Social- Emotional Development: 2. Attachment Flashcards
What is attachment?
“a close emotional relationship between two persons, characterised by mutual affection and a desire to maintain proximity (closeness).” (Eysenck)
“an emotional bond with a specific person that is enduring across space and time. Usually, attachments are discussed in regard to the relation between infants and specific caregivers, although they can also occur in adulthood” (Siegler)
What is attachment in terms of child development?
The affectional ties or emotional bonds that children form with their primary caregivers.
This includes: a desire for proximity a sense of security feelings of distress when the person is absent ties endure beyond infancy
Research questions regarding attachment
What aspects of early interaction are important for establishing bonds between infant and parent?
How important is the quality of early interaction between infant and parent for later development?
What bonds a caregiver and infant?
Harlow
primary needs or intimate contact?
Harlow’s work with infant rhesus monkeys
Experiments:
IV = aspect of mother available to infant
DV = amount of time with ‘mother’, feeding time, returning when threatened.
Effects on later development (Harlow)
Behaviour as adolescents. Aggressive interaction – no normal play.
Behaviour as adults. Isolated monkeys abnormal sexual behaviour
Length of time of deprivation experience. Up to 3 months, no problem; 6 months or more dramatic disturbances
Importance of interaction with other members of the species - nurturing adults, peers.
Do these findings generalise to human infants?
Bowlby- attachment theory
Ethology: Imprinting – Konrad Lorenz
Close contact with adult essential for development.
Attachment behaviour is pre-wired in humans to keep immature infants close to their parents.
Traits and behaviours part of an evolutionary, adaptive system.
Review of findings of studies of institutionalised children for World Health Organisation.
Concept of Maternal Deprivation with emphasis on role of biological mother.
Breaking the maternal bond with the child during the early years of life is likely to have serious effects on intellectual, social and emotional development.
Bowlby- attachment theory stages
Infant responds in similar way to everyone.
Approx. 5 months: discriminates among people – preference for primary caregiver.
Around 7 months stays close to primary caregiver; ‘separation protest’.
3 years + : goal corrected partnership – shows some sensitivity to caregiver’s needs.
5 years internal working model of child – caregiver relationship.
Ainsworth- The Strange Situation
Research strategy for investigating attachment behaviour.
Attachment behaviour observed in company of parent, and in separation and reunion episodes.
Patterns of attachment behaviour
Main, Kapan and Cassidy (1985) identified a fourth type of attachment behaviour.
Classifications: Anxious-avoidant Secure attachment Anxious-resistant Disorganised – disoriented
Fraley and Spieker (2003) opposition to conventional classification of attachment behaviour
Fraley and Spieker (2003) argued that it is an oversimplification to assign children’s attachment patterns to three (or four) categories.
e.g., Two children might both be classified as showing avoidant attachment, but one may display more avoidant behaviour.
Dimensions of :
Avoidance/withdrawal vs proximity seeking
Angry and resistant vs emotional confidence
Parenting factors and attachment
Key parent behaviour:
Sensitive responsiveness on part of carer
Responsive to signals of infant
Key feature of interaction - a secure base to explore the world.
How early attachment influences later behaviour
children develop an internal working model of relationships.
Early experience persists in the expectations the child has about responses from carers.
Evidence for the internal working model
Habituation paradigm:
Infant behaviour is pre-verbal
Event repeated until it becomes ‘expected’
New event – looking time recorded
Prediction:
Expected → shorter looking time
Unexpected → longer looking time
Test trials observed parent:
return to distressed child OR
observed parent continue to move away.
Research findings for the internal working model
Children previously identified as securely attached to their caregiver looked longer (were more surprised) when the parent continued moving away from the distressed child than when the parent returned to the child.
In contrast, children previously identified as insecurely attached showed little discrimination between the two events.
Internal working model of relationships – expectations about the behaviour of the other.
Cross cultural factors and attachment
Sagi, Ijzendoorn & Koren-Karie (1991) used the Strange Situation methodology to test attachment in infants in US, Israel, Japan and Germany.
A cross-national comparison of data from seven laboratories ( N = 498) was carried out in order to determine (a) whether the pre-separation episodes made any difference in attachment classifications and (b) whether infant behaviour in different countries was indeed the same before separation from the mother.
