attatchment Flashcards
What are the caregiver-infant interactions?
Reciprocity and interactional synchrony
What is reciprocity?
Interactions that take turns and elicit responses from eachother like smiling.
What are alert phases?
Signals that babies make to tell us they want interactions such as eye contact. mothers typically respond 2/3rds of the time
What is active involvement refering to in attachment?
How babies have an active role in them recieving care, its seen as a dance with mother and baby responding to eachother.
What is interactional synchrony?
Mirroring/reflecting behaviours to eachother in coordination.
When does synchrony begin?
As young as 2 weeks, an observation study found adults making faces and baby doing the same.
Why is synchrony important?
There are assosiations between having healthy attachents and more synchronic behaviours.
What are the issues with observational studies on babies?
Babies have very subtle body language making them super hard to observe, its really hard to tell whats happening from the infants perspective.
How can we improve observations on babies?
Most studies are filmed so we can look back and confirm our answers with other researchers, this is a way of testing relaibility called inter-rater relaibility.
What are Schaffers four stages of attachement?
- Asocial, first few weeks - behaviour to people and objects are simular
- Indiscriminate, 2-7 months - more social behaviours to people but no preferences for individuals
- Spesific, 7 months - primary attachment forms stranger and seperation anxieties show up
- Multiple, by 1 year - secondary attachments form. 27% of babies do this withing a month of stage 3.
What are the issues with Shaffers stages of attachment?
Theres was poor research done into the asocial stage. Babies have limited movements and co-ordination and so may be displaying social behaviours that ae just really hard to observe so the mothers may struggle to spot these and repoty back
What strengths does Shaffer and Emersons stages of attachment have?
It has real world application, knowledge about when babies form attachments means that mothers can plan childcare, suggesting that starting childcare with unfamiliar adults in the spesific attachment stage can be really difficult, this means we can plan around it, using a introducing the carer in the indiscriminate/asocial stage so they can form a secondary attachment to them later.
Who does most research focus on in attachment and what is research suggesting now?
Most research focuses on the mother, neglecting the fathers (or closest male caregiver) role. Research now states they have an important role in play and stimulation.
What did Schaffer and Emmersons study find out about the attachment to the father?
That fathers are less likely to be the primary attachment. In their stages study they found that the only 3% of babies attached to the father first and 27% of babies attached joint first. Most babies had formed an attachment to the father by 18 months.
What research was done to find out if fathers have a distinctive role like mothers do?
A longitudinal study of babies - teens researched the quality of both parents behaviours and attachment. They found that the quality of mums relationship was related to attachments made in adolescence , but not the fathers. He instead found that they had a different role, based on play and stimulation.
How does the father act when he is the primary attachment?
He takes on a more emotional role, a study on parent-baby reciprocity primary mothers and fathers both acted very simularly, spending more time imitating than secondarys. This means that fathers can and do provide the responsiveness needed for a close emotional attachment.
What is a strength of research into role of the father?
it can be used to give advice to parents, reassure them that its okay for the mum to work and dad to stay at home, aswell as reassuring same sex parents that the dads can form primary attachments and that babies without a dad wont be affected in development
What is a problem with research into the fathers role?
Theres conflicting questions about the role of the father. some studies focusing on the role as the secondary and some as the primary both of which find different results so a simple answer cant be given to the wuestion’what is the role of the father’
Observational studies are also flawed because people preconseptions about the father will affect what they will see (observer bias)
Outline Lorenz’s geese study.
A goose layed 12 geese eggs, 6 were left with her as normal, 6 were brought up with Lorenz. The geese attatched to Lorenz as the he was the first thing they saw. When the chicks were put back together again and allowed to follow whoever, 6 followed their mother, 6 followed Lorenz.
Lorenz identified a critical period, what is that?
The chicks had a few hours to imprint after hatching, else they wouldnt imprint.
What is sexual imprinting?
Simular to imprinting but more spesifically helps the bird know who to mate with as an adult.
One study showed chicks who imprinted to a washing up glove trying to mate with one in later life, however most of them worked it out after a while.
Outline Harlow’s monkey study.
Harlow studies 16 baby monkeys that were raised by 2 surrigate mothers. One made of wire one made of cloth.
the wire mother had a bottle of milk (food) and the cloth mother didnt. regardless of this, all monkeys prefered thecloth mother, seeking her for comfort. Some bravely ventured out to drink the milk before returning, others starved themselves.
What did Harlow find out about maternal deprivation?
That maternal care is crutial, the babies (that survived) grew up to have severe perminent effects. Being aggressive, unsociable and struggled to mate normally. Those who did become parents were neglectful.
What are the two explanations for attachment?
Learning theory - conditioning/learned (nurture)
Bowlby’s monotrophic theory - evolutionary/innate (nature)
Bowlby has two relivent theories in attachment what are they?
Monotrophy and maternal deprivation
What is the learning theory of attachment?
It’s based on cupboard love, food (a primary innate drive) is associated with our primary care giver which leads to an attachment (secondary drive).
