Unit 1 - Attachment

Question 1

Define attachment.

Answer 1

A strong emotional and reciprocal bond between two people.

Question 2

Describe the Social Learning Theory.

Answer 2

Classical conditioning - food (UCS) produces pleasure (UCR). The child associates food and mother together. The mother becomes the conditioned stimulus and happiness becomes the conditioned response leading to an attachment formed (Cupboard Love Theory)

Operant conditioning - the presence of the caregiver is reinforcing for the infant. The infant gains pleasure/reward as they are being fed. The behaviour of the infant is reinforcing for the caregiver (from smiles). The reinforcement process is therefore reciprocal and strengthens the emotional bond between the two.

Question 3

Evaluation for SLT.

Answer 3

Harlow’s research suggested monkeys became attached to the soft surrogate mother rather than the one who fed it which suggests that attachment has more to do with comfort than food.

Lorenz found goslings imprinted on the first moving object they saw which suggests attachment is innate and not learnt.

Question 4

Describe bowlby’s theory.

Answer 4

Infants are born with a set of instinctive behaviours which have evolved through natural selection.
Social releasers are signals that are appealing to caregivers and involve the way the infant looks, cries, smiles etc which leads to responses such as feeding and comforting.
There is also a critical period where infants much form an attachment to a caregiver (0-5 years). If ‘window of opportunity’ is missed, the ability to form an attachment is lost.
The child’s relationship with a primary caregiver provides an internal working model which influences later relationships. This concept of monotropy suggests that there is one relationship which is more important than all the rest.

Question 5

Evaluate bowlby’s theory.

Answer 5

Harlows monkeys - showed that monkeys reared in isolation from their mother suffered emotional and social problems in older age. The monkeys never formed an attachment and grew up to be aggressive and had problems interacting with other monkeys.

Question 6

Describe secure attachment.

Answer 6

1) distress on separation
2) pleasure at reunion
3) explored playroom when caregiver was present

Question 7

Describe insecure-resistant attachment.

Answer 7

1) very distressed on separation
2) resisted contact on reunion
3) express anger
4) not willing to explore

Question 8

Describe insecure-avoidant attachment.

Answer 8

1) did not show distress on separation
2) showed very little pleasure on reunion
3) willing to explore

Question 9

Summary of strange situation

Answer 9

1) child plays with mother
2) stranger enters/ mother leaves
3) stranger comforts child
4) mother returns/ stranger leaves
5) child is left alone
6) stranger enters
7) mother enters/ stranger leaves

Question 10

Attachment type stats

Answer 10

Secure = 70%
Avoidant = 20%
Resistant= 10%

Question 11

Evaluation of SST

Answer 11

Lacks population validity - used American infants so cannot be generalised.

Low ecological validity.

Easy to replicate - standardised procedure

Question 12

Discuss research findings on cultural variations.

Answer 12

Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg found that secure attachment was the majority of infants.
Lowest % of secure in China = 50%
Highest % of secure in UK = 75%

Western countries that support independence such as Germany had high levels of insecure avoidant.

Question 13

Evaluation of cultural variations.

Answer 13

Many studies used in the meta analysis had biased samples which cannot claim to be representative of each culture. E.g only 36 infants where used in the Chinese study which is a very small sample size for such a populated country.

Based on assumptions and norms of behaviour in western cultures.

Question 14

What is disruption of attachment?

Answer 14

When children have formed an attachment and are then separated from their attachment figure.

Question 15

What is deprivation?

Answer 15

Being separated from loved ones.

Question 16

What is privation?

Answer 16

Never having had an attachment bond.

Question 17

Attachment disorder (effect of disruption)

Answer 17

Caused by experience of neglect or frequent change of caregivers.
May be withdrawn, lack social skills.
Inhibited (reactive) or disinhibited (overfriendly).

Question 18

Poor parenting (effect of D)

Answer 18

Ex-institutionalised women of ten had difficulties as parents (cycle of privation)

Question 19

Deprivation dwarfism (effect of D)

Answer 19

Children who experience P+D are often physically smaller.

Emotional disturbance may affect the production of hormones.

