Exam 3 Flashcards
Shaver and Mikulincer: How do attachment strategies in adulthood provide feelings of security?
They don’t necessarily involve proximity-seeking behavior, but they can be soothing, reassuring mental representations of past experiences with supportive attachment figures.
Shaver and Mikulincer:What are the 2 secondary attachment strategies that adults use to feel secure?
1) Hyper activation is manifested in energetic attempts to attain greater proximity, support, and protection, combined w. a lack of confidence that these benefits will be provided
2) Deactivation of the system involves inhibition of proximity-seeking tendencies, denial of attachment needs, maintenance of emotional and cognitive distance from others, and compulsive reliance on oneself as the only reliable source of safety and comfort
Shaver and Mikulincer:What are the 2 dimensions that define attachment styles?
1) Avoidant attachment reflects the extent to which a person distrusts relationship partners’ good will, deactivates his or her attachment system, and strives to maintain behavioral independence and emotional distance from partner
2) Anxious attachment reflects the degree to which a person worries that a partner will not be available in times of need and therefore hyper activates efforts to gain partner’s attention and support
Shaver and Mikulincer:How do those who have secure attachment histories differ from those who are anxious and avoidant histories in providing effective caregiving?
1)They’re comfortable being intimate ad interdependent with others
2)See others as deserving sympathy and support
3)Feel confident about their ability to respond to other people’s needs while effectively regulating their own emotions
Act in a caring, prosocial, and moral manner toward others
Shaver and Mikulincer:What did the Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath and Nitzberg study reveal about decisions to help a person in distress?
Avoidant attachment individuals less willing to help and able to express compassion
Anxious attachment individuals associated w increased personal distress but not necessarily with helping while witnessing another suffer
Shaver and Mikulincer:What’s the difference between authentic morality and defensive morality? Summarize the 2 studies that the authors conducted to explore these two forms of morality.
1)Authentic morality manifested by secure people and anchored in a genuine concern for other’s welfare
2)Defensive morality manifested by people who score high on attachment anxiety who have a shaky sense of self-worth and use self-perceived moral behavior as a defense
3)2 studies summarized:
a) Examined the effects of attachment anxiety and threats to the self on moral choices when their self-esteem was threatened than when it was not
b)60 Israeli university students (42F,18M)
-1st session: Participants completed the Experiences in Close Relationships(ECR) inventory
-2nd session: Participants performed four cognitive tasks while an ego threat (failure feedback) was imposed on a randomly selected half of them.
I. Threat condition: Participants presented w same four unsolvable problems and told they failed them all.
II. No-threat condition: Participants presented w the same four unsolvable problems but received no feedback concerning their performance
c)All participants presented with four scenarios in which they assessed moral choices// Moral choice was pitted against a financial loss (One involving investing in companies & other breaking the law)
d)Conclusion: Ego threat raised the more anxious individuals’ level of morality to the level characteristic of the less anxious individuals w or w.o. threat
-self-threat can sometimes cause people to make more moral choices & this kind of defensive morality is more characteristic of attachment-anxious people than of relatively secure people who make moral choices w or w.o. a threat.
Coan:Can you list the neural systems that support attachment?
Hippocampus, hypothalamus, and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)
Coan:Is there a one-to-one correspondence between neural circuits and behavioral systems?
NO/Neural systems are distributed throughout the brain; similar behaviors may, across individuals, result from different neural system combinations
Coan:Why would dopamine facilitate proximity seeking?
Because incentive motivation plays a key role in a # of attachment-related processes (i.e. proximity seeking)/ Tightly linked to the dopamine projection system in the ventral tegmental area(VTA)
Coan:What is the amygdala’s role in forming long-term memories?
Amygdala “tags” sensory experiences as significant or salient, and this tagging is prominently represented in long-term memory consolidation
Coan:In what 2 ways is the prefrontal cortex associated with attachment processes?
1) Over time, medial orbital circuits may encode conditioned or “automatic” responses to attachment figures related to excitatory or inhibitory responses to threat cues
2) Dorsolateral circuits may modulate cognitive operations associated w attachment figures in reflective, working memory.
Coan:Emotional Constituents in Combination: This section puts several systems together in a really useful way and also offers a “real-world’ example.
1) Dopaminergic neurons in the VTA share connections with many regions other than the nucleus accumbens including the:
a) Amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and the PFC
i. These structures form their own distributed networks of often reciprocal influence
2) Real world example: Encounter with an attractive potential mate
a. The encounter initially elicits pleasurable feelings increase in incentive motivation associated w the partner amygdala “tags” sensory features of the encounter as salient during the process of memory consolidation, in cooperation w the hippocampus the VTA becomes conditioned to cues associated w the potential mate Activating incentive motivation circuits early in the “chain of cues” Increase in likelihood of encountering the potential mate again
Coan:What roles do the locus coeruleus and the amygdala play in an infant’s tolerance of aversive care from a parent?
