P - Attachment

Attachment definition

A close emotional relationship between two persons, characterised by a mutual affection and desire to maintain proximity

Bond vs. Attachment

Bond - set of feelings that tie one person to another

Attachment - mutual emotional relationship involving two people

Key Behaviours → Maccoby 1980

• seeking proximity to primary caregiver

• distress on separation

• joy on reunion

• general orientation of behaviour

Key behaviours → caregiver-infant interactions

• caregiverese

• interactional synchrony → move in rhythm with caregiver

  • Isabella et al. sign of secure attachment

  • Levine et al. not Keyan mothers hence not cross culturally

• Reciprocity → take turns

• Seeking proximity

Stages of attachment

1. Pre attachment/asocial

• birth → 3 months, from 6 weeks attracted to humans(smiling)

2. Indiscriminate

• 3 →7/8 months, begin to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar

3. Discriminate

• 7/8 months → onwards, specific attachments, distress on separation, avoid unfamiliar and protest contact

4. Multiple

• 9 months → onwards, strong to major caregivers and non-caregivers, stranger anxiety weakens, strongest attachment to mother

Schaffer and Emerson 1964

• Longitudinal, 60ppts from Glasgow, observed every 4 weeks until 1yr then 18m

• Measured: separation protest and stranger anxiety

• ½ specific between 6-8m, stranger anxiety 1m later

• maternal sensitivity=more intense attachment

• 65% first specific = mother

• 39% person who fed, bathed, changed, was main attachment

• 18m, 87% had >=2 attachments, 31% >=5 attachments, 75% to father

Difficulties with studying children

• no consent, deliberate distress, general ethics

• cannot communicate → make inferences

• cannot identify neurodivergent/other individual factors

• observer bias (babies aren’t biased though)

• young children mostly sleep

Multiple attachments: Bowlby vs Rutter

Bowlby: main monotropic attachment, others minor in comparison

Rutter: all attachments are of equal importance, develop internal working model

Role of the father - factors of attachment

• degree of sensitivity

• type of attachment with own parents

• Marital intimacy

• supportive coparenting

Role of the father - degree of sensitivity

• Gieger, associate fathers with playing and excitement

• Lamb, prefer fathers when happy and mothers when in distress; also found that men who become primary caregivers quickly develop same level of sensitivity

Role of the father - type of attachment with own parents

• Bernier and Miljkovich: single parents with children 4-6yrs found similar attachment with own parents

  • doesn’t apply when married → link to coparenting, stress=familiar(SLT)

Role of the father - marital intimacy

• Belsky et al. high levels=secure and low levels=insecure, effect on emotional availability?

• Animosity associated negative atmosphere, hence affecting the child’s attachment with the non-primary

Role of the father - supportive coparenting

• amount of support from father affects attachment made

• brown et al. 68 families 12-16m, high support=secure, did not extend to mother(maybe bc primary is alr mother, father sensitivity increased

Role of the father - general importance

• decreases behavioural issues as it increases ability to regulate emotions

• Pederson pointed out most studies on single mothers are from poor socio-economic bg.

• important to the mother, time away to reduce stress and increase self-esteem

• Lamb → sensitivity learned but Machin → brain changes in father(planning and problem solving more active, testosterone decrease)

Biological and social factors of maternal sensitivity

• physically carry child, oxytocin released in labour

• produce milk=nurture, skin to skin=oxytocin

• child dolls, maternity leave

Types of attachment - secure vs insecure

• secure: strong positive relationship

• insecure: weak emotional relationship=anxious, negative effect on development

Types of attachment - nature/nurture

• nurture: sensitivity of needs, maltreatment

• nature: temperament

Types of attachment - importance of secure

Wartner et al. - competence in play and exploration; 82% at 18m and 6yrs in same category

Belsky and Fearon - social competence, school readiness, expressive(out) and receptive(in) language

The strange situation - procedure

Ainsworth and Bell 1970

100 middle class(white) American mother-child (1/2y)

M=mother, B=baby, E=experimenter, S=stranger

MBE → MB → SMB → SB → MB → B → SB → MB

Noted: willingness to explore, separation distress, stranger anxiety, reunion behaviour

behaviour: proximity, contact, avoidance, resistance, search

The strange situation - findings

70% secure: distress on separation, stranger anxiety when alone, joy on reunion, mother as safe base

10% resistant: intense distress, avoids stranger, approaches but resists mother, cries more, explores less

15% avoidant: no distress, no stranger anxiety, little interest in reunion, mother and stranger comfort equally

MAIN&SOLOMAN ID’d DISORGANISED + (that’s me^-^)

The strange situation - evaluation

• ethnocentric

• lacks external validity (temp, pop and econ)

• reductionist

• social desirability and individual differences

• ethics (distress??????)

