Schaffers Stages Of Attachment - A03

Question 1

Strength - good external validity

Answer 1

• Schaffer and Emerson’s study was carried out in the families’ own homes and most of the observation (other than stranger anxiety) was actually done by parents during ordinary activities and reported to researchers later.
• This means that the behaviour of the babies was unlikely to be affected by the presence of observers.
• There is an excellent chance that participants behaved naturally while being observed.
• We can therefore say the study has good external validity.

Question 2

Strength - longitudinal design

Answer 2

• A strength of the study was that it was carried out longitudinally.
• This means that the same children were followed-up and observed regularly.
  The quicker alternative would have been to observe different children at each age.
• This is called a cross-sectional design.
• However, longitudinal designs have better internal validity than cross-sectional designs because they do not have the confounding variable of individual differences between participants (participant variables).

Question 3

Limitation - limited sample characteristics

Answer 3

• The sample size of 60 babies and their carers was good considering the large volume of data that was gathered on each participant.
• However, the fact that all the families involved were from the same district and social class in the same city and at a time over 50 years ago is a limitation.
• Child-rearing practices vary from one culture to another and one historical period to another.
• These results do not necessarily generalise well to other social and historical contexts.

Question 4

Limitation - problem studying asocial stage of attachment

Answer 4

• Schaffer and Emerson describe the first few weeks of life as the ‘asocial’ stage, although important interactions take place in those weeks. - The problem here is that babies that are young have poor co-ordination and are generally pretty much immobile.
• It is therefore very difficult to make any judgments about them based on observations of their behaviour.
• There just isn’t much observable behaviour!
• This does not mean the child’s feelings and cognitions are not highly social but the
  evidence cannot be relied on.

Question 5

Limitation - conflicting evidence on multiple attachments

Answer 5

• Although there is no doubt that children become capable of multiple attachments at some point, it is still not entirely clear when.
• Some research seems to indicate that most if not all babies form attachments to a single main carer before they become capable of developing multiple attachments (Bowlby, 1969).
• Other psychologists, in particular those who work in those cultural contexts where multiple caregivers are the norm, believe babies form multiple attachments from the outset (van IJzendoorn et al. 1993).
• Such cultures are called collectivist because families work together jointly in everything - such as producing food and child rearing

Question 6

Limitation - measuring multiple attachments

Answer 6

• There may be a problem with how multiple attachment is assessed. Just because a baby gets distressed when an individual leaves the room does not necessarily mean that the individual is a ‘true’ attachment figure.
• Bowlby (1969) pointed out that children have playmates as well as attachment figures and may get distressed when a playmate leaves the room but this does not signify attachment.
• This is a problem for Schaffer and Emerson’s stages because their observation does not leave us a way to distinguish between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and shown towards playmates.