Attachment: The development of attachment Flashcards
Outline Schaffer and Emerson’s main aims for their study
To investigate the formation of early attachment
Find the effects of separation anxiety and stranger anxiety.
What is separation anxiety?
The baby will become distressed when they become separated with their caregiver.
What is stranger anxiety?
The baby will become distressed when they are picked up or approached by someone unfamiliar
Outline the 4 stages of attachment.
1) Indiscriminate attachment
2) Beginning of attachment
3) Discriminate/specific attachment
4) Multiple attachment
Outline the main factor of Indiscriminate attachment?
Near the end of this stage the baby will start to show social stimulus such as facial expressions as well as being more content in the presence of humans
Outline the main factor of the beginning of attachment phase?
They are able to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people
Outline the main factor of discriminant attachment?
Form a primary attachment with a caregiver
Start to show stranger and separation anxiety
Become happy when reunited with caregiver.
Outline the main factor of the multiple attachment phase?
The infant develops a wider circle of multiple attachments depending on how many consistent relationships they have.
What did Shaffer and Emerson find about secondary caregivers in their study?
Within one month of becoming attached, 29% of infants had an attachment to someone other than their primary attachment figure. By one year this had risen to 78%
What was Grossman’s (2002) study about?
The influences on adolescent relationships
Outline what happened in Grossman’s (2002) study
It was a longitudinal study looking at the relationship between parent’s behaviour and its effects on the quality of children’s attachment in adolescence
What did Grossman find?
Attachment with father is not as important compared to attachment with mother.
Father’s quality of play with children was related to children’s attachment in adolescence.
Suggests fathers have a different role in attachment. More to do with stimulation than nurturing.
Outline the father as the primary caregiver
When fathers do take on the role of primary caregivers they take on a role usually associated by mothers.
They spend more time smiling and imitating infants than secondary caregiver fathers.
This shows that the father can be the more attachment figure.
Outline the views of Shaffer and Emerson on the father as a primary caregiver
They found that the father is less likely to be primary caregivers than mothers.
This may be because they spend less time with their infants
What is the biological argument towards fathers as primary caregivers?
most men are not psychologically equipped to form intense attachment because they may lack emotional sensitivity.
Oestrogen, female hormone, underlies caring behaviour which makes women generally more orientated towards impersonal goals
