Paper 1: Attachment

Question 1

What is reciprocity?

Answer 1

The idea that the mother and infant are responding to each other in a meaningful way, eg infant cries and mother comforts baby

Question 2

What is interactional synchrony?

Answer 2

Mirroring of emotional states with infant and mother

Question 3

Evaluation for reciprocity/interactional synchrony?

Answer 3

Impossible to know if the infant attaches any emotional meaning to the interactions - they could simply be copying the parent

Supporting research - newborn babies were analysed by researcher - r would stick tongue out, child would copy

Question 4

What are Shaffer’s Stages of attachment?

Answer 4

He studied 60 babies at monthly intervals for 18 months. They were studied in their own home and he tried to identify a regular pattern of behaviour. The mother kept a diary to examine evidence for the development of attachment. They measured the following 3 things:
Separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, social referencing (the degree to which a infant will look to their carer to check how they should respond to something new).
Schaffer discovered 4 stages of attachment
1 - x asocial/-pre-attachment - 0-6 weeks this is where the infant is asocial, any social or non-social stimuli will produce a response like a smile.
2 - indiscriminate attachment - 6 weeks - 7 months. Infants will prefer human over non-human company - was not the case in asocial stage.
3 - specific/discriminate attachment - 7-9 months. Infant has a special preference for 1 single attachment figure. This is usually the mother. They will also have stranger and separation anxiety by this point.
4 - multiple attachments - 10 months+. The baby becomes more independent and forms several attachments. These may be with other family members like grandparents.

Schaffer also found that attachment was more likely to form with the people that responded accurately to the baby’s signals, rather than the person that fed them or the person they spent the most time with. Disproves Bowlby’s learning theory.

Question 5

Evaluation for Shaffer’s stages of attachment?

Answer 5

low pop validity - all ppts were from Glasgow and working class.
Mothers keeping diaries promotes demand characteristics - mothers are less likely to report negative experiences with their own children. Response bias.

Question 6

What is the role of the father?

Answer 6

Most of the babies in the Schaffer/Emerson study had multiple attachments by 10 months. By 18 months over 1/3 had 5+ attachments.
Schaffer found that the mother was the main attachment figure for about half of the children.
dea of the role of the father is that the mother will adopt a more nurturing/carer role while the father adopts a more playmate role. Infants will prefer contact with the father when they are in a positive mood and want to play, but will want the mother when they are in a negative mood and want comforting.
The idea of the role of the father has socioeconomic implications - mothers will feel pressured to stay at home and not work.

There are multiple factors that will affect the fathers role eg culture, age, whether or not they have to travel etc.

Question 7

Aims of Harlow’s study?

Answer 7

to test the importance of food vs comfort for an infant.

Question 8

Procedure of Harlow’s study?

Answer 8

harlow got 16 baby monkeys who had a choice of an uncomfortable wire mother that provided food, or a comfortable cloth mother that did not provide food.

Question 9

Findings of Harlow’s study?

Answer 9

they spent far more time with the cloth mother than with the wire one. They also found that the monkeys had problems later in life due to being maternally deprived, such as aggression and social dysfunction.

Question 10

Conclusions of Harlow’s study?

Answer 10

Outlined potential existence of a critical period.

Question 11

Evaluation for Harlow’s study?

Answer 11

monkeys are not humans: could be argued research done on monkeys is not generalisable to humans; different brains. Lorenz’s research showed that attachment in humans in humans and animals is different.

Significant ethical issues: long term suffering caused to the monkeys; showed issues with social aggression, mating, and parenting. Findings were arguably important enough to justify ethical issues.

Question 12

Aims of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 12

Studied imprinting - the innate need to attach to another living creature.

investigating the innate need to attach to another creature in order to survive.

Question 13

Procedure of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 13

Lorenz was the first living creature seen by a group of newly hatched goslings.

Question 14

Findings of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 14

the goslings followed him everywhere, because they had imprinted on him.

Question 15

Conclusions of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 15

there is a critical period in which imprinting must occur, or else it will not occur at all

Question 16

Evaluation for Lorenz’s study?

