Lecture 3 Flashcards
Attachment II
What caregiver characteristics should we consider?
Parent gender
adoption, fostering and assisted reproduction
LGBTQIA parenting
What is the sensitivity hypothesis?
It predicts that early attachment security is dependent upon caregiver responsiveness and signals
What else can you call the sensitive hypothesis?
Responsive hypothesis
How would sensitive caregiving look like?
Responding to babies crying, cooing, smiling
Being attentive to the baby
What are developmental theories?
Developmental theories are a special form of causal or ‘functional’ relationship
e.g. we’re saying one thing leads to another
How do we establish causal relations?
- Observed variables must co-vary (covariation)
- Covariation must not be spurious (non-spuriousness)
- Causal factors must precede outcomes (temporality)
define covariation
the ability to observe how two or more variables change in relation to each other
define spuriousness
what may appear as causation between two variables is actually the result of a third (spurious) variable not accounted for in the analysis
What study design would we use to see if there is a positive association between parental sensitivity and attachment security at 14m?
Cross-sectional designs
What study design would we use to see if we want to asses whether parental sensitivity measured at 6 months predicts attachment at 14m?
Longitudinal designs
What study design would we use to test if when we train parents to be sensitive, do gains in sensitivity lead to changes in attachment security?
Intervention studies
What are the features of a typical longitudinal design?
there is covariation
there is no proven non-spuriousness or causal factor precedes outcomes
What are the features of an auto-regressive longitudinal design?
measuring attachment security at time 1 + caregiver sensitivity at time 1 compared to attachment security at time 2
there is covariation and non-spuriousness (potentially)
there are no causal factors that precedes the outcomes
What are the features of a cross-lagged longitudinal design?
caregiver sensitivity measured at (T1) is compared to caregiver sensitivity at (T2)
alongside attachment security at (T1) compared to attachment security (T2)
caregiver sensitivity (T1) is also compared with attachment security (T2)
attachment security (T1) is also compared with caregiver security (T2)
there is covariation, non-spuriousness (potentially), and causal factor precedes outcomes
What are the features of a intervention longitudinal design?
pre-test: assessment of parental sensitivity, assessment of a child attachment security
1: parental sensitivity training
2: control condition (no training)
post-test: parental sensitivity, child attachment security
there is covariation, non-spuriousness, and causal factors precede outcomes
What did Ainsworth et al (1978) find about parental sensitivity associated with child attachment security ?
a really large correlation between sensitive caregiving in the home and later attachment security
What did Lucassen et al (2011) find about parental sensitivity and the association with child attachment security?
not a large association between parental sensitivity and child attachment security due to the small (but still significant) effect size
Suggest it cannot be the sole factor
so this idea of sensitivity being the primary determinant isn’t true, but its still a determinant
What is infant temperament? and does this drive the type of caregiving a child receive?
Individual differences in reactivity and self regulation
Tendency to approach/avoid novel stimuli
Stability of mood (positive/negative affect)
Temperament is heritable in infancy and toddlerhood
Is temperament related to attachment security?
Researchers argue this temperament drives the kind of caregiving you receive.
E.g. a fearful baby that cries a lot, a caregiver might find that quite stressful and it might be harder to be sensitive to the baby.
temperament influences the type of insecure attachment that infants have with insensitive caregivers
What did Groh et al. (2017) find in its meta analysis on temperament and secure attachment?
Found when you look at all the data together, the difference between the secure and insecure groups’ temperament is small and significant
So temperament plays a role in some of these associations
What did Bakermans-Kranenburg et al. (2003) meta analysis find about improving caregiver sensitivity?
Found it is possible to improve caregiver sensitivity so they can see changes/improvements in sensitivity from T1 to T2 when you get training
What are genetically sensitive designs?
Adoption studies, whereby we’re able to rule out genetics as a factor because the caregiver and the child are not biologically related
What is internalising (disorders)?
for example anxiety, depression, somatic complaints, things that later on in adolescence or adulthood would be diagnosed as these
What is externalising (disorders)?
conditions that we might see as antisocial behaviour, conduct problems, hyperactivity, children who are externalising their emotional responses to the world
How do the attachment styles differ when responding to a threat/stressor?
Insecure resistant - fearful of novelty, might withdraw, more like to have internalising problems
Insecure avoidant - difficulty with relationships and intimacy and therefore they might kind of have a very difficult social relationship with other people, and as a result show some of these externalising problems
Secure - when there is a threat/stressor I will go to the sensitive caregiver as a source of support and comfort
Disorganised - develop an overall propensity for either external or internal effects and they might just be at risk in general to all mental health difficulties
What did Fearon et al (2010) find from their first studies?
Found that insecure children were significantly more likely to have externalising problems than secure children (average effect)
Effect seems to be stronger in boys than girls
What are some pro-social behaviours?
- Attending to Welfare of Others
- Empathic responding (e.g., comforting)
- Co-operation (e.g., helping, sharing)
Why should one be cautious when researching the sensitive hypothesis?
- Weak-moderate associations (so other factors matter)
- Studies often collapse kids into secure/not secure, so it is unclear what kinds of parenting leading to different types of insecurity
- Cross-lagged designs not very common
- Preponderance of work in WEIRD countries, little evidence from non-heterosexual biological families
- It’s also unclear why some parents are more sensitive than others… one possibility is that parents’ own previous attachment history might shape their parenting
What are criticisms of the sensitivity hypothesis?
Some argue that the measure of sensitive caregiving is problematic, it might not just be a single thing but a lot of things.
When looking at these meta analyses, they tend to lump all of the insecure children together into one group. Often these studies will break the categories into just secure and insecure.
Although there have been studies in different countries , there is still a lot of countries that are still not represented in this research. Sensitive caregiving could be viewed as middle class / western style of caregiving
What did Bowlby and Ainsworth focus on?
Remember Bowlby focused on having or not having a caregiver
Whilst Ainsworth came up with different kinds of attachment.
So we all may have a caregiver or an attachment figure but she said that they might differ in terms of quality.
So this is where we get secure/ insecure/disorganised.
What did Fearon say about sensitive caregiving on infants and their mental health?
if you have a secure infant who has a sensitive caregiver, if that infant experiences threats/stress they have a working model of their caregiver as someone who is reliable. If they’re in a stressful situation, they will go to that caregiver and use them as a source of support.
The idea is that this positive expectation about other people and about how other people behave when you are stressed , is your foundation of your later mental health and well-being.
What did Groh et al. (212) metal analysis find about internalising and attachment in infants?
Insecure groups have slightly more elevated levels of internalising than the secure group
Avoidant children have elevated levels of internalising
(Aligns with the fact that avoidant children minimise emotion compared to resistant children who maximise emotion)
They found the resistant children were not more likely to have internalising problems than any of the other children
What did Groh et al. (2014) find about whether secure attachment allows you to form better relationships with others?
Does having a secure attachment as an infant/child enable you to become someone who’s better at forming and building relationships with other people?
seemingly yes, as no matter what type of insecure style you are, there was always an effect found suggesting they (insecure style) were less socially competent compared to secure children
These findings show us that the relationship a child had with primary caregivers might set themselves up for later relationships beyond the family.
What did Deneault et al. (2023) meta-analysis find about pro-social behaviour in children?
The securely attached children were more likely than the insecurely attached children to demonstrate pro-social behaviours in different situations (not primarily, small correlation)