Question 20

Explain the Genie Case Study. (Effect of privation)

Answer 20

(Failure to form an attachment)
Found at the age of 13. Spent all her life severely neglected and abused. No opportunity to interact with other people.

Genie’s motor skills were very poor and so were her language and cognitive skills. Her language did not develop properly.

Question 21

Evaluation of Genie Study.

Answer 21

She never fully recovered despite spending time with psychologists that worked hard to help her overcome the effects of her early experiences. However, she was able to to develop attachments to her foster carers despite suffering from privation.

Problems with this conclusion as we cannot be sure that Genie’s developmental problems were not present from birth, and not due to experiencing privation.

Question 22

What is institutional care?

Answer 22

Situations where children spend part of their childhood in a hospital, orphan, or a residential home.

Question 23

Describe an effect of institutional care study.

Answer 23

Hodges and Tizard studied the social and emotional development of 65 children who had been in institutional care from a few months old. Carers were discouraged from forming attachments and the children had an average of 50 different caretakers by the age of 4. (Natural experiment)

Question 24

Describe the results of the effect of institutional care study.

Answer 24

All children who had spent their early years in care were more attention seeking and showed some difficulties in their social relationships. For example, they were more likely to be bullies and have no friends. This shows that IC effects peer relationships.

At 16, those adopted were securely attached to new families, but those who returned to biological families were not securely attached.

Question 25

Evaluate the institutional care study.

Answer 25

Natural experiment - high in ecological validity but the extraneous variables were not controlled for, e.g. The adopted children might have been more socially able than the children who remained in the institution.

Attrition was a problem as it was a longitudinal study many participants dropped out.

Question 26

What is day care?

Answer 26

A form of temporary care not given by family members. For example, nurseries or child minders.

Question 27

Study of positive effects on peer relations.

Answer 27

Shea videotaped children during playtime in their first 10 weeks of nursery. The method was a naturalistic observation.

He found children became more sociable and made more contact with others. He concluded that day care is a positive experience and it lowers aggression and increases social skills.

Question 28

Evaluation of peer relations study.

Answer 28

Shea only observed behaviour in one nursery so we may not be apply these results to other situations.

However, the naturalistic nature of the study allows children to engage in normal, comfortable behaviours as they are in their normal setting so high ecological validity. No demand characteristics to alter the child’s behaviour as it was not set up.

Question 29

Study of aggression (day care)

Answer 29

Belsky conducted a longitudinal study researching the development of 1083 children across the U.S. Children in extended hours of care (30 hrs per week) were almost 3 times more likely to show aggressive behaviour than children attending less than 10 hours per week.

Question 30

Study of social development (day care)

Answer 30

Positive - Violata & Russell meta analysis of 88 studies concluded that >20 hours of daycare pw had a negative effect on socio-emotional development, behaviour and attachment of infants.

Question 31

Problem and change to Hodges & Tizard study. (IC)

Answer 31

Carers told not to make attachments with children. Carers changed over time.

Key workers for each child who are encouraged to form attachments. This helps children’s future social and emotional development. Institutions try and keep siblings together when possible.

Question 32

Problem and change to Robertson study. (Hospitalisation)

Answer 32

Strict rules applied to parental visiting times and limits placed on how long parents could spend with their children. This could lead to young children going through the PDD model of behaviour (protest, despair, detachment).

Following the findings of the study that children require continuing emotional care and as much contact as possible with natural parents, visiting hours were extended.

Question 33

Problem and change to day care provision.

Answer 33

Each nursery was different as there was no national standards for best practice.

Research shows children need high quality care including appropriate child/staff ratio, key worker, appropriate staff training, and low staff turnover. The NICHD recommend no higher than 3 children to each carer

Question 34

Harlows monkey study.

Answer 34

Harlow (1958) experimented with the attachments formed between rhesus monkeys and surrogate mothers. surrogate mothers were wire framed models that provided food and therefore satisfied the monkeys’ primary needs, or ones that were comfortable and padded but provided no food. The findings were that the monkeys would cuddle up to and be more distressed at losing the comfortable padded surrogate mother that provided no food than they were the uncomfortable wire-framed surrogate mother that fed them. It would be easy to conclude from this that conditioning does not explain attachment in infant monkeys as they are not linking food with pleasure, but more with comfort.