Wk8 Live Flashcards
What attachment type will children with sensitive and responsive mothers develop?
Secure attachment
What attachment type will children with inconsistent mothers develop?
Insecure-resistant
What attachment type will children with indifferent and rejecting mothers develop?
Insecure-avoidant
What other positive parenting behaviours are related to attachment security?
Emotional support, synchrony, mutuality.
Is there a correlation between maternal attachment beliefs and infant attachment?
Yes. Their beliefs regarding attachment will affect how sensitive they are towards their child and how they parent their child
What does contingent responsiveness mean?
How the parent responds to the baby.
Can contingent responsiveness be quantified?
Yes. These behaviours can be coded. The researcher can determine how in sync the parent and child are.
What do other parental behaviours include?
Positive attitude, support, quality of physical contact, encouragement. These are measured more qualitatively.
What does contingent responsiveness involve?
Involves detecting signals, appropriate responses, synchrony, and shared attention.
What is one technique researcher’s can measure sensitivity?
Maternal behaviour Q-sort
What does the maternal behaviour Q-sort involve?
2 observers observe the parent and the child in their home environment for 2 hours.
The mother completes a task for 20 minutes where her attention is removed from the child.
The trained observers sort 90 behavioural descriptions according to level of similarity to observed behaviours. 9 piles.
Are there correlations between attachment security and maternal sensitivity?
Yes.
What child behaviour is associated with secure attachment?
Parent is used as a secure based
Child is upset by separation from caregiver.
Easily soothed on reunion.
What parental behaviours are associated with a child’s secure attachment?
Sensitive, responsive, affectionate
What child behaviour is associated with insecure-resistant attachment?
Clingy behaviour
Wary of stranger
Extreme separation anxiety.
Avoids caregiver on reunion (not easily soothed)
What parental behaviour is associated with insecure-resistant attachment?
Inconsistent, awkward in reacting to distress, seems overwhelmed
What child behaviour is associated with insecure-avoidant attachment?
Ignores parent, explores readily
Easily comforted by stranger
What parental behaviour is associated with insecure-avoidant attachment?
Insensitive, avoids close contact, rejecting, impatient
What child behaviour is associated with disorganised attachment?
Dazed, confused, contradictory behaviours, may seem fearful of parent
What parental behaviour is associated with disorganised attachment?
Intrusive, emotionally unavailable, confusing or frightening, abusive
What has research suggested about the strength of attachments with fathers?
Infants form strong attachments to their fathers despite spending less time with them and having different types of interaction.
How strong is the association between father’s sensitivity and attachment security?
What could this suggest?
Weak association between father’s sensitivity and attachment security.
This suggests that other behaviours of the father (other than sensitivity) can lead to a secure attachment. For example, playing and stimulating the child.
What could be different pathways to attachment?
Comfort (safety-regulating system)
Activation (promoting exploration, play, discovery)
What have intervention studies of attachment and sensitivity suggested?
Intervention studies demonstrate that sensitivity has a causal effect on attachment security.
Infants who took part in attachment interventions (between 3 and 9 months old) with their parents were three times more likely to be securely attached than control groups.
What is are 2 examples of attachment interventions?
Circle of security
ABC Intervention
Explain what the circle of security intervention teaches
Teaches the parents about their role as being a secure base and how they should support exploration but be available to comfort them when scared.
How does the circle of security intervention work?
An intensive, 20-week clinical group protocol.
Trained clinicians go to the parents home and take videos, conduct interviews, and go through the process of guided reflection.
What does the circle of security intervention reduce the risk of?
Reduces the risk of insecure and disorganised attachment.
What does ABC intervention stand for?
Attachment and Behavioural Catch-up (ABC) Intervention
Who is ABC targeted to?
Children who have experienced maltreatment or disrupted care.
What does the ABC intervention involve?
10 weekly visits to family home.
Parents are given feedback in the moment and told how they can do things differently.
What is the aim of ABC?
Increase nurturing behaviour and responsiveness/sensitivity.
Decrease frightening behaviours in parents
What has research on the ABC intervention found?
More children in the intervention group had secure attachment and fewer had disorganised attachment.
Parents had higher sensitivity and more delight.
What other factors need to be considered alongside sensitivity in explaining attachment security?
Family functioning
Parents beliefs and attachment history
How susceptible the child is to interactive behaviours
Shared genes / biological factors
What is the attachment parenting movement characterised by?
Baby-wearing
Breast-feeding
Sleeping with your child in the same bed (co-sleeping)
Responding with sensitivity and consistent and loving care from a primary caregiver.
What does the attachment parenting movement strongly oppose?
Cry it out
Controlled crying
Ignoring
What is the attachment parenting movement all about?
Having the baby close
Comforting the baby
What are some concerns about the attachment parenting movement for mother’s?
If taken to the extreme, mothers can feel under pressure to immediately respond to their child’s needs above all else. This is stressful and tiring for parents as they worry what the outcomes will be for their child if they cannot be with their child at all times.
What are problems with research on parental sensitivity?
Research tends to just look at mother’s and ignores the role of other caregivers.
Responding sensitively to 100% of infants signals is unrealistic. How much sensitivity is enough for a secure attachment to develop?
What type of attachment is the norm across all cultures?
Secure attachment
What cultures is insecure-avoidant attachment high in?
Individualistic cultures (Germany). It is a positive thing that the child is not reliant on the mother.
What cultures is insecure-avoidant attachment absent in?
Collectivist cultures
What cultures is insecure-resistant attachment high in?
Japan - mothers encourage high dependency. Would be unethical to use strange situation in these cultures because it’s so different from the culture ideals.
What do cultural findings regarding attachment styles suggest about the strange situation?
The strange situation may not measure universal attachment styles. Attachment styles may differ between cultures according to the cultures values (individualistic/collectivist).
What does alloparenting refer to?
Parenting performed by siblings or grandparents, rather than parents
What are 3 cultural variations in childcare?
Alloparenting
Fear of strangers can be non-existent because in some traditional cultures infants would never see strangers
Father’s can take a central caregiving role in some cultures
What are 2 examples of cultures where father’s take a central caregiving role?
Aka foragers in Central Africa - fathers maintain body contact with young children
Manus of New Guinea - Father’s become the primary attachment figure from toddlerhood
Are there different cultural conceptions of sensitivity?
Yes. There is variation in sensitivity to infant facial/vocal expressions versus body signals across cultures.
A study found differences between Cameroon and German mothers. Cameroon mothers are more tentative to physical care, body contact, and stimulation. German mothers value face-to-face contact and positive emotional interactions.
What does Bowlby’s traditional attachment theory propose?
Attachment is a universal human need that has the same features and emerges in the same way across cultures
What does a newer perspective on attachment suggest?
Attachment is an evolved universal development task that looks different and develops differently across cultures. E.g., it is more common now to have more than one caregiver.
