Attachment AO3 Flashcards
Caregiver infant interactions
:( questionable reliability- children’s faces in constant motion- hard to establish whether they are reacting to career
:( individual differences- Isabella et al (1989) only securing attached informants engage in care giver infant interactions
Stages of attachments
:) empirical evidence- longitudinal study Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found 4 stages- shows pattern in all infants- biological process
:) ecological validity- field study and longitudinal study- observations from own mother- see how same infants change over time in own environment- more generalisable
:( bias sample- all working class population-
Role of the father
:(- MacCallum and Golombrok found contradicting evidence as they found that children growing up in single or same sex parent families did not develop any differently to those in opposite sex parents.
:(- Alternative explanations about why fathers don’t usually become the PCG could be because of traditional gender roles that people don’t like to break as it is not seen as normal and thus they continue with the social norms.
:(- Alternatively it could be biological reasons for mothers being the PCG majority of the time. Females have much higher levels of ostrogen and oxytocin and these create higher levels of nurturing behaviour.
Use of animal studies
:(- This type of research will always have animal bias and we must be cautious when applying the findings to humans as we are very different to other species, cognitively that is.
:) - Many very useful practical applications have come from this as it gives us a very valuable insight into caregiver-infant attachment. It has helped social workers understand risk factors in neglect and instead of just making sure people have shelter and food that they are also being treated with love and care.
:(- There are however drawbacks of this study and it is that it lacks the following of any ethical guidelines. The monkeys suffered greatly with irreversible effect
Learning Theory
:(- Schaffer found that babies developed a primary attachment to their biological mother regardless of who did most the feeding, this directly contradicts the learning theories explanation.
:(Too oversimplified- Learning theory ignores other factors associated with forming attachments such as interactional synchrony and reciprocity. Furthermore studies have shown that the best quality attachments are with sensitive and responsive caregivers who respond to infants signals.
Bowlbys Monotropic Theory
:) - empirical evidence- Brazleton observed mothers and babies interact and showed that there was interactional synchrony. In further experiments he instructed the PCG to ignore the babies signals (social releases). He found that after some distress the babies curled up and remained motionless.
:) - empirical evidence- Hazan printed a love quiz in an American newspaper. They collected information about individuals early attachments and their current attachments wth loved ones. They found that securely attached children had happy and long lasting relationships in later life. insecurely attached children found it hard to form relationships. This supports the IWM.
:(- individual differences- Other psychologists criticise Bowlbys mono-tropic theory for not accepting the role of the child’s temperament. It has been shown that some babies are born more social or more anxious than others. Therefore this could explain later social behaviour
rather than the IWM.
The Strange Situation
:(- Lacks ecological validity as it was fake environment with unrealistic task. Means it is difficult to generalise the three different attachment styles to other children in the real world.
:(- The SSC has been criticised for imposed etic. The tool is based on western practices and ignores cultural norms and practices in collectivist cultures. We must take caution when using it in cultures it is not designed for.
:(- Low pop validity, hard to generalise
:(- Criticised for being over simplified, other psychologists believe that you cant fit every child into one of three attachment types and that there are large individual differences between children that play a huge part. This lowers the value of the insight into children’s attachment types and development.
:) Reliability was proved by ‘Main et al’, he tested babies at 18 months and then retested them at 6 years of age and found 100% of the secure babies were still secure and 75% of the avoidant babies were still avoidant. This is called test retest reliability.
Ainsworth tested inter-rater reliability, this was also found to be very high.
Cultural Variations
:) - The study used 2000 children which gives it a very high population validity, meaning the results about cultural differences in attachment styles can be generalised to the target population of other children around the world.
:(- Although a large number of studies were used nearly half of them were done in US therefore the study has culture bias and we must be cautious when generalising the results across different cultures. This limits the value of the insight into cultural variations in styles.
:(- This study used the SSC which has been criticised for imposed etic and was made solely for individualistic cultures originally. This means we must be cautious when extrapolating results as the SSC might not be suitable to measure attachments in collectivist cultures.
:(- Reductionist as it doesn’t take other factors into account such as individual differences.
Bowlbys Maternal Deprivation Theory
:(- His research he used to support his theory is flawed as there are many confounding variables such as the fact that his study on war orphans were not just deprived as children but they were often traumatised from atrocities of war.
:(- Furthermore Bowlby carried out all the interviews himself and thus it is at risk of extreme researcher bias as the results could have been subjective. This would reduce the value of the insight into maternal deprivation in children.
:(- Lewis replicated the 44 thieves study with 500 children and found no relationship between criminality and separation as a chid. This shows other factors could have been present causing AP.
Institutionalisation
:)- There are practical applications that came with this research, for example many orphanages now work in a way that each orphan has a key worker that they are looked after by in order to create a strong bond between them, instead of having many different workers.
:(- The data collection methods are criticised for being subjective as there is no factual measurement. They used self reports which are prone to social desirability, as the participants could easily lie about their attachments.
Effect on relationships
:(- Most of the research used self report techniques which are at risk to social desirability and given the sensitive topic of the research this is very likely to have occurred, devaluing the value of the insight.
:(- The retrospective nature of the research as it involved asking participants about their childhood which realistically they may not recall accurately.
