Attatchment

Question 1

What is the definition of an attachment?

Answer 1

An attachment is an enduring, two-way emotional tie to a specific other person, demonstrated when an infant shows stranger protest and separation anxiety.

Question 2

What is interactional synchrony?

Answer 2

Interactional synchrony refers to how a parents speech and infants behaviour become finely synchronised so they are in direct response to each other, reinforcing attachment bond.

Question 3

What is reciprocity?

Answer 3

Reciprocity is when interactions between carers and infants result in mutual turn-taking behaviour, with both parties being able to produce responses from each other, reinforcing the attachment bond.

Question 4

Evaluate caregiver-infant interactions

Answer 4

Interactional synchrony has high importance with regard to possible effects in later childhood. Researchers found that synchrony between mother and child developed social skills and ability to self regulate. Researchers analysed video recordings to find infants co-ordinate their actions in sequence with adults speech, supporting idea of interactions synchrony. However, study of these interactions might not be so straightforward. Vine et al reported that Kenyan mothers have little physical contact or interactions with their infants, but they have a high proportion of secure attachments.

Question 5

What are Schaffer’s 4 stages of attachment?

Answer 5

Schaffer showed how the common pattern in the development of infants attachments could be divided into several distinct stages.
1) pre-attachment stage : 0-3 months
Infants are attracted to all human faces, preferring them to objects.
2) indiscriminate attachment phase : 3-7/8 months
Infants discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar people, smiling more at known people, but still being handled by strangers.
3) discriminate attachment phase : 7/8 months+
Infants develop specific attachments, staying close to particular people and showing distress when separated
4) multiple attachments stage : 9 months +
Infants form strong emotional ties with other major caregivers, fear of strangers weakens but attachment to mother figure remains strongest.

Question 6

Evaluate Schaffer’s stages of attachment

Answer 6

Carpenter presented infants with familiar and unfamiliar voices and faces. Two-week old babies looked at a face longest when it was the mothers accompanied by her voice and showed distress when the voice changed. This doesn’t support Schaffer’s stages of attachment with says babies aged 0-3 months are attracted to all human faces. However, Schaffer’s last stage (multiple attachments) can be enforced by Rutter’s model of multiple attachments. It suggests we should encourage multiple attachments to develop social relationships.

Question 7

Discuss Schaffer and Emerson’s research on the development of social attachments in infancy.

Answer 7

Schaffer and Emerson studied 60 babies from Glasgow every month for 18 months (longitudinal method). They observed the babies in their own homes. They found that attachments were most likely to form to carers who were sensitive to the babies needs.
By 10 months, they had formed multiple attachments, with the main being the mother for half of the babies. This observation led to the formation of Schaffer’s 4 stages of attachment.

Question 8

Discuss the difference between the traditional and modern view on the role of the father.

Answer 8

Traditionally, fathers were seen to play a minor role in parenting, being a playmate for children and not providing sensitive responsiveness. However, their role still has importance as it helps socio-economic development. The modern view is that fathers are equal to the mother, having full involvement and being able to provide sensitive responsiveness - shown by rise in single fathers and gay couples.

Question 9

Discuss Lorenz’s study of imprinting

Answer 9

Aim: to research on what makes animals imprint, and whether it’s innate.
Procedure: He randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs, half were hatched naturally by the mother and the other half in an incubator, seeing Lorenz as their first large moving object to imprint on.
Findings: Each half imprinted separately, geese imprinted within the first 32 hours, suggesting it’s innate- biological mechanism. Attachment bond after imprinting was irreversible.

Question 10

Discuss Harlow’s study of contact comfort

Answer 10

Aim: to test the “cupboard love” theory. Questioning whether food or contact comfort was more important when forming attachments.
Procedure: infant monkeys were removed from biological mothers and placed in cages with surrogate mothers. They were scared purposefully to see which mother they went to, and timed how long was spent with each.
Findings: monkeys went to the soft mother when scared, and spent most of the time with it over the food mother. He concluded that monkeys formed attachments based on contact comfort rather than food, directly contrasting learning theory.

Question 11

Evaluate the 2 animal studies of attachment

Answer 11

Both studies have extrapolation issues- the generalisation of animal behaviour to human psychology is problematic. The studied are extremely unethical as animals are taken from their natural mother, going against the “protection from harm” guideline. Harlow’s research especially impacted them as they engaged in rocking behaviour, had stress induced diarrhoea, had issues with socialising and mating.

Question 12

What is Bowlby’s monotropic theory?

Answer 12

Bowlby was influenced by animal studies to reject learning theory, seeing attachment bonds as innate and part of the nature argument, attachments evolved to prevent predators.
Infants only have one primary attachment, usually the mother.

Question 13

What are social releasers?

Answer 13

Social releasers are attachment behaviours suggested by Bowlby, including crying to attract parents attention, smiling/vocalising to maintain parental attention and interest, clinging/following to gain and maintain proximity to parents. These behaviours are displayed from an early stage, in an automatic way, and go from being triggered by many people to a few individuals.

Question 14

What is the critical period?

Answer 14

Bowlby believed in a critical period for the formation of attachments. Within the first 2 years of life.

Question 15

What is the internal working model?