Individual differences in attachment

Maternal sensitivity hypothesis:

• sensitive = secure

• misunderstood=resistant

• uninterested/suffocating=avoidant

Temperament hypothesis:

• innate temperament inherited through genes

Explanations of attachment

How attachments are formed

• Learning theory

  • Classical Conditioning

  • Operant Conditioning

• Evolutionary Theory

  • Bowlby’s monotropic theory

Learning theory - classical conditioning

Food(UCS) → Satisfaction(UCR)

Food(UCS) + Caregiver(NS) → Satisfaction(UCR)

Caregiver(CS) → Satisfaction(CR)

after several pairings of caregiver and food, infant learns to associate

Learning theory - operant conditioning

Primary reinforcer → food and drink serves to satisfy basic drive

Second reinforcer → associates with primary, becomes reinforcer

Dollard and Miller, babies fed ~2000 times, removes hunger(negative reinforcement)

Fox, Isreali Kibbutzim, full time carers still not main attachment

Learning theory - Harlow 1959 aim

to test learning theory through comparison of attachment behaviour

Harlow - procedure

• harsh ‘wire mother’ and soft ‘towelling mother’, 16 baby monkeys

• 4 conditions: wire w milk and towelling, wire w no milk and towelling w milk, wire/towel w milk

• amount of time spent w each mother, frightened by loud noise - comfort, large cage exploration

Harlow - findings

• preferred contact with towelling, stretched to towelling whilst wire feeding → 22/24 hrs per day

• monkey w only wire had diarrhoea(stress), loud noise(cling to towelling), monkeys w towelling explored more and visited more

Harlow - conclusions

• Rhesus monkeys have innate, unlearned need for contact comfort

• attachment concerns emotional security > food

Ethologists

biologists who study animal behaviour in the natural environment

Lorenz 1935

• randomly split clutch of goose eggs, half left in nature w bio mum and other in incubator

• first thing incubator group saw once hatched was Lorenz and natural saw mother, mixed all to observe

• incubator group imprinted on Lorenz and followed him, critical period of 13-16 hours

  • irreversible(challenge as not longitudinal, also unethical) but lack of generalisability

John Bowlby’s evolutionary/monotropic theory

• Adaptive

• Social releasers

• Critical period

• Monotropy

• Internal working model

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory - adaptive

• attachment = adaptive advantage as child is kept safe, warm, and fed

• maintain proximity and ensure safety

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory - social releasers

• unlock innate tendency of adults to care for them

• physical(eyes) and behavioural(babbling)

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory - critical theory

• attachment must be formed within 2 and a half years (rutter changed to 5; privation/adaption)

• else: damage socially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory - monotropy

• form one special attachment to mother(consider time) - intense

• if not present, need an ‘ever present mother substitute’

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory - internal working model

• through monotropic attachment, schemas are formed

• use as a template for future relationships

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory → evaluation research

• M/C - Schaffer and Emerson found 87% of >18m had at least 2 attachments, 31% more than 5

• Harlow showed other factors → comfort

• Rutter Romanian Orphans, older form more slowly but still able (suggested sensitive period instead)

• Efe tribe of Congo breast fed by many women but form stable attachment to mother

• Hazen and Shaver ‘love quiz’ found continuity between child attachment and adult relationship (link to Freud identification to form schemas)

John Bowlby’s evolutionary theory → general evaluation

• neglects rile of role of the father, and the importance of having more than one parent

  • absent father increases likelihood of criminal behaviour

• Economic implications of women being mothers only

  • decreases workforce

  • destruction of nursery sector

  • decreases disposable income

  • disproportionate effect on single mothers and widows

  • discourages women’s financial independence

Cross-cultural variations

behaviour, attitude, norms, and values socially constructed across cultures

e.g. childrearing styles and beliefs (individualistic versus collectivist)

cultural variations: individualistic

emphasises individuality, individual needs and independence

cultural variations: collectivist

share tasks, belongings and income, large versus small families

cultural variations: Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenburg 1988

A: investigate variation through meta-analysis, only strange situation to draw inference about the external validity of the study

P: 32 studies, 8 different nations (GB, USA, Ger, Sweden, Netherlands, China, Japan, Israel), 1979 mother-infant pairs

F: Secure most common, western avoidant dominant (Ger), non-western resistant(Japan); 1.5x greater variation intraculturally versus interculturally

C: universal secure proportion, more variation among different groups, different child rearing practices have been implicated for variations

