The Development of Attachment Flashcards
What are the 4 stages of attachment?
What age does each stage occur?
- Asocial stage (0-2 months)
- Presocial stage (2-7 months)
- Specific attachment (7 months onwards)
- Multiple attachments (7 months to about a year)
What takes place in the 1st stage of attachment?
Asocial stage
Infants produce a similar response to all objects, animate or inanimate.
Infants begin to prefer social stimuli like a smiling face. Reciprocity and Interactional Synchrony play a significant role in this stage
What takes place in the 2nd stage of attachment?
Presocial Stage
Infants become more social. They prefer animate to inanimate objects.
No stranger anxiety yet, enjoy being social with anyone.
What takes place in the 3rd stage of attachment?
Specific Attachment
Seperation anxiety begins to develop with one person.
They are especially happy when this person is reunited with them.
They have formed a primary attachment with this person
Stranger anxiety also develops
What did Schaffer and Emerson find about strong attachments?
It is about quality of time spent with each other, not quantity.
Responsive, attentive mothers formed the strongest attachments with their infant.
What takes place in the 4th stage of attachment?
Multiple Attachments
Secondary attachments are formed with people other than the mother, such as with siblings, grandparents, father, neighbours.
By one year, majority of infants have formed secondary attachments (Schaffer and Emerson)
Outline Schaffer and Emerson’s study
60 Working Class Infants studied
5-23 weeks old
Studied until the age of 1
Mothers visited once every 4 weeks and reported their infant’s response to separation in 7 EVERYDAY SITUATIONS
Mother also asked to describe the intensity of any protest to separation which was rated on a scale 1-4
Mother also asked to say who the protest was directed at
AO3 -
Unreliable Data
Based on mothers reports of infants.
Mothers may have been less sensitive to infants’ protests and therefore not report them or rank them as intense.
This would create a bias which would reduce validity of the data
AO3 -
Biased Sample
Working class sample, findings may be unique to that class and not others
Sample was from 1960s, parental care has changed since then.
(More women work so there is more time spent in childcare rather than just with mother. Also, fathers are more likely to stay home and be primary carer now than they were.)
If the same study was done today, results may be different.
