W2 Flashcards
What did Bowlby’s 1947 study on juvenile thieves reveal about early relationships?
61% of juvenile thieves experienced early prolonged separation from their mothers in childhood.
How were affection bonds viewed in relation to ‘drives’ in early theories?
Affection bonds were seen as ‘secondary’ drives, arising from ‘primary’ drives like sex and nutrition.
What studies challenged the view that relationships arise solely from primary drives?
Lorenz’s (1935) imprinting study and Harlow & Zimmerman’s (1959) infant monkey behavior study.
What is attachment?
A strong emotional bond characterized by the desire for proximity and security.
Who discovered individual differences in attachment?
Mary Ainsworth, through her Strange Situation experiment.
What did Ainsworth’s research emphasize?
The concept of responsive, sensitive caregiving.
What are the phases of early attachment formation according to Bowlby (1969)?
- PHASE I (0-3 Months): Signals, limited discrimination.
- PHASE II (3-6 Months): Signals, responds to discriminated figures.
- PHASE III (9 months - 2 years): Maintains proximity to a discriminated figure.
- PHASE IV (2.5 years): Goal-corrected partnership, internal working model formed.
What did Schaffer and Emerson (1964) discover about infant attachment development?
Infant attachment develops from indiscriminate social behavior to specific attachments.
What are the hypotheses of attachment theory?
- Universality and Normativity
- Continuity
- Sensitivity
- Competence
What tasks are used to measure attachment behaviors?
- Strange Situation procedure
- Attachment Q-sort
What tasks are used to measure attachment representations?
- Child Attachment Interview
- Adult Attachment Interview
What variables are used to measure attachment?
- Presence/absence
- Individual differences
- Form/function
- Behavior
- Representation
What is Ainsworth’s Strange Situation?
A standardized, laboratory-based method for observing exploratory and attachment behaviors in 1- to 2-year-old children.
What are the four attachment patterns found in the Strange Situation?
- Secure
- Avoidant
- Resistant
- Disorganized
What are the evaluations of the Strange Situation?
- Reliability (consistent across observers and over time)
- Validity (narrow window, convergent and discriminant validity)
What is the Attachment Q-Sort?
A method that studies individual differences in ‘secure base’ behavior in natural settings through detailed home observations.
What are the evaluations of the Attachment Q-Sort?
- Suited for 12-48 months
- Test-retest stability
- Convergent and divergent validity
- Lengthy observations needed
- May have caregiver bias
What are Adult Attachment Interviews (AAI)?
Standardized interviews that study recollections of early relationships to reveal individual differences in attachment representations.
How do different attachment types react to AAIs?
- Secure: coherent, consistent.
- Dismissive: difficulty remembering, dismiss importance.
- Preoccupied: excessive attention, confused, angry.
- Unresolved: focus on unresolved trauma.
What are the evaluations of AAIs?
- Reliability (test-retest)
- Validity (unrelated to memory, IQ, social desirability)
What are Children Attachment Interviews?
Semi-structured interviews that assess children’s attachment representations through perceptions of availability and analysis of narratives.
What are the evaluations of Children Attachment Interviews?
- Reliability (high inter-rater, test-retest)
- Validity (attachment classification unrelated)
What is universality in attachment?
All infants show attachment behaviors and a preferential bond with a caregiver.
What is normativity in attachment?
The majority of infants should exhibit secure attachment.
How does culture impact attachment according to Mesman et al. (2016)?
While some aspects are universal, expression varies by culture, including rates of insecure attachment and primary caregiver roles.
Do early attachments have a long-lasting effect?
It’s debated whether they provide a ‘prototype’ for future relationships.
What are the challenges to the idea of long-lasting effects of early attachments?
- Behavior vs. representation
- Age-dependent measures
- Dyad vs. trait
Does Strange Situation classification predict Adult Attachment Interview classification? (Waters et al. 2000)
There is continuity, but not perfectly. Secure-Secure, Avoidant-Dismissive, Resistant-Preoccupied have correlation.
What did Pinquart et al. (2013)’s meta-analysis find about attachment stability?
Insecure/secure attachment styles show moderate stability (r = .26).
What is continuity in the context of stability of circumstances? (Booth-LaForce et al., 2014)
Attachment stability is influenced by stable or changing circumstances, with ‘lawful discontinuity’ occurring when changes are predictable based on life events.
Why is longitudinal data key for attachment theory, and what are its challenges?
It tests long-term stability, but faces challenges such as expense, limited age ranges, caregiver identification, and choice of measures.