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenburg 1988 - Evaluation

+ meta-analysis of 8 countries, large same(nomothetic) hence reliable

- neglected large proportion of the world (Aus/Africa)

- no control over secondary data BUT + already exists

- spread of data uneven → half of the same USA, Chine(25) → not representative

- made in the USA, Japan and Germany have very different child rearing practices hence imposing etic, culturally biased

- discounts individual differences, no further investigation

- socially sensitive → could influence views and formation of stereotypes

Disruption to attachment

• Separation

  • Robertson and Bowlby PDD (protest, despair, detachment)

• Deprivation

  • Bowlby Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis

• Institutionalisation

  • Rutter Romanian Orphan studies

• Privation

  • Hodges and Tizard

Separation

• short term disruption

• R&B 1952 studied children when separated from mother for a short time in hospital (Little John)

• 3 stages

  • Protest - intense emotions

  • Despair - lost hope, apathetic, self soothing

  • Detachment - appear less distressed, if caregiver comes back by reject/ignore

Separation - support

• first to study short term, identified main stages, helps minimise adverse effects to separation (influence on hospital care)

• Douglas (1975) - separation <1 week and <4 yrs old = behavioural difficulties (MDH)

Separation - challenge

• individual differences (effect of maternal sensitivity, attachment type, and parenting style)

• Robertson² 1971, minimising effects through placing child with familiar and good substitute carer

Deprivation

• Long term disruption

• B - maternal deprivation hypothesis

• IM ACIDIC

  • Irreversible

  • Monotropy

  • Affectionless psychopath

  • Critical period

  • IQ low

  • Deprivation

  • Internal working model

  • Criminal behaviour

  • + social and emotional difficulties

Deprivation - 44 thieves

• 88 children (5-16), 44 because of theft (16 affectionless) and 44 maladjusted

• 86% of thieves affectionless and separated

• 17% only separated

• 4% of control experienced separation

Deprivation - Evaluation

• Spitz and Wolf x100 ‘normal’ children who became depressed post hospital found they recovered well if <3m → informed hospital practices, c-reversible

• hospital is depressing, rutter distinguished differences between privation and deprivation

  • lack of quality care as issue - Spitz

  • South American poor orphanages, little warmth/attention - anaclitic depression

  • Goldfarb found first few months versus years in inadequately staffed orphanage increased low IQ and social issues

Institutionalisation - definition

adverse effects on children being placed in an institution, can influence cognitive and social development

Institutionalisation - ways to reduce effects

• good quality substitute care

• pairing the children

• low carer: children ratio

• keep in touch once adopted

Institutionalisation - Romanian orphan studies

Rutter 1998 - ongoing

• Quasi, x3 groups (adopted <6m, >6m, >2yrs)

• control 52 British children

• 50% severe cognitive deficits and underweight initially

• age 4, significant improvement, <6m = British

Smyke 2007 - found cognitive and social development more dependent on quality of care

Dontas found that when allocated a specific member of staff to care for and form emotional bond to, easier to form attachment when adopted, significant within 6-8 months

Privation - Hodges and Tizard 1989

• emotional and social effects in adolescence

• 65 into institute <4m, comparison to control raised at home

• up to 24 different caregivers, by 4yrs - 24 adopted, 15 restored, rest remained

• assessed at 4, 8, 16 for social and emotional competence through interview and self-report

• 4: no attachments, 8/16: most adopted formed close relation to family NOT restored negative social affects for both (attention seeking and peer relations)

• 16: adopted family relation = control, returned = mutually affectionless, both = no BFF or close peer for emotional support, adopted are better adjusted

Influence of early childhood - Continuity hypothesis

attachments from childhood continue into adulthood

• Bowlby construct internal working model consisting of rules and expectations

• Youngblade and Belsky - 3/5yrs securely attached children more curious, competent, empathetic, resilient, self confident hence got along better with other children and were more likely to form close attachments

Influence of early childhood - bullying

Myron-Wilson and Smith, 196 children age 7-11 in London,

• Secure unlikely to be involved

• avoidant likely victim

• resistant likely bully

Influence of early childhood - Hazen and Shaver

• ‘Love quiz’, retrospective, self-report, assessed temperament and causation but affected by social desirability and demand characteristics

• found 56% secure, 24% avoidant, 20% resistant, matching pattern of Ainsworth’s findings

• further research - 22% changed style for different relationships, influences love and vice versa

Influence of early childhood - other research

Zimmerman 2000, style at 12-18m less of a predictor than life events such as parental divorce, Hamilton concurred that ‘negative life events’ had more of an effect