Quiz 2 Flashcards
What is Attachment?
Refers to an affectional tie that one person (or animal) forms to another specific individual.
Where is the first tie for attachment disorder linked to?
The mother, but may soon be supplemented by attachments to a handful of other specific people.
What is a key component of Freud’s Instinct Theory?
An instinctual drive has a source and an aim, both of which are genetically determined and hence little influenced by environmental variations.
According to Freud, what is the child’s first love object?
The mother’s breast.
When did Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) appear?
1980, in the DSM III
How is RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) described?
Describes young children who exhibit limited or absent initiation or response to social interactions with caregivers and aberrant social behaviors.
According to RAD, what happens when the child is distressed?
The child fails to seek or respond consistently to comfort from caregivers and exhibits emotional dysregulation.
What is RAD, essentially?
the absence of a preferred attachment to anyone.
What disorder is RAD most often linked to?
Internalized disorders and converges mostly with depression.
What is Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder (DSED) ?
1) A lack of social reticence with unfamiliar adults.
2) failure to check back with caregivers in unfamiliar settings
3) a willingness to go off with strangers.
What disorder is correlated with DSED?
ADHD and Disruptive Behavior Disorders.
What is an interesting correlation between adopted children and attachment disorders?
They may turn to their adoptive parents for comfort, support, and protection, and still show a lack of reticence around strangers and struggle to conform to normal social boundaries.
What is Criteria A for RAD?
There is a constant pattern of inhibited, emotionally withdrawn behavior towards caregivers, manifested by both of the following:
1) The child rarely or minimally seeks comfort when distressed.
2) The child rarely or minimally responds to comfort when distressed.
What is Criteria B for RAD?
A persistent social and emotional disturbance characterized by at least two of the following:
1) Minimal social and emotional response to others
2) Limited positive affect.
3) Episodes of unexplained irritability, sadness, or fearfulness that are evident even during nonthreatening interactions with adult caregivers.
What is Criteria C for RAD?
The child has experienced a pattern of extremes of insufficient care evidenced by at least one of the following:
1) Social neglect or deprivation in the form of a persistent lack of having basic emotional needs met by adults (comfort, stimulation, affection).
2) Repeated changes of primary caregivers that limit chances for stable connections.
3) Rearing in unusual settings severely limiting opportunities to form selective attachments.
What is Criteria E for RAD?
Criteria are not met for autism disorder
What is Criteria F for RAD?
Disturbance is evident BEFORE age 5
What is Criteria G for RAD?
The child has a developmental age of at least 9 months.
What is the major difference between RAD and DSED?
RAD is basically equivalent to a lack of or incompletely formed preferred attachments. (Thought the lack of attachment)
DSED is when children lack attachments to one or more primary caregivers, in children who display clear selective behavior, and even in children whose attachment behavior is considered secure. (describing social engagement).
What is another correlation between RAD and DSED in children in foster care?
RAD seems to disappear after children are placed in adequate family settings.
DSED signs often persist.
- These are seen in samples of children in foster care, not institutionalized settings.
If children are placed in adequate homes, does that mean that they can obtain secure attachment with their new caregivers?
Not really. It has been shown that signs of either RAD or DSED in the second year of life are predictive of subsequent psychiatric impairment in the preschool years, even if signs of the symptom have diminished or disappeared.
DSED has been shown to persist into adolescence and is associated with peer difficulties, even after children with this disorder have been adopted into nurturing homes.
What is a focus of future direction for children with RSD?
Even if signs of the symptom disappear and children are in good homes, are they still at risk for interpersonal or behavior difficulties?
What does longitudinal research show about family factors on children?
1) Family factors substantially increase the risk of a child manifesting clinically significant disturbances in cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that can be traced back to infancy or pre-birth before the child is even symptomatic.
2) may also be more stable predictors of later child maladaptation.
What must we be careful of when using neurobiology as “underlying mechanisms” for behavior?
Associations between neurobiological processes and behavioral or relational processes do not establish etiological priority for either level of mechanism.
What drives neurobiological adaptions in children?
Changes in the infant’s behavioral interactions.
What did studies about depression in mothers reveal about children’s development procceses?
Maternal depression is related to poor quality care, increased stress response, and amygdala volume in the child.
What is a casual mechanism associated with BOTH neurobiological outcomes?
Reduced Care
What effect did increased levels of pre natal anxiety in mothers have on their children?
1) reduced hippocampal volume.
2) altered size of the corpus callosum.
3) decreased grey matter
4) increased risk of anxiety disorders, conduct disorders, and atypical stress response.
What does prenatal exposure to nicotine, alcohol, and illicit substances mean?
1) Higher levels of child irritability.
2) attachment insecurity
What is the AAI?
Adult Attachment Interview: developed to explore the implicit mental representations of “internal working models” that parents have formed of their own early attachment-related experiences.
What was an interesting find relating to the AAI and parental attachment regarding children?
Parental attachment classification could predict the infant’s attachment style 1 year later.
what is the percentage of correspondence rate between secure vs. insecure mother and child attachment styles?
75%/ effect size: 0.47
What are the environmental contributions to children’s attachment styles?
1) The attachment pattern with one parent is not strongly associated with the attachment pattern shown to the other parent.
