Attachment - Role of the Father and Conditioning Flashcards
What did Schaffer and Emerson find?
That 75% of infants formed a secondary attachment with their father by the age of 18 months (29% of this proportion was in a month of forming their primary attachment.)
What did Tiffany Field find?
Primary caregivers, regardless of gender, were the most attentive, spending more time holding them and smiling at them.
What did MacCallum and Golombok find?
That children raised in a homosexual household or a single parent family were no different from those who were in a heterosexual family.
What is the basic assumption of The Learning Theory of Attachment?
That all children are born as blank slates and that attachment has to be learned through interaction with the mother. This is achieved through classical and operant conditioning, via the fulfilment of needs i.e. - food.
How are babies classically conditioned?
At first the baby only feels comfort through food. Then, the mothers presence at feeding (breast feeding etc) causes the baby to associate the mother with the comfort the food provides. This is how the base of attachment is formed.
How are babies operantly conditioned?
The baby feels discomfort or is hungry and cries. This causes the action of the mother coming to it to give it comfort or feed it. The baby then is calmed again. The primary reinforcer is the food/comfort and the mother is the secondary reinforcer.
