countries
- 15 in the US, 1990 children
- meta analysed
What are the findings of Kroonenberg’s research?
cultural variation
- Wide variation between attachment types in all studies
- secure attachment was most common, 75% in Britain and 50% in China
- Individualist culutres= insecure resistant similar to Ainsworth’s original sample (under 14%)
- Collectivist cultures= Samples from China, Japan and Israel were above 25%
What is the difference between separation and deprivation?
Maternal deprivation
Separation means the child not being in the presence of the PAF. Extended separations can lead to deprivation which by definition causes harm.
What is the consequence of deprivation during the critical period?
Maternal deprivation
- If a child is separated and deprived of her emotional care, Bowlby believed psychological damage was inevitable and that there was a continuing risk up to the age of 5.
How did maternal deprivation affect intellectual development?
Maternal deprivation
Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would experience delayed intellectual development (low IQ)
What did Goldfarb discover?
Maternal deprivation
Lower IQ in children who had remained in institutions compared to those who were fostered because they had emotional care.
Define affectionless psychopathy
Maternal deprivation
The inability to experience guilt or strong emotion compared to others. This prevents someone from fulfilling relationships and is associated with criminality.
What was the procedure in the 44 thieves study?
Maternal deprivation
- 44 teenagers accused of stealing
- all thieves interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy (lack of remorse, guilt and empathy)
- families also interviewed about if the thieves had early separations from their mothers
- compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal, emotionally disturbed youths
What were the findings of the 44 thieves study?
Maternal deprivation
- 14/44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths
- 12 had experienced prolonged separation from mothers in first 2 years of their lives
- Only 5 of the remaining 30 thieves experienced separations
- 2/44 in control group experienced long separations
Describe Rutter’s procedure of romanian orphan studies
Romanian orphans: institutionalisation
- Followed a group of 165 romanian orphanse for many years as part of the English and Romanian adoptee study
- Orphanse were adopted in the UK
- Aim was to investigate the extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences
- A group of 52 children from UK adopted at same time (control)
What did Rutter’s study discover?
Romanian orphans: institutionalisation
- Half of adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development, majority were severely undernourished.
- At age 11= adopted children showed differential rates of recovery
- IQ adopted before 6 months= 102
- IQ adopted between 6 months and 2 years= 86
- Adopted after 2 years= 77
- These differences remained at 16
- Disinhibited attachment (after 6 months)= social behaviour indiscriminately towards all adults
Describe Zeanah’s procedure
Romanian orphans: institutionalisation
- Bucharest early intervention project assessing 95 romanian children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care
- compared to control group of 50 children who haven’t lived in an institution
- attachment type measured using strange situation
- carers asked about unusual social behaviour
What were the findings of Zeanah’s research?
Romanian orphans: institutionalisation
- 74% of control group were classed as securely attached
- 19% of institutional group were securely attached
- Disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of Institutionalised children compared to 20% of control group
How has Rutter described disinhibited attachment?
Romanian orphans: institutionalisation
An adaptation to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation
What type of attachment causes babies to form good friendships?
Early attachment and later development
Securely attached go on to form the best quality attachments
What do insecurely attached babies suffer from? (friendships)
Early attachment and later development
Not being able to form and maintain friendships
What did Wilson and Smith do?
Early attachment and later development
They assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11
What attachment type is likely to be a bully?
Early attachment and later development
Insecure resistant
What attachment type is likely to be a victim of bullying?
Early attachment and later development
Insecure avoidant
What attachment type is likely to not be involved in bullying?
Early attachment and later development
Secure
Why is the baby’s first attachment crucial?
Early attachment and later development
This template will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships
How does the experience of having a loving first attachment affect a baby?
Early attachment and later development
The baby will assume this is how relationships are meant to be, they will seek out functional relationships and will act functionally within them
( without being too uninvolved or emotionally close, insecure avoidant )
What did McCarthy study?
Early attachment and later development
Studied 40 adult women who had been assessed when they were babies to establish early attachment type.
Found that securely attached babies had the best adult friendships and romantic relationships
Resistant= problems maintaining friendships
Avoidant= struggled with intimacy
Describe an italian study.
Cultural variations
Simonelli= conducted a study in italy to see whether the proprotions of babies of different attachment types matched those found in previous studies
Researchers assessed 76 12 month olds using strange situation
What did the Italian study find?
Cultural variations
50% were secure, 36% avoidant
Findings aligned with other studies
Suggest this is because increasing numbers of mothers work long hours and use professional childcare
What does the italian study tell us?
Cultural variation
Patterns of attachment are not status but vary in line with cultural change
Describe the Korean study and the findings
Conducted a study to compare attachment type in Korea to other studies.
Used strange situation, 87 babies
Amount of Insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries
Most of the insecure babies were resistant, one was avoidant
Similar to the findings of Kroonenberg
How could the findings of the Korean study be explained?
Cultural variation
Might be explained in terms of child-rearing style.
