Attachments Flashcards
What are primitive reflexes?
Reflexes that help people survive through their attachments
When does bodily contact begin for babies?
Straight after birth
What do babies tend to mimic?
Facial expressions
How do caregivers interact with infants?
Through modified vocal language that’s high pitched and song like
What is interactional synchrony?
Imitating emotions and behaviours as well as physical interactions
What is reciprocity?
Interactions that produce responses from each other however aren’t done for the same meanings
What type of observation was Meltzoff and Moore’s interactional study?
Controlled
How many different stimuli and faces were there in Meltzoff and Moore’s interactional study?
4 different stimuli and 3 different faces/ hand gestures
Outline Meltzoff and Moore’s interactional study
-Observed infants reaction regularly
-Videos of infants taken were watched in real time, slow motion and frame by frame when necessary
-Video then watched by independent observers who did not know what the infant had just seen
-Infants as young as 2 to 3 weeks imitated specific facial and hand gestures
-In a later study infants as young as 3 days old demonstrated the same synchrony, suggests that it is innate and not learnt
What did Piaget think of Meltzoff and Moore’s study?
Not intentional imitation but instead learnt behaviour, it was was repeated as it was rewards such as with a smile
What is the key study in stages of attachments?
Schaffer and Emerson
What was the aim in Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
To find evidence for the stages of attachment
What was Schaffer and Emerson’s method?
-Observed 60 Glaswegian (from Glasgow) babies for 18 months, mostly from skilled working class families.
-Mothers/babies were visited once a month for 1 year and then again at 18 months.
-Researchers asked the parents to observe their children in different circumstances, write a diary of their of their observation and report back to the researchers e.g. separation anxiety, stranger anxiety
Schaffer and Emerson conducted what type of study?
Longitudinal
Detail what made Schaffer and Emerson’s study longitudinal other than the fact it went on for 18 months
Conducted circumstances that included being left alone in a room, left alone with a stranger, left alone in their cot.
Stranger anxiety was directly observed by Schaffer and Emerson when they visited the families.
What were Schaffer and Emerson’s findings?
-Some stages of attachment were at 8 months, about 50 of them had more than one attachment. About 20 of them had no attachment with their mother or had a stronger attachment with someone else even though their mother was the main carer.
-Quality of care is important in forming attachments so the baby may not attach to its mother if other people respond more accurately to its signals
What was Bowlby’s early research on the role of the father?
-There is only one primary caregiver (mainly mother)
- Fathers are typically seen as playmates rather than caregivers.
-Mothers more perceiving and nurturing so they recognised and responded to needs
What are the factors affecting the relationship between the fathers and children
-Degree of sensitivity (more sensitive, more secure relationship)
-Type of attachment to their own parents (single parent fathers tend to form similar attachments with their children that they had with their own parents)
-Marital intimacy (type of relationship he has with his partner, research by Belsky)
-Supportive coparenting
What was Grossman’s research?
Longitudinal study on 44 families where he tried to find out how important a father’s role was in a child’s development.
What was Grossman’s finding on mothers?
Quality of infant attachment with mothers related to attachments in adolescence. Suggests that father attachment is less important.
What was Grossman’s finding on fathers.
That fathers play a role in stimulation.
Give points on Fathers as primary caregivers
- Primary caregiver fathers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants compared to secondary
-Fathers can be more nurturing
-The key to attachment is the level of responsiveness- not gender
What study did Mary Ainsworth’s conduct?
The strange situation
What was Ainsworth’s aim?
To see how infants aged between 9-18 months behave under conditions of mild stress and also novelty