1) The locus coeruleus releases large amounts of norepinephrine (neurotransmitter: transmitting a signal from one neuron to another neuron or muscle cell) early in development
a. Although in adults norepinephrine moderates memory consolidation and learning; norepinephrine from the locus coerculeus appears to be necessary and sufficient for learning in humans
2) The amygdala, being immature during early neonatal development, may not be capable of associating aversive stimuli w alarm or avoidance behavior; this may leave virtually all stimuli to be simply encoded as “familiar,” which is, for many intents and purposes at this stage, unconditionally reinforcing.
Coan:How does the dopaminergic system and the neuropeptides, oxytocin and vasopressin, distinguish mating behavior from partner preference? How does the research with voles demonstrate this?
1) Dopaminergic activity in the nucleus accumbens is insufficient for the establishment of partner preferences
2) Oxytocin and vasopressin have been associated w the formation of partner preferences regardless of mating behavior, and both, especially oxytocin, are elicited by positive social behavior
Prior and Glaser:What are the two questions addressed by this article?
1) Which domains of functioning, precisely, are hypothesized to be correlated with attachment?
2) If attachment security is found to be associated w functioning in other behavioral systems, what are the pathways of its influence?
Prior and Glaser:Table 10.1. Different views of the domains of functioning associated with attachment security
1) Narrow view: Trust, confidence and harmony in relationship w partner and significant others/ emotion regulation/ self-reliance (vs dependency), ego-resilience, personal efficacy/ Relational intimacy/ Interpersonal competence/ Relationship-based developmental disorders
2) Broad view: Everything in Narrow View + sociability w unfamiliar adults and peers/Understanding of and orientation towards others
3) Very broad view: Broad view + Language and cognitive competence/ play competence, exploratory skill/ communication style/ other outcomes influenced by self-confidence and ego functioning
Prior and Glaser:In brief, what components are included in Models 1 -3?
M1(V broad view):Attachment security influences functioning in another behavioral system
M2:Attachment security shares its influence on functioning in another behavioral system w another factor (i.e. self-confidence)
M3: Attachment security does not influence functioning in another behavioral system
Prior and Glaser:What distinction does Bowlby make between “safety” and “security”?
1) Safety: The objective condition
2) Security: The feeling state
Prior and Glaser:What was the “third definition of competence” offered by Ainsworth & Bell?
1) Attachment security influences functioning in another behavioral system by influencing the feeling state associated w that system
a. Infant’s ability to influence his environment by influencing his carer fosters a general ‘sense of competence’ and this influences the development of increased competence in other domains, whether viewed in absolute or age-appropriate terms
Prior and Glaser:Describe the feedback loop in Model 5.
1)Feed-back loop may operate in which attachment security enhances caregiver sensitivity in another parenting domain, i.e. play, which promotes greater child competence in that domain
Prior and Glaser:What do the authors conclude about what is known and not known about the correlates of attachment security?
1) What’s known: The link bw caregiving sensitivity and attachment security is already established
2) What’s not know:The link bw parental sensitivity and child feeling states and competencies in other domains
Bowbly and social info processing(2)
1) IWM: Experience based mental representation
a) Adaptive or maladaptive
i) Quality of IWM predicts processing of social environment
2) In presence of “attachment relevant social info”
a) Maladaptive IWM defends against painful info
b) 2 forms of defensive exclusion
i) Deactivation: Turn attn away from emotions
ii) Disconnect from sitatuion
c) adaptive IWM
i) Tolerates distressing situations
- Expects mastery over threatening situations
Schema driven view of attachment security and social info processing(2)
1) Insecure attachment
a) Negatively biased schema
i) Draw on bad experiences w. caregiving
2) Secure attachment
a) (+)biased schema
- Draw on (+) experiences w caregiving
Hostile attributional bias
Hostile ppl tend to see other people’s actions as intentionally hostile towards them
Ziv et al. (2004) Attributional bias (3)
1) Connection bw infant SSP classification + attributions of hostile intent
2) Secure
a) Attribute + motives
i) Except to hostile intent
3) Insecure
a) Attribute - motives to ALL
Processing w biased schema: The stroop test
1) Typical results: Slow to name color if incongruent w color label
2) “Emotional” stroop: Typically slower to name color of - words