Key study: Schaffer + Emerson

Question 1

Aims

Answer 1

-To understand how babies form and develop attachments.
- Establish when infants started to display separation anxiety.

Question 2

Participants

Answer 2

• Studied 60 babies from Glasgow at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life- children were all studied in their own homes + visited monthly for approximately 1 year.

Question 3

Methods

Answer 3

• A longitudinal method.
• A type of observational + correlational study that involves
• Understand human change and development.
• Researchers analyse target population without manipulating/ altering the natural environment.

Question 4

Procedure

Answer 4

• Children were all studied in their own homes/ natural environment and visited monthly for approximately one year. Interactions with their carers were analysed to establish if + when infants started to display separation anxiety.

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

Results revealed that attachments were most likely to form with carers who were sensitive to the baby’s signals, rather than be the person they spent the most with.

• By 10 months old, most of the babies have several attachments, including attachments to mothers, fathers, siblings and extended family.
• It was observed that the mother was the main attachment figure for roughly half of the babies when they were 18 months old and the father for most of the others.

Question 5

Conclusions

Answer 5

• Being sensitive and responsive (including playing and communicating without infant) is more instrumental in attachment development than physical care.
• Led to the formation of 4 stages of developmental progress that characterise infants attachments:
  1) Asocial stage (0-6 weeks)
  2) Indiscriminate attachment (6 weeks- 6 months)
  3) Specific attachment (7 months +)
  4) Multiple attachments (10/11 months +)