Attachment - Broken Attachments Flashcards
What are the key assumptions of Bowlby’s (1951) Theory of Maternal Deprivation?
- continued emotional care from mother is essential
- separation from mother may lead to maternal deprivation
- separation is different from deprivation
- critical period of 30 months
- intellectual development: deprivation lowers IQ
- emotional development: deprivation linked to affectionless psychopathy
Why is continued emotional care from mother essential?
Continuous emotional (maternal) care from a mother or mother-substitute is necessary for normal emotional and intellectual development.
What may separation lead to?
Separation from mother may lead to maternal deprivation. Bowlby believed that mother-love in infancy is ‘as important for mental health as vitamins and proteins are for physical health’.
How is separation different from deprivation?
- Separation means the child not being physically in the presence of the primary attachment figure.
- Deprivation means losing emotional care as a result of the separation (could be physical separation or because they are unable to provide the child with care).
Deprivation can be avoided if alternative emotional care is offered, thus separation doesn’t always cause deprivation.
What is the critical period?
If a child is separated from their mother (without substitute emotional care) for an extended time during the first 30 months, then psychological damage is inevitable.
How does deprivation affect intellectual development?
If a child is deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period, they will suffer abnormally low IQ. Goldfarb (1947) found lower IQs in children from institutions compared to fostered children.
How does deprivation affect emotional development?
Lack of emotional care may also lead to affectionless psychopathy - the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion for others. This prevents the person developing normal relationships and is associated with criminality.
Procedure
Bowlby (1944) 44 Thieves Study
This study examined the links between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation. The sample in this study was 44 delinquent teenagers accused of stealing. Families were also interviewed to establish any prolonged separations from mothers. A control group of 44 non-criminal teenagers, with emotional problems were all assessed to see how often maternal deprivation occurred to the children who were not thieves.
All ‘thieves’ were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy characterised by a lack of affection, guilt and empathy.
Findings and Conclusions
Bowlby (1944) 44 Thieves Study
14 of the 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths. Of these, 12 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives.
In contrast, only 5 of the remaining 30 ‘thieves’ had experienced separations.
In the control group 2/44 had maternal separation but 0/44 were categorised as affectionless psychopaths.
This suggests prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy.
What are the strengths of Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation?
- studies have demonstrated maternal deprivation
What are the weaknesses of Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation?
- sources of evidence for maternal deprivation are flawed
- counter-evidence does not support Bowlby’s findings
- later research suggests that the critical period is more of a sensitive period (effects can be reversed)
- Bowlby didn’t distinguish between deprivation and privation
- 44 thieves study had no control over confounding variables, may have suffered from investigator effects (leading them to respond to demand characteristics) and interviews may have been unreliable and lacked objectivity
How do supporting studies demonstrate maternal deprivation?
Most psychologists are critical of the maternal deprivation theory, but one line of research supports the idea that maternal deprivation can have long-term effects.
Levy et al. (2003) showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as a little as a day had a permanent effect on social development.
However, there is always some doubt over the extent to which animal studies like this can be generalised to human behaviour.
How are sources of evidence for maternal deprivation flawed?
Goldfarb studied war-orphans who were traumatised and often had poor after-care. These factors may have caused later developmental difficulties rather than separation.
Similarly, children growing up from birth in poor quality institutions were deprived of many aspects of care, not just maternal care.
Bowlby carried out the assessments for affectionless psychopathy and the family interviews himself, knowing what he hopes to find. This may have produced biased results.
What counter-evidence is there that doesn’t support Bowlby’s findings?
Lewis (1954) partially replicated the 44 thieves study on a larger scale, looking at 500 young people.
Early prolonged maternal separation did not predict criminality or difficulty forming close relationships.
This is a limitation of Bowlby’s theory because it suggests that other factors may affect the outcome of early maternal separation.
How does later research suggest that the critical period is more of a sensitive period rather than critical?
Koluchova’s (1976) case study of Czech twin boys isolated from age 18 months to 7 years old (locked in a cellar by their step-mother). Later they were looked after by two loving adults and appeared to recover fully in terms of school work and later married successfully.
