Developmental Psychology: Cultural Variations on Types of Attachments Flashcards
Name 2 studies that outline and support Cross-cultural similarities
> Fox
> Tronick et al.
What did Tronick do?
Tronick studied an African tribe, in which the infants were looked after and breast fed by different women, but usually they slept with their own mother.
What did Tronick find?
Tronick found that despite the differences in childcaring practices the infants, at six months still showed monotropy.
What did Fox do?
Fox studied infants raised in an Isreali kibbutzim who spent most of their time being cared for in a communal children’s home by nurses. Attachment was tested using the strange situation with either the nurses or the mother.
What did Fox find?
Fox found that the infant was equally attached to both caregivers except in terms of reunion behaviour, where they showed greater attachments to their mothers. This suggests that the mothers were still the primary attachment figure despite the shared care.
Name 2 Studies that outline and support Cross-cultural differences
> Grossman and Grossman
> Takahashi
What did Grossman and Grossman do?
They studied German infants using the Strange Situation
What did Grossman and Grossman find?
They found that German infants tended to be classified as insecurely rather than secure attached. This may be due to the difference in childcare practices, and that German culture involves a lot of independence, which is why most German infants are classified as insecure.
What did Takahashi do?
Takahashi used the strange situation to study 60 middle-class japanese infants and their mothers.
What did Takahashi find?
He found similar rates of secure attachments to those found in the US, however unlike the original sample, japanese children showed high rates of insecure-resistant attachment (32%). He said this is because of the difference in childcare practice, in Japan, infants rarely experience separation from their mothers which would explain why they showed a lot more distress in the SS than American Infants.
Name the Meta-Analysis which looked into Cultural Variations
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenburg
What did they find?
They looked at over 2000 studies using the strange situation in different countries. They found that the variations between cultures/countries was very small. Secure attachment was the most common type of attachment in every country. Insecure-avoidant was the next most common in every country apart from Japan and Israel.
What conclusion did they draw?
The global patterns are similar to those found in the US, this supports the idea that secure attachment is an innate and biological process
