day 1 : topic on attachment

Question 1

what does attachment mean?

• what are 3 ways attachments can be displayed

Answer 1

attachment= Close two way emotional bond between two individuals.

Proximity : people try to stay physically close to whom they are attached to

Separation distress: people are distressed when attachment figure leaves their presence

Secure base behaviour: even when are separated from our attachment figure we tend to make regular contact with them

Question 2

What are 2 caregiver interactions + evidence to support

Answer 2

Reciprocity = when adult and infant take turn to respond to each other.

Brazelton et al (1975) described this interaction as a “dance” because it is just like a couples dance where each partner responds to each other’s moves

Interactional synchrony = adult and baby respond to each other at the same time mirroring each other’s actions.

Meltzoff and Moore (1977) observed the beginning of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks old. Adults displayed one of 3 facial expressions. The child’s response was filmed and identified by independent observers. An association was found between expression or gesture the adult had displayed and actions of the babies.

Question 3

what is evaluation of caregivers interactions?

Answer 3

it is hard to know what is happening when observing infants
Many studies involving observation of interactions between mothers and infants have shown the same patterns of interactions. (Gratier 2003) however what is being observed merely hand movements or changes in expression. It is extremely difficult to be certain what is taking place from an infant perspective. Therefore we can not know for certain that behaviours seen in mother-infant interactions have a special meaning

Observations of mother-infant interaction are generally well controlled procedures with both mother and infant being filmed often from multiple angles. This ensures very fine details of behaviours can be recorded later analysed . This is the strength because it means the research has good validity.

Observations don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity
Feldman 2012 points out synchrony simply describes behaviours that occur at the same time. These are robust phenomena in the sense that they can be reliably observed but this may not be particularly useful as it does not tell us their purpose.

Question 4

attachment figures
role of father

Answer 4

introduction:
Schaffer and Emerson found that majority of babies did become attached to mother first
- within few weeks and months formed secondary attachments to other family members including father.
- 75% of infant formed attachment with father by age of 18 months.
- this was determined by fact that infants protested when their father walked away - sign of attachment

role of father
- Grossman carried out longitudinal study looking at both parents behaviour and relationships to quality of children’s attachment into their teens.
- quality of infant attachment with mothers but not fathers suggesting fathers attachment was less important
- however fathers have different role in attachment. one is to do more with play and stimulation and less do with nurturing.

fathers as primary carers
- when fathers take on role of being main caregiver they adopt behaviours that have been in past associated with mothers.

• tiffany field (1978) filmed 4 month old babies in ftf interaction with primary caregivers mothers , secondary caregivers fathers and primary father caregivers.
• primary caregivers fathers like mother spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregivers fathers.
• this behaviour seems to be important in building attachment with infant. so it seems fathers can be more nurturing attachment figure. key to attachment relationships is level of responsiveness not gender of parent

Question 5

evaluation on role of fathers

Answer 5

inconsistent findings on fathers
- research into the role of father is confusing because different researchers are interested in different research questions. on one hand, some psychologist are interested in understanding the role of fathers have as secondary attachment figure whereas other researchers are interested in father as primary attachment figure. this is problem because it means psychologist could not simply answer the question what is the role of the father?

2) study of grossman found that fathers as secondary attachment figures had an important role in childrens development. however other studies e.g MacCallum and golombok 2004 found that children that grew up in single or same sex parent families do not develope any different from those in two parent hetrosexual families
- this would suggest that fathers role as secondary attachment figure is not important.

3) the fact that fathers tend to not become the primary attachment figure could simply be as result of traditional gender role, in which women are expected to be more caring and nuturing than men. therefore fathers simply do not feel they should act like that. on the other hand, it could be female hormones such as oestrogen create high level of nuturing and therefore women are biologically predisposes to be primary attachment figure ( taylor et al 2000)