The Influence Of Early Attachment Flashcards
What is the internal working model?
A mental model of the world which enables individuals to predict and control their environment.
In the case of attachment the model relates to a person’s expectations about relationships.
What is the role of the internal working model?
Bowlby’s concept of it is similar to a schema (basically a concept but a bit more). For example, you can now define imprinting. That’s the basic concept, but you also know how imprinting happens and why it happens. That’s a schema.
The internal model is like this. An infant learns about a relationship from experience - the infant learns what relationships are and how partners in a relationship behave towards each other.
It is an operable model of self and attachment partner, based on their joint attachment history (Bretherton and Mulholland, 1999).
It is operable because it is used to predict the behaviour of other people in the future.
Who designed a study to test the internal working model and when?
Hazan and Shaver
1987
What was Hazan and shaver’s procedure?
They placed a ‘love quiz’ in the Rocky Mountain news (American small town paper).
The quiz asked questions about current attachment experiences and about attachment history to identify current and childhood attachment types. It also asked about attitudes towards love, an assessment of the internal working model.
They analysed 620 responses, 205 from men and 415 from women, from a fair cross-section of the population.
What did Hazan and Shaver find?
56% were classified are secure, 25% avoidant and 19% resistant.
They also found a positive correlation between attachment type and love experiences.
Securely attached adults described their love experiences as happy, friendly and trusting. These relationships were also more enduring (10 years) compared to avoidant and resistant (5/6 years).
Finally, they found a relationship between the concept of love (internal working model) and attachment type.
What behaviours are influenced by the internal working model?
Childhood friendships
Poor parenting
Romantic relationships
Mental health
How are childhood friendships influenced by the internal working model?
The Minnesota child-parent study found continuity between early attachment and later emotional/social behaviour.
Individuals who were classified a securely attached in infancy were highest rate for social competence later in childhood, were less isolated and more popular, and more empathetic.
This can be explained in terms of the internal working model because securely attached infants have higher expectations that other are friendly and trusting, and this would enable easier relationships with others.
How is poor parenting influenced by the internal working model?
Harlow’s research with monkeys also demonstrated a link between poor attachment and later difficulties with parenting.
A study by Quinton which showed that the same is true in humans.
The lack of an internal working model means that individuals lack a reference
How are romantic relationships influenced by the internal working model?
The study by Hazan and Shaver demonstrated a link between early attachment type and later relationships.
Individuals who were securely attached has longer-lasting romantic relationships.
How is mental health influenced by the internal working model?
The lack of an attachment during the sensitive period in development would result in a lack of an internal working model.
Children with attachment disorder have no preferred attachment figure, an inability to interact and relate to others that is evident before the age of 5, and experience of severe neglect or frequent change of caregivers.
For some time a conditioned called attachment disorder has been recognised but it has recently been classed as a distinct psychiatric condition and included in the DSM.
What are the evaluative points for the internal working model?
Research is correlational Retrospective classification Overly determinist Low correlations An alternative explanation
What is meant by research is correlational?
The research linking the internal working model/early attachment with later relationships experiences is correlational rather than experimental, and therefore we cant claim that the relationship between early attachment and, for example, later love styles is one of cause and effect.
In fact it is possible that both attachment style and later love styles are caused by something different - such as innate temperament.
An infants temperament affects the way a parent responds and thus may be a determining factor in infant attachment type.
The individuals temperament may explain their issues (good or bad) with relationships later in life. In this case temperament is an intervening variable.
What is meant by retrospective classification?
Most studies (e.g. Hazan and shaver) rely on retrospective classification -asking adults questions about their early lives in order to assess infant attachment.
Such recollections are likely to be flawed because our memories of the past are not always accurate, but longitudinal studies also support Hazan and shavers findings.
For example, an ongoing longitudinal study (Simpson, 2007) assessed infant attachment type at one year of age.
Researchers also found that pps who were securely attached as infants were rated as having high social competence as children, close to their friends at age 16 and were more expressive and were emotionally attached to their romantic partners in early adulthood.
This support the view that attachment type does predict relationships in adult life.
What is meant by overly deterministic?
The research suggests that very early experiences have a fixed effect on later adult relationships and, therefore, children who are insecurely attached at 1 year of age are doomed to experience emotionally unsatisfactory relationships as adults.
This is fortunately not the case as researchers have found plenty of instances where pps were experiencing happy adult relationships despite not having been securely attached as infants.
As Simpson (2007) concluded, the research doesn’t suggest that an individual’s past unalterably determines the future course of his/her relationships.
What is meant by low correlations?
Not all research has found a strong positive correlation between early attachment and later relationships.
Fraley (2002) conducted a review of 27 samples where infants were assessed in infancy and later reassessed (ranging from 1 month to 20 years later).
He found correlations ranging from .50 to as low as .10.
Such correlations do not suggest that attachment type is very stable, but Fraley suggested that one reason for low correlations may be because insecure-anxious attachment is more unstable.
Such low correlations would pull down the overall correlations.
