Theorists Flashcards
Who are the 4 attachment theorists?
Bowlby, Ainsworth, Rutter and Schaffer and Emerson
What was Bowlby’s theory?
The importance of attachment of children’s later lives. He suggested that babies were born primed to develop an attachment to 1 key person.
Who did Bowlby focus the child’s attachment to be with?
Mother
Why do babies need that one attachment? - Bowlby.
Suggested it was a survival instinct because of attaching to one person, the baby could be protected and have their needs met.
What happens if a child is deprived of a mother in the early years of their life? - Bowlby.
would affect their later social and emotional development
Definition of maternal deprivation? - Bowlby.
Being deprived of a mother in the early years affecting their social and emotional development.
What are the 3 clear stages of separation anxiety? - Bowlby.
- protest
- Despair
- Detachment
What’s the protest stage in Bowlby’s theory?
In the early stages of not being with their mothers, children cry and are very distressed.
What’s the Despair stage in Bowlby’s theory?
Children become withdrawn and very quiet - they’ve given up hope.
What’s the detachment stage in Bowlby’s theory?
After a period of separation children “give up” on their attachment and when reunited will avoid contact with their parent.
What’s Bowlby’s internal working model?
He was one of the 1st to recognise that the quality of the 1st bond a child makes will be a template for later relationships + for the child’s views of others
Criticisms of Bowlby’s work =
- Only focused on the mother providing the attachment
- He suggested that babies would make a bond only with one person - monotropy
- That mothers should stay with their babies for the first 2 years of their lives.
How has Bowlby’s work changed many practices?
Policies in hospitals and early years settings: parents can now stay over and / visit the children when they are in hospital.
In early years: They now have settling in policies to ensure babies do not become distressed due to missing their parents.
Continued contact for absent parents - shows the importance of children having continued contact with absent parents. Eg: Family breakdown - explains why when contact between absent parent and child breaks down because children are reluctant to spend time with them because of detachment.
What’s Ainsworth’s theory? Compared to Bowlby’s.
Quality of attachment to the mother, she considered how sensitive mothers were to their babies’ needs while Bowlby focused on the physical presence of the mother.
What was the experiment that Ainsworth did to test the quality of attachment that babies had with their mothers?
The strange situation
How old were the babies in the strange situation experiment? - between __ and ___ months
between 9 and 18 months.
What happened in part 1 of the strange situation? - Ainsworth
- Child and mother put in a room + mother is asked to not participate as baby explores.
- Stranger enters + talks to parent. + parent leaves the room
- Stranger engages with the child, following their cues
- The parent comes back in and stranger leaves.
What happened in part 2 of the strange situation? - Ainsworth
- Parent leaves the room and child is alone
- Stranger comes in and engages with child and follows their cues
- Parent enters and stranger leaves.
What did Ainsworth look at during this experiment?
Many aspects of the child’s reactions - when parent left then came back in
Ainsworth also considered how much the child explored and interacted with the stranger
What are the 4 types of attachment? - Ainsworth.
- Secure attachment
- Insecure avoidant attachment
-Insecure ambivalent / resistant attachment - Disorganised disorientated attachment
Features of the secure attachment =
- Parents are sensitive to their child’s needs
- Babies are able to explore when their parent is present as they can use them as a safe base
- They are relaxed when the stranger is present alongside parent
- Shows distress when parent leaves
- Pleased to see parent return and quick to calm down.
Features of the Insecure avoidant attachment =
- Babies tend to ignore parent + doesn’t react when parent leaves
- Don’t explore much
- Show no fear of stranger
- Parent’s who routinely ignore child’s needs
Features of the insecure ambivalent / resistant attachment =
- Clingy to parent even before experiment started
- Very fearful of stranger
- When parent returned baby was hard to comfort + settle down.
- Babies shows anger + helplessness
- Parents who are inconsistent - needs are sometimes met.
Features of the disorganised - disorientated attachment =
- Added after it was noted that some children didn’t fit into the other 3.
- Babies showed a range of emotions eg: fear, freezing
Some wanted to be close with parent and others didn’t. - Babies don’t show a pattern in this category.
What has Ainsworth’s theory influenced?
- Advice to parents - now understood that tuning into children and being sensitive to their needs can affect later development.
- Classes eg: baby massage are used to increase the amount of responsiveness between parent + child.
Research identified that parents who had experienced trauma eg: bereavement + depression = more likely to have children with disorganised disorientated attachment. - Link between attachment and depression is now increasingly recognised and more support provided to parents.
Criticisms of Ainsworth’s experiment =
- Babies’ experiences of being left with others may affect their responses.
- Parents may be responding to their babies’ temperament eg: some babies at birth are easier to settle than others.
- Not considered to be reliable when carried out in other cultures.
What was Rutter’s theory?
