Stages Of Attachment

Question 1

What are the 4 stages of attachment

Answer 1

1. Asocial stage
2. Indiscriminate stage
3. Specific attachment
4. Multiple attachments

Question 2

What does ‘All Infants Say Mum’ stand for

Answer 2

Asocial, indiscriminate, specific, multiple attachments

Question 3

Outline Schaffer and Emerson’s (1964) research into the formation of early attachments

Answer 3

METHOD
- involved 60 babies, 31 male and 29 female from working-class families in Glasgow
- the mothers were visited every month for the first year and then again at 18 months
- they were asked questions about the kind of protest that the babies showed in 7 everyday separations
- parents also kept a diary of their observations
FINDINGS
- between 25 and 32 weeks 50% of infants showed separation anxiety towards a particular adult (typically the mother) this is a specific attachment
- by 40 weeks 80% of infants had a specific attachment And 29% displayed multiple attachments

Question 4

What is the asocial stage

Answer 4

• Infants can’t distinguish between people and objects.
• babies may show some preference to human features towards the end of the stage
• first few weeks

Question 5

What is the indiscriminate stage

Answer 5

• infants have a preference to people over objects
• They have no preference for particular humans
• accept comfort and cuddles and comfort from any adults therefore INDISCRIMINATE
• between 2-7 months
• no separation or stranger anxiety

Question 6

What is the specific attachment stage

Answer 6

• from around 7 months infants start to show stranger anxiety and separation anxiety from one particular adult (this is the specific attachment)
• this favoured adult is the primary attachment figure

Question 7

What is the multiple attachments stage

Answer 7

• shortly after an infant forms a specific attachments they will start to extend this behaviour towards other adults they spend time with (secondary attachments)
• in Schaffer and Emerson’s study 29% of infants formed a secondary attachment within a month of forming a primary attachment
• by around the age of 1 most infants would have formed multiple attachments

Question 8

AO3 evaluation of the stages of attachment

Answer 8

• difficult to gather meaningful data about the asocial stage as infant behaviour may not be deliberate making it questionable and unreliable
• Schaffer and Emerson’s study may lack population validity as it only looked at people from Glasgow who were working class (cultural bias) making findings hard to apply to other cultures
• Schaffer and Emersons study used a good sample size with no gender bias making the results more reliable, high internal validity
  The problem with stage theories is that they propose a fixed order for development. For example, in some cultures, multiple attachments might come first. This will be problematic if the stages become a standard to which some families are judged and classed as abnormal

Question 9

what do the stages of attachment tell us about human attachment

Answer 9

• highlighted that attachment is INNATE as people are following similar stages, if the attachment wasn’t innate we wouldn’t have a similar timeframe for attachment
• this is in line with Bowlby’s theory of human attachment