Answer 16

Geese are biologically completely different to humans - not very applicable to human behaviour. Added role of emotion in humans.

Research suggests imprinting can be unlearned; lorenz perhaps overstated the effects of imprinting.

Question 17

What is the learning theory of attachment?

Answer 17

Attachment can be learned by classical conditioning, in which the child associates food and the mother together. Food is UCS, happiness is UCR mother becomes CS, happiness is CR
Attachment could also be learned by operant conditioning. Positive reinforcement: the child and the mother have a sense of pleasure from being together.

Question 18

Evaluation for the learning theory?

Answer 18

Schaffer and Emerson found that less than half of children had primary attachment to the person that fed them.

Harlow’s research found that monkeys become attached to a soft, surrogate mother rather than the one providing food.

Lorenz found that goslings imprinted on the first moving object they saw which shows attachment is innate, not leaned.

Question 19

What is Bowlby’s monotropic theory of attachment?

Answer 19

Bowlby’s monotropic theory suggests that there is one primary attachment that an infant makes, usually the mother. It suggests that one relationship is more important than all the rest, and that an infant has a hierarchy of attachments. It also suggests that there is a critical period of forming these attachments, that is 0-2.5 years. The child’s relationship with their primary attachment forms an internal working model which is a blueprint for future relationships - if the relationship with the monotropic attachment figure is flawed, the person’s idea of a healthy relationship is likely to be flawed.

Question 20

Evaluation for Bowlby’s monotropic theory?

Answer 20

Socially sensitive: for people who have had bad relationships with their primary attachment figure, and also for mothers - overemphasises the importance of the primary attachment figure - perhaps influencing them not to go to work after having a baby.

Research suggests the mother is not usually primary attachment figure - Schaffer + Emerson found fairly even split between mother and father.

Question 21

Aims of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 21

to investigate how attachments may vary between children.

Question 22

Procedure of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 22

infants between 12-18 months from 100 middle class american families were studied in 8, 3-minute long episodes. All varying between whether the baby was alone, with a stranger, with the mother or both. Analysing 4 behaviours - proximity seeking, maintaining contact, separation anxiety, and stranger anxiety.

Question 23

Findings of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 23

Ainsworth identified 3 main attachment styles: secure attachment (type B), insecure avoidant (type A) and insecure resistant (type C)
Secure = securely attached, responds predictably
Insecure avoidant = doesn’t care. Low separation/stranger anxiety, little emotion on reunion etc
Insecure resistant = sad and scared; high sep/stranger anxiety, anger with caregiver upon reunion.

Question 24

Conclusions of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 24

Infants have different attachment styles

Question 25

Evaluation for Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 25

very standardised procedure means it is easy to replicate and highly reliable.

Low pop validity - conducted on middle class American babies.

Question 26

Aims of Van Ijzendoorn’s meta-analysis?

Answer 26

to conduct a meta-analysis of the findings of the Strange Situation across different cultures.

Question 27

Procedure of Van Ijzendoorn’s meta-analysis?

Answer 27

used secondary data, of repeats of the experiment in various countries. He calculated % of each attachment type for each country.

Question 28

Findings of Van Ijzendoorn’s meta-analysis?

Answer 28

the highest secure was the UK, highest avoidant was Germany, highest resistant was Israel.

Question 29

Evaluation for Van Ijzendoorn’s meta-analysis?

Answer 29

Shows strange situation as a procedure can be used across cultures, solidifies reliability of exp
Weakness: studies were not globally representative, eg Africa, South America, Eastern Europe.

Findings were misleading; disproportionately high number of studies were conducted in the US, which means the findings were distorted overall.

Question 30

What is Bowlby’s theory of Maternal Deprivation?

Answer 30

If the primary maternal attachment figure is disrupted during the critical period, the child will suffer irreversible long term consequences. Effects include: delinquency, lower intelligence, increased aggression, depression, and affectionless psychopathy.

Question 31

What is the 44 thieves study?

Answer 31

44 thieves study: bowlby interviewed 44 young thieves, found that the majority had suffered maternal deprivation, supports idea of delinquency being linked to MD.