He used Bowlby’s work as a starting point for his own research. Concluded that he failed to see the difference between a baby who has never formed a relationship with a mother and one who did and then experienced separation.
-Used the terms privation and deprivation.
What does privation mean?
Babies’ who have never formed an attachment
What does deprivation mean?
Babies’ who had been separated from their mothers.
What are the different effects of privation and deprivation? - Rutter.
He saw that children who had never formed an attachment fared worse than those who had started off with an attachment.
They were more likely to show attention - seeking behaviours and to be dependent, as well as being ready to form relationships + friendships with anyone. The effects in later life included: antisocial behaviour + lack of empathy.
How does cognitive and language development link to attachment according to Rutter?
He saw that as well as providing an emotional template attachment has a role in supporting cognitions of attachment.
Influence in the world - Rutter’s theory
His work has helped:
- Early years settings to recognise the role of attachment in children’s education, emotional and social development - helped professionals to work on the quality of attachments.
Also meant that young babies who are removed into care are usually put with a foster family so they can develop an attachment. - because the experience of having an attachment is recognised as being protective.
Criticisms of Rutter’s theory =
- Based on his choice of case histories - as number involved are relatively small.
What is Schaffer and Emerson’s theory
They were looking and understanding how babies form and develop attachments. They looked at the babies for the first 18 months of their lives. They visited them monthly in their homes + asked parents to keep a diary. When visiting the parents, researchers noted the adults’ sensitivity to the children as well as their interactions.
True or false: They observed that the quality of responses mattered more than the length of time that an adult spends with them. - Schaffer and Emerson.
True
What are the 4 stages - how babies developed attachments. - Schaffer and Emerson.
- Asocial stage
- Indiscriminate attachment
- Specific attachment
- Multiple attachments
What’s the Asocial stage? - 0-6 weeks.
Infants behaviour is directed at anyone / anything positive reaction (smiling). - They stare at human faces / representations of faces (smiling sun).
What’s the indiscriminate attachment stage? - 6 weeks - 7 months.
Children are happy to be with anyone but from around 3 months they start to smile more at familiar faces + likely to be soothed easily by a familiar adult. They have no fear of strangers + can be left without showing separation anxiety.
What’s the specific attachment stage? - 7 months +
Babies develop 1 special person - clear preference to.
They show separation anxiety when this adult is not available.
Show stranger anxiety.
What’s the multiple attachments stage? - 10 months.
Babies regularly see other adults (grandparents, childminders, early years practitioners - can develop attachments to them. The quality of these attachments will depend on the responsiveness of the adult - not the amount of time spent with them.
Meaning of stranger anxiety - Schaffer and Emerson
When babies start to be fearful of unfamiliar adults even when they are with their parents.
Where has the work of Schaffer and Emerson about the sequence of attachment been used?
Some settings to influence their settling in policies.
Influence of Schaffer’s and Emerson’s work =
- Able to show that Bowlby’s theory that babies attach to one caregiver was not accurate.
- They were able to show that quality of adult response mattered more than time.
-Proved reassuring for working parents - who now know that provided they spend “quality time” with their baby an attachment can still be formed.
Criticisms of Schaffer and Emerson’s theory.
- Sample size too small
- Reliant on parent observation
- Study wasn’t carried out in several different geographical areas - may be cultural bias.
What did Noam Chomsky suggest?
He suggested that babies were born with the potential to learn language. He proposed that this was innate or instinctive.
He also looked at the way in which children and babies appear to follow a pattern in terms of how they learn language + are able to detect grammar.
What does language acquisition device refer to (LAD)?
To talk about the structures in the brain that made this possible.
What’s universal grammar? - Chomsky
That all human languages share a deep structure rooted in a set of grammatical rules and categories.
Universal grammar is understood intuitively by all humans.
What does poverty of the stimulus mean? - Chomsky.
He argued that the linguistic input received by children is often insufficient for them to learn the complexities of their native language solely through imitation / reinforcement. - yet children rapidly + consistently master native langs - pointing to inherent cognitive structures.
What does critical period mean? - Chomsky.
He put forward a critical period for language acquisition, during where the brain is particularly receptive to linguistic input, making language learning more efficient.
Strengths of Chomsky’s theory:
- Emphasises on the innate nature of language acquisition.
- His theory influenced the field of linguistics, leading to advancements in our understanding of language structure and syntax.
What are criticisms of Chomsky’s theory?
- Lack of concrete evidence for the existence of universal grammar.
- Challenging to empirically prove the existence of a universal grammar shared by all languages.
- Oversimplify the complexity of language acquisition + overlook the environmental factors in shaping language development.
What did Piaget suggest?
That there were 4 stages in the development of children’s thinking.
What was Piaget’s view of language?
Was that it’s a tool to support thinking and so it reflects their level of understanding at the time.
Egocentric speech =
To describe when talk is not aimed at anyone else - children talk out loud to themselves when they play.