2) Infant attachment to the primary caregiver is predictable from the caregiver’s state of mind with regard to attachment issues assessed before the birth of the infant.
3) Child attachment strategy displayed toward the primary caregiver is more predictive of later child social adaptation than attachment strategies shown toward the non primary caregiver (EVEN WHEN THE PRIMARY CAREGIVER IS NOT BIOLOGICALLY RELATED).
4) Infant temperament has predicted distress at separation but has not predicted whether the distressed or nondistressed behavior pattern is classified as secure or insecure.
What did the AAI find about mother’s state of mind?
that the maternal unresolved state of mind predicted infant attachment disorganization with a significantly higher probability among infants who carried a long “risk” allele.
What does the attachment behavioral system include?
Infant behaviors that are activated by stress and that have as a goal the reinstating of a sense of security are usually best achieved in infancy by close physical contact or proximity with a family caregiver.
Describe the attachment system.
Think of it as the psychological version of the immune system.
It’s the pre-adapted behavioral system for combating fearful arousal.
For example, it buffers the individual (infant and adult) against higher levels of fearful arousal.
Is the attachment system preemptive?
Yes! It is aroused because it mobilizes responses to fear and threat.
The attachment system is foundational to turning attention away from issues of threat towards more positive developmental achievements such as exploration, learning, and play.
When were secure, avoidant, and ambivalent attachment patterns identifiable?
at 1 year of age.
How are secure infants described?
Maintaining a stance or strategy of open communication of both positive and negative effect.
What are the characteristics of Secure attachment?
1) Open communication
2) May or may not be distressed at separation
3) Positive greeting or contact seeking
4) Soothing effective if distressed
What are the characteristics of Avoidant Attachment?
1) Restricted communication of affect
2) Little display of distress
3) Avoidance of contact
4) Displacement of attention
What are the characteristics of Ambivalent strategy?
1) Heightened communication of affect.
2) Heightened distress
3) Anger and contact seeking combined
4) Failure of soothing
How are infants with ambivalent attachment viewed?
as maintaining a strategy of heightening signals of anger and distress to elicit a response from a less responsive caregiver.
How are infants with avoidant attachment viewed?
as restricting communication of anger and distress by displacing attention onto the inanimate environment, away from cues that might intensify the desire to seek comfort from a parent who rejects attachment behavior.
How are attachment behaviors correlated to mothers?
Related to both current and prior differences in maternal caregiving behavior observed at home, mothers of infants classified as secure attachment style were rated as more sensitive and responsive than mothers of infants in the other two styles.
How did the 4th attachment style (Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment Behavior) get discovered?
Researchers studied high-risk families, and the results indicated that infants from these families did not fit the previous three styles.
What is disoriented/disorganized referenced to?
There is a lack of a consistent strategy for organizing responses to the need for comfort and security when an individual is distressed.
The term does NOT refer to mental disorganization or behavioral disorganization.
How many infants display disorganized attachment behavior?
15% in two-parent, middle-class families.
What is the percentage rate of infants with disorganized behaviors in low SES
82%
What is the percentage of infants displaying disorganized behaviors among middle class families with depressed parents?
24%
What are characteristics of Disorganized attachment?
1) apprehensiveness
2) Helplessness/ depressed behaviors
3) unexpected alternations of approach and avoidance toward the attachment figure.
4) Freezing or stilling “underwater” movements
Is disorganized attachment classified as itself?
it is not, all disorganized attachment is included with either of the other styles.
e.g., disorganized-avoidant, disorganized-secure, disorganized-ambivalent
What happens to attachment behaviors as the infant enters toddlerhood?
The toddlers exhibit more controlling behaviors towards the parent (evident at age 3).
What are the two types of controlling behavior?
Controlling-caregiving: characterized by organizing and guiding the parent or providing support and encouragement.
Controlling-punitive: characterized by hostility toward the parent that are marked by a challenging, humiliating, cruel, or defying quality.
What is the theory behind how disorganized attachment strategies start in infants?
There is parental unresolved fear, which is then transmitted to the infant through behavior that is either frightened or frightening.
What does the father’s role in attachment indicate?
Fathers are more attuned to their children’s motivation to explore and predict security and exploration.
What did maternal intrusive control on children’s behavior indicate?
Insecure attachment behavior at 12 months old; negative, noncompliant, and hyperactive behavior at age three and a half; internalizing and externalizing problems by first grade.
What is dependency?
learned drive; denotes a state of helplessness
What are the two modes of though for Dependency?
as an acquired drive (an infant is helpless and requires its mother);
What is “pre-learning”
emphasize the species-specific behavior systems from which attachment behavior stems.
What are the 4 phases o f attachment behavior?
1) Orientation and signals without discriminated figures.
2) Orientation and signals directed toward one or more discriminated figures.
3) maintenance of proximity to a discriminated figure by means of locomotion as well as by signals.
4) formation of a reciprocal relationship.
What are the three behaviors that mediate attachment?
1) Orientational
2) Signaling
3) Executive
What were the five attachment behaviors Bowlby mentioned
1) Behavior that initiates interaction (greeting, approaching, touching, embracing, calling)
2) Behavior in response to the mother’s interactional initiatives
3) Behavior aimed to avoid separations (crying, clinging)
4) exploratory behavior as it is oriented with reference to the mother.
5) withdrawal or fear behavior
