Schaffer's Stages of Attachment

Question 1

What was the procedure for Schaffer & Emersons research?

Answer 1

• Study involved 60 babies- 31 boys, 29 girls
• All from Glasgow-Majorty working class
• Researchers visited babies & mothers in own homes every month for first year & again at 18 months
• Researchers asked mothers questions about kinds of protests babies showed in seven everyday separations e.g. adult leaving room-measure of separation anxiety

Was designed to measure babies attachment

Question 2

What were Schaffer & Emersons findings?

Answer 2

Identified the 4 distinct stages in the development of infant attachment behaviour

Question 3

What are Schaffer & Emersons 4 stages of attachment?

Answer 3

• Asocial Attachment
• Indiscriminate Attachment
• Specific Attachment
• Multiple Attachment

Question 4

What is the asocial stage of attachment?

Answer 4

• Bab’y 1st few weeks of life-behaviour towards humans & objects are fairly similar
• Tend to show signs that they prefer being with other people
• Baby is beginning to form bonds w certain people & these form the basis of later attachment

Question 5

What is the indiscriminate stage of attachment?

Answer 5

• 2-7mo babies start to display more obvious & observable social behaviours
• Now show a clear preference for being with humans instead of inanimate objects
• Do not usually show separation anxiety when caregivers leave their prescence or stranger anxiety in prescence of unfamiliar people

Question 6

What is the specific stage of attachment?

Answer 6

From around 7mo majority of babies begin to display classic signs of attachment towards one particular person

• Signs include- anxiety towards strangers, (especially when attachment figure is absent)
• & anxiety when seperated from attachment figure
• The person who this attachment is formed is the primary attachment figure.
• PAF figure is not necessarily who baby spends most time with but who has most interaction & responds to baby’s ‘signals’

Question 7

What is the multiple stage of attachment?

Answer 7

Shortly after babies start to show attachment behaviour to one person they usually extend this behaviour to multiple attachments with other people they regularly spend time with

These relationships are secondary attachments

Question 8

What is one strength of Schaffer & Emersons study?

Answer 8

• Has good external validity
• Most of observations were made by parents during ordinary activities & reported to researchers
• Alternative would have been to have researchers present to record observations-this might have distracted babies or made them feel more anxious

Question 9

What are the issues of asking the mothers to be ‘observers’?

Answer 9

• Might have been biased in terms of what they noiced & what they reported

e.g. they might not have noticed when thier baby was showing signs of anxiety/misremembered it- meaning if babies behaved naturally their behaviour may not have been accurately recorded

Question 10

What is one limitation of Schaffer & Emerson’s stages of attachment?

Answer 10

• The validity of the measures they used to assess attachment in the asocial stage
• Young babies have poor coordination & are fairly immobile
• If babies less than 2 months old felt anxiety in everyday situations they might have displayed this in subtle-hard to observe ways

Meaning that babies may actually be quite social but because of flawed methods, they appear to be asocial

Question 11

Give another strength of Schaffer & Emersons stages of attachment.

Answer 11

• These stages can have practical application in daycare
• In asocial & indiscriminant attachment stages daycare likely to be straight forward as babies can be comforted by any skilled adult
• Schaffer & Emersons research tells us that day care, especially starting day-care with an unfmailliar adult may be problamatic during the specific attachment stage

Meaning that parents’ use of day care can be planned using Schaffer & Emersons stages