Explanations of attachment

The cupboard love theory and classical conditioning

• Dolland and Miller (1950)

• Based on the principles of learning theory- infants become attached to their caregiver because they learn that their caregiver provides food

• Food-UCS

• Pleasure-UCR

• Mother-NS associated with food-UCS

• MOTHER-CS

• Pleasure response in the presence of the motehr-CR

Operant conditioning and learning patterns due to reinforcement

• Positive reinforcement- when a baby is crying and therefore parent feeds them, the baby is more likely to repeat the crying behaviour to get food- therefore the addition of a pleasant stimulus reinforcing the behaviour

• Negative reinforcement- the removal of an unpleasant stimulus- the baby stopping the crying when fed or their diaper is changed, the parents are likely to repeat this behaviour- the crying is a negative stimulus so this behaviour is being reinforced by the removal of tit

Attachment as a secondary drive

• Drives are the desire to complete an action

• Primary drives are instinctive- we don’t need to learn to want to eat or sleep as thy are biological needs

• Secondary drives are learnt- eg: according to cupboard love, we learn attachment as infants because it ultimately lead to satisfying a primary drive

Learning theory evaluations

• Face validity- makes intuitive sense that babies cry more when they learn crying gains them attention and food

• The behaviourist principles to explain this are backed up by well controlled researched, however, such highly controlled research on babies is impossible for ethical and practical reasons

• Learning theory applied to human attachment is environment reductionist- the complex interactions between caregiver and infant are just the result of simplistic stimulus associations, learnt responses and patterns of reinforcement- most would say they have a complicated relationship with their children

• Harlow’s research rejects the cupboard love theory- contact comfort

• Theres theories such as Bowlby’s Monotropic which give an evolutionary explanation

Bowlby’s monotropic theory

• An evolutionary explanation of attachment- infants have an innate drive to form an especially strong attachment to their mother (monotropy) and stay in close proximity- this instinctual drive is vital to survival for an infant as their mother provides food and security

• Babies use social releasers to help develop the monotropic relationship- crying, smiling, vocalisations- mothers are biologically programmed to instinctively find these behaviours cute or distressing

• A strong monotropic attachment should form within 30 months- he suggests a lack of monotropy results in permanent negative social, intellectual and emotional consequences

• Suggests that stronger attachments will form if care is consistent and weaker attachments will result in long/frequent separations- the strength o the monotropic relationship can be sen in safe base behaviour

• Believes that the monotropic attachment to its mother provides a schema/ blueprint for future relationships to see if people can be trusted or if relationships are loving

Evaluation on Bowlby’s monotropic theory

• Bowlby’s work is partially based of Lorenz’s on goslings (the idea of a critical period)- however, showing the difficulty of applying animal research to humans, later research suggests that with humans, ths period is sensitive and not critical which counters Bowlby’s claim of permanent damage🟧

• Bowlby’s work has been impactful; inspired researches like Ainsworth who was one of his students- his ideas have been developed an applied to early childcare✅

Evaluation of Bowlby’s monotropic theory

• Bowlby’s theory is criticised for suffering from alpha bias- exaggerates gender differences- Bowlby argues that the father’s role is to provide for the family while the mother’s monotropic role is crucial- lack of temporal validity

• There are alternate explanations for attachment such as cupboard love or learning theory- these have well controlled experiments to back them

• The continuity hypothesis suggests that the quality of infant attachment can predict those infants’ later adult relationships due to the internal working model- this is highly deterministic- people like to think that they have complete conscious control over their relationship