Answer 15

Bowlby believes that the primary (monotropic) attachment presents a template for future relationships.
Bailey et al found that mothers with poor attachments to their own mothers had poor attachments to their children.

Question 16

Evaluate Bowlby’s monotropic theory

Answer 16

Bowlby’s theory suffers from alpha bias, it exaggerates the role of the mother and downplays the roles of father, grandparents, and friends. It lacks temporal validity as modern society has changed, fathers have more equal roles, and it leads to negative implications and pressure on working mothers. The idea of monotropy contradicts Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment, with the final stage being multiple attachments.

Question 17

What is the learning theory?

Answer 17

Learning theory proposes that infants form attachments based on food rather than contact comfort. It starts with classical conditioning, where the food = unconditioned stimulus, and the caregiver goes from neutral stimulus to conditioned stimulus through association. Operant conditioning acts as a negative reinforcer when infants cry, producing a comforting response from the caregiver (reciprocal reinforcement- where mother and baby positively reinforce each other).

Question 18

Evaluate the learning theory

Answer 18

Fox studied attachment bonds between mothers, children, and metaplets. Children were generally more attached to mothers than metaplets who did most of the feeding, suggesting learning theory alone cannot explain formation of attachments. It can also be seen as reductionist as it explains complex behaviours in simple ways, not considering internal cognitive processes or the emotional nature of attachments.

Question 19

Discuss Ainsworth’s strange situation

Answer 19

Mary Ainsworth conducted a controlled observation in the 1978 to observe attachment security in caregiver infant relationships. She introduced 26 mother-child pairs in USA to a strange room with toys, with 8 stages, 3 minutes apart. She observed infants willingness to explore, separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, and reunion behaviour. She found that sensitive mothers who are responsive to child’s needs are more likely to have securely attached children.

Question 20

What are the 3 attachment types found by Mary Ainsworth?

Answer 20

Type A: Insecure avoidant (15%)
Plays with stranger, does not check for mother’s presence, shows no distress at absence and can seek comfort from stranger. Shows no interest in mother’s return.
Type B: Secure attachment (70%)
Infant is indifferent to stranger when mother is present, but ignores stranger when alone, becoming distressed when mother leaves. Becomes happy when mother returns in both reunions, easily calms.
Type C: Insecure resistant (15%)
Shows fear of stranger, intense, distressed reaction to mother’s absence. Resists comfort during reunion even if clearly desired.

Question 21

Evaluate Ainsworth’s strange situation

Answer 21

The strange situation has good reliability, it achieves consistent results.
However, focusing on maternal sensitivity places too much emphasis on the mother, and is a reductionist approach. Kagan suggested that a child’s innate temperament is what leads to different attachment types.
It can be seen as too limited to categorise infants into 3 types, and Ainsworth’s research overlooked a 4th type- insecure disorganised, characterised by lack of social behaviour patterns and lack of coherent strategy to deal with separation.
It is culturally biased- based on American values.

Question 22

Discuss and evaluate cultural variations in attachment

Answer 22

Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg did a meta-analysis of 32 studies from 8 countries. Their average findings were consistent with Ainsworth, but they found that cultural variation within a country was nearly 1.5 times greater than variation across countries.
This comparison is aided by the standardised methodology, however the study was not globally represented, it’s missing Africa and South America. It presents cultural bias as it uses western procedures and fails to consider that country does not equal culture.

Question 23

What is Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis?

Answer 23

Maternal deprivation refers to the negative consequences of a child being separated from the mother (primary attachment):
An inability to form attachments in the future- linking to the internal working model; Affectionless psychopathy (inability to feel remorse); Delinquency; Problems with cognitive development like low IQ.

Question 24

What is institutionalisation?

Answer 24

Institutionalisation concerns the effects upon attachments of care provided by orphanages and children’s homes. Institutional care involves privation (no attachment formed) and deprivation (attachment formed but broken) effects. Children can show disinhibited attachment, shown by clingy, attention-seeking behaviour, being indiscriminate to all people.

Question 25

What was the Romanian orphan study?

Answer 25

In the 1900s media attention was directed to horrific conditions endured by children in Romanian orphanages.
Rutter et al conducted a longitudinal study with 111 orphans, assessing their cognitive functioning when adopted (at either 6 months or 2 years) and then at age 4. They showed great improvements in physical and cognitive development, concluding that the negative effects of institutionalisation can be overcome by sensitive, nurturing care, contradicting Bowlby’s maternal deprivation, which states that permanent attachment loss affects internal working model.

Question 26

Evaluate institutionalisation studies

Answer 26

As it is a longitudinal study, over time a certain type of participant drops out, affecting reliability of the results due to atypical sample attrition. Bowlby’s early studies of institutionalised children has serious methodological flaws based on their research method. The Goldfarb study did not use random samples, and other samples showed the similar flaw of atypical sample attrition.

Question 27

How does early attachment influence childhood and adult relationships?

Answer 27

The continuity hypothesis sees children’s attachment types being reflected in their later relationships, based on the internal working model, explored through 4 ways:
1) social competence
2) difficulties with parenting
3) inability to interact and relate to others
4) romantic relationships; Hazan and Shaver created a love quiz to test the internal working model. They found a positive correlation between early attachment types and love experiences.
However, the continuity hypothesis is contradicted by Rutter’s Romanian orphan study.