Attachment - Caregiver-Infant Interactions Flashcards
What is an attachment?
A close two-way emotional bond between 2 individuals, where each sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
What are the 3 ways of recognising an attachment?
Proximity
Secure-base behaviour
Separation anxiety
What is separation anxiety?
The distress a person feels when an attachment figure leaves their prescence
What is secure-base behaviour?
the tendency to make regular contact with an attachment figure - they are a base from which to explore
What is a caregiver?
Any person who provides for a child
What stage of a child’s life does an infant refer to?
first year or two
What is the importance of caregiver-infant interactions?
they are important for the child’s social development and forms the basis of the attachment between the two
What is reciprocy in caregiver-infant interactions?
a two way process between a caregiver and the infant where each party responds to the other’s signals to sustain the interaction
What feature of reciprocy is important for laying the foundations for later attachment?
the infant’s actions are regular, allowing the caregiver to anticipate their behaviour and respond appropriately.
this sensitivity lays the foundation for later attachment
What is interactional synchrony?
When a caregiver and infant can mirror each other’s actions
What is the procedure for the still face experiment?
caregiver interacts with infant
caregiver then stops interacting and has a ‘still face’
caregiver interacts normally again
What is the dependent variable in the still face experiment?
the behaviour of the infant:
mouth opening, termination of mouth opening
tongue protusion, termination of tongue protusion etc
What are some strengths of the still face experiment?
babies cannot show demand characteristics or social desirability bias
applications - mothers returning to work too soon after having a child could restrict interactional synchrony
test-retest reliability
What are some weaknesses of the still face experiment?
can’t find out why infants do certain behaviours as they can’t explain for themselves
infant might not be imitating but repeating behaviours for a reward
What was the aim of Schaffer and Emerson’s experiment?
to investigate attachment formation between infants and caregiver
What was the method of Schaffer and Emerson’s experiment?
separation anxiety measured by asking parents what protest behaviours babies did
stranger anxiety measured by watching response to unfamiliar adults
What were the findings of Schaffer and Emerson’s experiment?
between 25 and 30 weeks - 50% had separation anxiety towards a specific adult
by 40 weeks - 80% had specific attachments and 30% had multiple
What are the 4 attachment stages outlined by Schaffer and Emerson?
Indiscriminant attachment
Beginnings of attachment
Discriminant attachment
Multiple attachments
What is an indiscriminant attachment?
no preference for any objects or people
preference for a social stimuli
What is the beginnings of attachment stage?
can distinguish familiar people from strangers
no stranger anxiety
What is a discriminant attachment?
separation anxiety begins
preference for primary attachment figure
What is the multiple attachments stage?
discriminant attachments formed with multiple people
What are some weaknesses of Schaffer and Emerson’s experiment?
sample bias - all babies from Glasgow and same socio-economic status, leads to cultural bias
historical bias - done in 1964, role of mothers very different now
self report techniques - social desirability bias
determinist - assumes all babies attach the same
uses babies - they can’t explain their behaviour themselves