Shows that severe deprivation can have positive outcomes provided the child has some social interaction and good aftercare.
Cases like the Czech twins show that the period identified by Bowlby may be a ‘sensitive’ one but it cannot be critical.
How does Bowlby not distinguish between deprivation and privation?
Rutter (1981) distinguished between deprivation (the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed) and privation (the failure to form any attachment at all).
Rutter argues that the severe long-term damage Bowlby associated with deprivation is actually more likely to be the result of privation.
Many of the 44 thieves in Bowlby’s study had moved from home to home during their childhood so may have never formed attachments in the first place. This could be the cause of their affectionless psychopathy rather than deprivation.
How is there being no control over confounding variables a weakness?
There is no way to tell if prolonged separation was the cause of their affectionless psychopathy, or if there may be other factors (more important) that contributed to it.
For example, those people may have been from a more deprived neighbourhood or violent homes that led them to criminality.
Aim and Procedure
Rutter et al. (2011) English and Romanian Adoptee Study
To investigate as to what extent do children recover from suffering caused by deprivation or
privation at an early stage in their life, once placed in good care.
The researchers have followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans who experienced very poor conditions before being adopted in Britain.
This longitudinal study has tested the extent to which good care can make up for poor early experiences in institutions. Physical, cognitive and emotional development has been assessed at 4, 6, 11 and 15 years.
The study also followed a control group of 52 adopted British children.
Detailed measurement through interviews and observations were used to analyse the child’s behaviour.
Findings and Conclusions
Rutter et al. (2011) English and Romanian Adoptee Study
Half of the orphans showed undernourishment and delayed intellectual development when they came to the UK. At age 11 recovery rates were related to their age of adoption:
- those adopted before 6 months had a mean IQ of 102
- those adopted between 6 months and 2 years had a mean IQ of 86
- those adopted after 2 years had a mean IQ of 77
Frequency of disinhibited attachment related to the age of adoption.
- apparent in children adopted after they were 6 months old: clinginess, attention-seeking, and indiscriminate affection to strangers.
- rare in children adopted before the age of 6 months.
These findings support the view that there is a sensitive period in the development of attachments - a failure to form an attachment before the age of 6 months appears to have long-lasting effects.
Aim and Procedure
Zeanah et al. (2005) Bucharest Early Intervention Project
The purpose of the study was to determine whether removing young children from institutional care and placing them in foster care would enhance their developmental outcomes as assessed through brain and behavioral functioning. It was a randomised controlled trial of foster care as an intervention for children abandoned at or around the time of birth and placed in one of six institutions for young children in Bucharest, Romania.
The researchers used the Strange Situation to assess attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care.
They were compared to a control group of 50 children who had never experienced institutional care.
They also asked the children’s carers through interviews about unusual social behaviour such as clinginess, inconsistent patterns of behaviour, attention seeking behaviour directed inappropriately at all adults and sometimes showing strong attachment other times avoiding the caregiver.
Findings and Conclusions
Zeanah et al. (2005) Bucharest Early Intervention Project
Only 19% of the institutionalised group were securely attached. 65% classified with disorganised attachment.
This was compared to 74% of the control group having a secure attachment and less than 20% having a disinhibited attachment type.
The high percentage of disorganised attachment children (mixture of avoidant and resistant behaviours) is not ideal as it shows signs of stress and fear in the child’s personality. So institutional care is commonly damaging for mental health in later life due to trauma caused.
What are the strengths of the Romanian orphan studies?
- studying Romanian orphans has important practical applications
- Romanian orphan study has fewer confounding variables than other research
What are the weaknesses of the Romanian orphan studies?
- issues with generalisability
- children were not randomly assigned to conditions
- the long-term effects of early experience are not yet clear
What important practical applications does studying Romanian orphans have?
Results from this research have led to improvements in the way children are cared for in institutions (Langton 2006).
Children’s homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child. They have one or two ‘key workers’ who play a central role.
This gives the child a chance to develop normal attachments and avoid disinhibited attachments, immensely valuable in practical terms.