Stages Of Attachment -Schaffer And Emmerson Flashcards
stages of attachment
Qualitatively different behaviours are linked to specific ages. All babies go through them in the same order.
asocial stage
Babies’ behaviour towards non-human objects and humans is similar.
indiscriminate attachments
Babies start to show a preference for people, but their behaviour is not different towards any one person
specific attachments
Babies start to develop stranger anxiety as they have formed a specific attachment to one adult
multiple attachments
Attachments to two or more people. Most babies appear to develop multiple attachments once they have formed one strong attachment to one of their caregivers
primary attachment
The person who a baby forms a specific attachment with. This may not be the person the infant spends the most time with, but the person who offers the most interaction.
secondary attachments
The relationships that are formed between infants and other caregivers after their primary attachment.
separation anxiety
The degree of distress shown by the child when separated from the caregiver.
stranger anxiety
The degree of distress shown by an infant when with unfamiliar people.
Schaffer and Emmerson Research (1964)
What are some strengths about the study?
(+)This study was a longitudinal study. The same children were followed up over the 18 months of the study. This means it has good internal validity as there are no confounding variables such as individual differences that would be found if different children were studied. Psychologists can therefore be certain that the stages of attachment that were created based on this research show how individual children develop over time.
(+) The study has good external validity. It was carried out in the families’ own homes. This means that the environment is ‘natural’ for the parents and children, and therefore applicable to everyday situations. Furthermore, most of the observations (other than stranger anxiety) were done by the parents during ordinary activities and reported back to the researchers later. This shows that the study also has good mundane realism as the ‘tasks’ being completed will have been reflective of what typically occurs for the infants and their caregivers.
What are some limitations about the study?
(-) The sample of the study was 60 babies and their caregivers. This is a large sample size, especially considering the vast amount of data gathered on each participant. However, despite the large sample size, all of the babies studied were from the same district and social class in Glasgow. Child-reading practices vary from one culture to another. The results collected may therefore not generalise well to other social contexts, as the behaviour may not be representative of different types of individuals from other social classes and locations.
(-) As the observations were carried out by the mothers, the results may have been prone to bias and inaccuracy. Mothers may have focused on specific behaviours displayed by the children or may not have focused on behaviours they did not want the researchers to know about. This limits the validity of the findings as the accuracy of the mothers’ observations cannot be guaranteed.
What are the stages of attachment?
What are some strengths of the stages of attachment?
-widely recognised and adopted by other people in the world
-stages are objective and therefore can clearly identify what stage you are at
- explanation is based on the research done by Schaffer and Emmerson. Therefore the explanation is based on empirical evidence.
What are some limitations of the stages of attachment?
(-) The behaviours used to measure attachment are crude. Schaffer and Emerson used stranger and separation anxiety to distinguish which stage of attachment an infant was in. Attachment may involve more complex emotions and behaviours than the two typically used. This suggests that the stages are reductionist as they do not consider all factors involved with attachment.
(-)Carpenter (1975) found that babies can recognise and are drawn to their mothers from an early age. They presented infants with familiar and unfamiliar voices and faces. Sometimes the voices and faces would be congruent i.e., of the same person. He found that two-week-old babies looked at a face longer when it was the mother’s accompanied by her own voice but became distressed by the sight
of her face with a different voice i.e., when there was incongruence. This contradicts Shaffer and Emerson’s belief that babies are initially drawn to any person interacting with them.
