Early Attachment and Relationships in Childhood and Adulthood

Question 1

Who proposed the internal working model?

Answer 1

Bowlby

Question 2

What is an internal working model?

Answer 2

A mental representation of what a healthy relationship should look like. This acts as a template so the child expects all future relationships to look like this.

Question 3

What does a positive internal working model mean?

Answer 3

The child has a healthy, loving relationship with their parents, so they believe all future relationships will be happy and loving.

Question 4

What would a negative internal working model look like?

Answer 4

The person has a unloving, potentially abusive relationship with their parents, so they believe that future relationships should be unloving and abusive.

Question 5

If a child experiences abuse from their parents, how may this child treat their future children?

Answer 5

They may abuse their children.

Question 6

How may insecure avoidant babies behave in their future relationships?

Answer 6

They may be distant and not enjoy affection.

Question 7

How might insecure resistant babies behave in future relationships?

Answer 7

They may be controlling and argumentative.

Question 8

Name the researcher who studied childhood relationships.

Answer 8

Kearns

Question 9

Compare the friendships that securely attached children from with insecurely attached children.

Answer 9

Securely attached children form good quality friendships.
Insecurely attached children are likely to have friendship difficulties.

Question 10

In Myron-Wilson and Smith’s research on childhood relationships, what did they assess the link between in their research?

Answer 10

Attachment type and bullying involvement.

Question 11

What research method did Myron-Wilson and Smith use?

Answer 11

Questionnaire

Question 12

How many PPTs in Myron-Wilson and Smith’s study?
Give the age range.

Answer 12

196 PPTs aged 7-11.

Question 13

How do securely attached children behave when it comes to bullying?

Answer 13

Unlikely to be involved in bullying.

Question 14

How do insecure avoidant children behave when it comes to bullying?

Answer 14

Most likely to be bullying victims.

Question 15

How do insecure resistant children behave when it comes to bullying?

Answer 15

Most likely to be bullies

Question 16

Name the people who studied adult relationships and attachment types.

Answer 16

Hazan and Shaver

Question 17

What did Hazan and Shaver call their questionnaire?

Answer 17

Love quiz.

Question 18

How many replies did Hazan and Shaver receive to their quiz?

Answer 18

620

Question 19

What percentage of respondents to Hazan and Shaver’s research were identified as securely attached?

Answer 19

56%

Question 20

What percentage of respondents to Hazan and Shaver’s quiz were identified as insecure avoidant?

Answer 20

25%

Question 21

What percentage of respondents to Hazan and Shaver’s research were identified as insecure resistant?

Answer 21

19%

Question 22

Describe the traits of an adult relationship that occurs between securely attached people, as assessed by Hazan and Shaver.

Answer 22

Caring, loving and long lasting.

Question 23

Describe the traits of an adult relationship that occurs with insecurely avoidant people, as assessed by Hazan and Shaver.

Answer 23

They avoid intimacy.

Question 24

Describe the traits of an adult friendship that occurs with insecure resistant people, as assessed by Hazan and Shaver.

Answer 24

They struggle to maintain the friendship.

Question 25

McCarthy assessed the attachment type of how many women?

Answer 25

40

Question 26

Describe the friendships experienced by adult women assessed as securely attached in McCarthy’s study.

Answer 26

They experienced the best quality friendships.

Question 27

Describe the friendships experienced by adult women assessed as insecure resistant in McCarthy’s study.

Answer 27

They struggled to maintain friendships.

Question 28

Describe the relationships experienced by adult women assessed as insecure avoidant in McCarthy’s study.

Answer 28

They struggle with intimacy.

Question 29

Explain the strength of there being research support for the link between attachment type and later relationships.
What did Fearon and Roisman conclude about the link between early attachment and later attachments and wellbeing?
Disorganised attachments have lead to what type of condition? Compare this to insecure attachments only producing mild disadvantages.
What are the advantages of secure attachments for future relationships?

Answer 29

For example, Fearon and Roisman concluded that early attachment predicts later attachment, emotional wellbeing and attachment to own children. The strength of the relationship between early attachment and later development depends on attachment types and the aspect of later development. So while insecure avoidant attachment conveys mild disadvantages for development, disorganised attachments are strongly associated with later mental disorders. This means that securely attached babies appear to have advantages for future development while disorganised attachments may have disadvantages for children.

Question 30

Explain the limitation that attachments of adults as babies are assessed retrospectively.
How do researchers discover the attachment types of teenagers and adults?
Why does this cause validity issues - what does this type of research rely on from PPTs?
Why cant we be sure whether early attachment or adult attachment is being assessed?
What type of variable is present overall?

Answer 30

Most research on the link between early attachment and later development isn’t longitudinal. Instead, researchers ask adolescent and adults questions about relationships with their parents and identify attachment from this. This causes validity issues because it relies on the honesty of PPTs and, we can never be sure whether early or adult attachment is actually being assessed. This means that the measures of early attachment in studies may be confounded with other factors making them meaningless.

Question 31

Explain the limitation of studies into early attachment having confounding variables.
Why is McCarthy’s study valid?
On the other hand, use examples such as parenting style that could confound findings about attachment type.

Answer 31

Some studies such as McCarthys are valid because they assess attachment in infancy. However, studies like these may still have validity issues because associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables. For example, these could be impacted by parenting style. This means we can never be sure that early attachment is impacting development and not other factors.

Question 32

Explain the limitation of saying that attachment type influences development (it is not always true).
Insecure attachments may not always cause problems with what?
What type of prophecy can be caused by the pessimistic view that all insecure attachments are bad?

Answer 32

For example, having an insecure attachment may not always mean that there’s an increased risk of developmental problems – its never guaranteed that attachment type will cause someone to have unsuccessful romantic relationships, there could be other factors that influence this. The view that having an insecure attachment will lead to issues is pessimistic and may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.