Explanations Of Attachment - Bowlby's Theory

Question 1

What is the continuity hypothesis?

Answer 1

The idea that emotionally secure infants go on to be emotionally secure, trusting and socially confident adults.

Question 2

What’s the critical period?

Answer 2

A biologically determined period of time, during which certain characteristics can develop.
Outside of this time window such development will not be possible.

Question 3

What is the internal working model?

Answer 3

A mental model of the world which enables individuals to predict and control their environment.
In the case of attachment the model relates to a person’s expectations about relationships.

Question 4

What is monotropy?

Answer 4

The idea that the one relationship that the infant has with their primary attachment figure is of a special significance in emotional development.

Question 5

What are social releasers?

Answer 5

A social behaviour or characteristic that elicits caregiving and leads to attachment.

Question 6

Why do attachments form? (bowlby)

Answer 6

Attachment behaviour evolved becuase it serves an important survival function - an infant who is not attached is less well protected.

Our distant infant ancestors would have been in danger if they didn’t remain close to an adult.

Question 7

Why is it important that attachments are formed in two directions?

Answer 7

Parents must also be attached to their infants in order to ensure that they are cared for and survive.
It is only the parents who look after their offspring that are likely to produce subsequent generations.

Question 8

What does Bowlby’s monotropic attachment theory explain?

Answer 8

How and why attachments form

Question 9

How do attachments form? (Critical period)

Answer 9

Babies have an innate drive to become attached. Innate behaviours usually have a critical period for development.

Infants who do not have opportunity to form an attachment during this time seem to have difficulty forming attachments later on.

Bowlby’s proposed that attachment is determined by sensitivity.
His views were influenced by Mary Ainsworth whose observations of mothers led her to suggest that the infants who seemed most strongly attached had more responsive mothers.

Question 10

How do attachments form? (Social releasers)

Answer 10

Innate mechanisms that ensure that attachments develop from parent to infant.
Social releasers, such as smiling and having a ‘baby face’, all of which elicit caregiving.

Question 11

What did bowlby propose about monotropy?

Answer 11

That infants have one special emotional bond - the primary attachment relationship.
They’re used as a safe base for exploring the world.
They’re the template for future social relationships - internal working model.

Question 12

What did bowlby say about secondary attachments?

Answer 12

Infants also formed many secondary attachments that provide an important emotional safety net and are important for healthy psychological and social development.

Question 13

What is the critical period for attachment?

Answer 13

Around 3-6 months

Question 14

What are the consequences of attachment?

Answer 14

The importance of monotropy is that an infant has one special relationship and forms a mental representation of this relationship called an internal working model.

The continuity hypothesis proposes that individuals who are strongly attached in infancy continue to be socially ad emotionally competent whereas infants who are not strongly attached have more social and emotional difficulties in childhood and adulthood.

Question 15

What are the consequences of the internal working model?

Answer 15

In the short term it gives the child insight into the caregivers behaviour and enables the child to influence the caregivers behaviour, so that a true partnership can be formed.

In the long term it acts as a template for all future relationships because it generates expectations about what intimate, loving relationships are like.

Question 16

What are the evaluative points?

Answer 16

Is attachment adaptive?
A sensitive period rather than critical?
Multiple attachment versus monotropy 
Continuity hypothesis 
An alternative explanation

Question 17

What is meant by is attachment adaptive?

Answer 17

Attachment is clearly important in emotional development but it may be less critical for survival.

Bowlby suggested that attachments develop when the infant is older than 3 months. This is a very late mechanism to protect infants.
It would have been vital that out distant ancestors became attached as soon as they’re born.

The age of attachment is linked to features of a species life. Humans don’t need to cling on like monkeys as mothers can carry their babies.
However, when human infants start crawling (around 6 months) attachment is vital and that is when attachments develop in humans, supporting the view that it is adaptive.

Question 18

What is meant by a sensitive period rather than critical?

Answer 18

Psychologists have studied children who failed to form attachments during the important critical period between 3 and 6 months.
According to bowlby it shouldn’t be possible to form attachments beyond this period.

Evidence from Rutter shows that this is true to an extent. It appear less likely that attachments will form after this period but it is not impossible.

For this reason psychologists prefer to use the term sensitive period to reflect the fact that developments can take place outside of this window.

Question 19

What is meant by continuity hypothesis?

Answer 19

According to his theory, one outcome of attachment is the effect it has on subsequent relationships.
This has been tested by the Minnesota parent-child study (sroufe, 2005) -

This study followed participants from infancy to late adolescence and found continuity between early attachment and later emotional/ social behaviour. Individuals who were classified as securely attached in infancy were highest rated for social competence later in childhood ,were less isolated and more popular, and more empathetic.

This supports the continuity hypothesis because there is a link between early and later attachment.

Question 20

What is meant by multiple attachment versus monotropy

Answer 20

Multiple attachment model - that there are no primary and secondary attachments, but all are integrated into one single internal working model.

However, this may not have been so different from what Bowlby intended. Secondary attachments, in his theory, do not contribute to social development but healthy development requires one central person higher than all the others in a hierarchy.

Research on infant-father attachment, for example, suggests a key role for fathers as secondary attachments and in social development (Grossmann and Grossmann, 1991)

Prior and Glaser (2006) conclude, from a review of research, that the evidence still points to the hierarchical model as suggested by Bowlby’s concept of monotropy.

Question 21

What is meant by an alternative explanation?

Answer 21

The temperament hypothesis (Kagan, 1984) proposes that an infant’s innate emotional personality (called their temperament) may explain attachment behaviour.

Infants who have an easy temperament are more likely to become strongly attached because it is easier to interact with them whereas those who are difficult tend to be insecurely attached.

Bowlby’s theory suggested that attachment type is due to the primary attachment figures sensitivity, whereas kagan’s view is that attachment can be explained in terms of infant behaviours.
Belsky and Rovine propose that there is an interaction between the two.