introduction to attachment Flashcards
what is reciprocity?
A description of how two people interact
Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both infant and mother respond to each other’s signals and each elicits a response from the other.
what is interactional synchrony ?
Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a synchronised way
(It is believed that interactional synchrony is important for the development of mother-infant attachment)
parent infant attachment :
what did Schaffer and Emerson find?
Schaffer and Emmerson found that the majority of babies did become attached to their mother first.
within a few weeks or months formed secondary attachments to other family members including the father.
what is the role of the father? Grossman
Grossman carried out a longitudinal study looking at both parents’ behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens.
the quality of fathers’ play with infants was related to the quality of adolescent attachments.
what does Grossman study suggest about the role of the father?
This suggests that fathers have a different role in attachment - one that is more to do with play and stimulation and less to do with nurturing.
Evaluation: strength
interactional synchrony is highly controlled.
Observations of mother infant interactions are generally well-controlled procedures, with both mother and infant being filmed, often from multiple angles.
This ensures that the fine details of behaviour can be recorded and later analysed.
Furthermore, babies don’t know or care that they are being observed, so they are less likely to be affected by demand characteristics, which is generally a problem for observational research
Evaluation: weakness
observations dont tell us the purpose (Feldman)
Feldman points out that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time. These are robust phenomena in the sense that they can be observed, but may not be particularly useful in telling us the purpose
but some evidence that reciprocal interaction and synchrony are helpful in the development of mother-infant attachment, as well as helpful in stress responses, empathy, language and moral development.
Evaluation: weakness
inconsistent findings
research into the role of fathers have inconsistent findings
some psychologists are interested in understanding the role fathers have as secondary attachment figures whereas others are more concerned with the father as a primary attachment figure.
The former have tended to see fathers behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role. the latter have tended to find that fathers can take on a ‘maternal’ role.
Evaluation: socially sensitive
This would be because it suggests that children may be disadvantaged by particular child-rearing practices. In particular, mothers who return from work shortly after a child is born restrict the opportunity for achieving interactional synchrony.
This could be taken to suggest that mothers should not return to work so soon but other research shows that working mothers have plenty of time for such interactions after working hours.
