Schaffer's Stages of Attachment Flashcards
What are the Stages of Attachment?
1) Asocial Attachments
2) Indiscriminate Attachments
3) Discriminate (specific) Attachments
4) Multiple Attachments
What ages do Asocial Attachments apply to?
From birth to 2 months.
What are Asocial Attachments?
Infants display innate behaviours, e.g., crying or smiling, that ensure proximity to any potential caregiver. As their perceptual ability is limited, they will also display similar behaviours to non-human objects. Although towards the end of this stage, they do display a preference for faces/eyes. At this stage, they seek comfort from anyone, as they do not prefer any individual caregiver.
What ages do Indiscriminate Attachments apply to?
From 2-6 months.
What are Indiscriminate Attachments?
Infants develop the ability to tell apart humans and objects, as well as familiar and unfamiliar individuals, behaving positively, e.g., by smiling, towards the people that they see frequently. However, they do not yet show stranger anxiety or separation anxiety.
What ages do Discriminate (specific) Attachments apply to?
From 7-12 months.
What are Discriminate (specific) Attachments?
Infants form a strong attachment to a primary caregiver, looking to them for security and protection and showing joy upon their reunion. It is in this stage that separation anxiety and stranger anxiety develop.
What ages do Multiple Attachments apply to?
One year onwards.
What are Multiple Attachments?
The infant starts to form attachments with other regular caregivers, e.g., siblings, grandparents, and stranger anxiety starts to decrease. They are sometimes referred to as secondary attachments. They typically form in the first month after the primary attachment is formed and the number of multiple attachments which develop depends on the social circle to whom the infant is exposed.
Key study: Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - Aim
To examine the formation of early attachments.
Key study: Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - Method
- Longitudinal observation.
- Sample consisted of 60 babies (31 males and 29 females) from working class families in Glasgow aged between 5-23 weeks at the start of the investigation.
- The researchers visited the babies in their homes, every month for the first 12 months and then once again at 18 months.
- The researchers interviewed the mothers and observed the children in relation to separation and stranger anxiety in a range of everyday activities.
Key study: Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - Findings
- The results provided some support for the different stages of developing attachments.
- At around 25-32 weeks, 50% of the children showed separation anxiety towards their mothers as expected of the discriminate attachment stage and 30% had started to form multiple attachments.
- In the 18-month follow-up, 87% had developed multiple attachments.
- The strongest attachment was to those mothers with consistent caregiver-infant interaction.
Key study: Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - Conclusion
The findings provide some support for Schaffer’s stages of attachment and suggest that attachments develop through a series of stages across the first year of life. They also support the idea that the quality of the caregiver-infant interaction is fundamental in determining the strength of the attachment.
Schaffer’s Stages of Attachment - Strength
Point: One strength of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment is that it has important practical applications in understanding child development.
Evidence: Their identification of the four stages of attachment has been used to inform parenting practices and early childhood education. For example, infants in the asocial and indiscriminate stage of attachment don’t show any separation or stranger anxiety yet, therefore they can be comforted by any adult. However, daycare with an unfamiliar adult may be problematic for infants in the discriminate attachment stage as the infant suffers from separation and stranger anxiety during this stage.
Justification: Understanding the natural progression of attachment stages helps caregivers and professionals understand when children should be developing particular attachment behaviours, allowing them to identify potential issues early and intervene when necessary.
Implication: This enhances the practical utility of Schaffer and Emerson’s work in real-world contexts as such research can be used to improve child welfare services and promote healthy emotional development.
Counterargument: However, while Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment are useful for understanding general patterns in child development, their application may be oversimplified and not universally applicable to all children.
Evidence: Research has shown that cultural differences can influence attachment patterns. For example, in some cultures, children may form attachments at different rates or in different ways than those observed in the original study. Furthermore, children with unique needs, such as those in foster care or children who experience early trauma, may not follow the same developmental trajectory as described by Schaffer and Emerson.
Justification: This suggests that the stages of attachment outlined by Schaffer and Emerson may not fully capture the diversity of attachment experiences. Cultural and individual factors can influence attachment development, meaning that the theory may not be applicable in all cases.
Implication: The generalisability and practical utility of Schaffer and Emerson’s stages of attachment may be limited by these factors. While their work provides a useful framework, it’s important to consider individual differences and cultural contexts when applying the theory in real-world settings.
Schaffer’s Stages of Attachment - Weakness
Point: A limitation of Schaffer and Emerson’s research is that it suffers from issues related to sampling.
Evidence: The sample consisted of 60 infants and their mothers, all from working-class families in Glasgow, with a fairly even split between males (31) and females (29).
Justification: This sample lacks diversity in both socioeconomic and cultural background. Families from different social classes may have different patterns of caregiving and attachment, meaning the findings may not reflect the experiences of middle or upper class families. Additionally, the sample being drawn entirely from Glasgow limits its cultural scope. Attachment behaviours and parenting styles can vary significantly across different cultures, which this study fails to capture. Moreover, this study was conducted over 60 years ago and may be inapplicable today due to differences in childrearing practices.
Implication: Consequently, this limits the population and temporal validity of the findings, as they may not be generalisable beyond working-class families in 1960s Glasgow. The narrow and homogenous sample reduces the applicability of the conclusions to families from other regions, time periods and cultural contexts.
Schaffer’s Stages of Attachment - Strength
Point: One strength of Schaffer and Emerson’s research is its high applicability to real-life scenarios.
Evidence: The study was conducted in each infant’s own home using observations and interviews with the primary caregiver. This familiar setting meant that both the infant and caregiver were more likely to behave naturally. Moreover, strangers visiting the family home and the caregiver temporarily leaving the room are normal occurrences making this setting the most favourable.
Justification: By observing children in their everyday environment rather than in an artificial lab setting, the study reduced the likelihood of demand characteristics or unnatural behaviour, ensuring more authentic responses in relation to attachment formation.
Implication: Such mundane realism enhances the external validity of the research, as the findings are more likely to generalise to real-world settings involving families of similar demographics, thereby strengthening the study’s relevance to everyday caregiving contexts.
Counterargument: However, Schaffer and Emerson’s research may be criticised for the possibility of social desirability bias.
Evidence: The study relied on interviews with mothers about their infants’ behaviour, and some may have unintentionally exaggerated or misrepresented their children’s development to appear as more favourable, nurturing mothers with secure infants with their child(ren).
Justification: This could lead to inaccurate reporting, undermining the reliability of the data.
Implication: Consequently, although the natural setting strengthens external validity, the reliance on potentially biased parental reports weakens internal validity, as it may not accurately reflect true attachment behaviour.
Schaffer’s Stages of Attachment - Strength
Point: A methodological strength of Schaffer and Emerson’s study is its longitudinal design.
Evidence: The same children were observed and assessed repeatedly over a period of 12 months and then once again at 18 months, which allowed the researchers to track the development of attachment behaviours over time.
Justification: This longitudinal approach is beneficial because it enables researchers to observe actual developmental changes, rather than making assumptions or drawing conclusions based on one-off measurements. By observing the same participants across different stages of their lives, Schaffer and Emerson were able to track attachment development as it happened naturally.
Implication: As a result, this enhances the internal validity of the study’s findings, since the use of the same participants helps to minimise confounding variables that might arise from individual differences between participants, which can be a significant issue in cross-sectional studies. Additionally, the consistency in measurement allows researchers to make more confident conclusions about the causal relationships between stages of attachment and behavioural changes.
