PSY 127D Attachment Midterm: Lectures 1–5b

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core empirical findings, clinical measures, developmental pathways, and theoretical frameworks from Lectures 1 through 5b for the PSY 127D Attachment Midterm.

Attachment (Core Concept)

An evolved behavioral and physiological system designed for gaining security and protection, rather than merely being a secondary consequence of feeding.

Need Gratification Theory of Attachment

The perspective proposed by Sigmund Freud asserting that infants form emotional bonds with their mothers primarily because the mother gratifies basic physical needs.

Drive Reduction Theory (Hull & Spence)

A learning theory suggesting that attachment bonds develop because caregivers repeatedly reduce primary biological drives, such as hunger.

Watson's Parenting Perspective

John B. Watson's behavioral view that parents should avoid overindulging children and instead offer strict emotional detachment, such as a handshake rather than a goodnight kiss.

Proximity-Seeking (Lorenz)

A concept introduced by Konrad Lorenz characterizing the drive to maintain physical closeness to a caregiver as an adaptive, biologically prepared mechanism.

Harlow's Surrogate Mother Experiments

Studies with infant rhesus monkeys demonstrating that infants strongly preferred a cloth mother providing contact comfort over a wire mother providing food.

Harlow's Social Isolation Findings

Research showing that extreme social isolation in rhesus monkeys caused enduring impairments in social behavior, mating competence, and parenting abilities.

Filial Imprinting

A biologically constrained form of learning identified by Konrad Lorenz in which newly hatched goslings bond with the first moving object encountered during a critical period.

Bowlby's Evolutionary Theory of Attachment

John Bowlby's synthesis of psychoanalytic, ethological, cognitive, and evolutionary ideas into a unified theory of human relational bonding.

Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves Study (Bowlby)

Bowlby's clinical investigation which found that out of $14$ 'affectionless' juvenile thieves, $12$ had experienced prolonged early separation from their mothers.

Four Markers of Attachment

The four primary behavioral indicators confirming an attachment bond: proximity maintenance, safe haven, secure base, and separation distress.

Safe Haven vs. Secure Base

Safe haven refers to returning to the caregiver for comfort and protection when distressed; secure base refers to using the caregiver as a safe anchor from which to explore the environment.

Internal Working Model (IWM)

A cognitive framework comprising expectations, beliefs, and affective memories about self and relational partners, formed through repeated early caregiving interactions.

Infant Cry (Attachment Function)

A biologically prepared proximity-seeking signal designed to capture caregiver attention and activate maternal caregiving motivation.

Leerkes et al. (2016) Findings

Study demonstrating that mothers who remain physiologically regulated during infant distress display higher levels of sensitive caregiving.

Esposito et al. (2013) Infant Carrying Study

Research documenting that infants' heart rates decrease significantly when they are carried compared to when they are simply held in a stationary position, indicating an automatic calming effect.

Doi and Colleagues' Cry Processing Study

Neuroimaging and behavioral findings showing that mothers process infant crying faces more robustly than smiling faces, even when observing unfamiliar infants.

Caregiving System

A biologically grounded behavioral system that is shaped and tuned by personal relational history, cultural context, and specific infant characteristics.

'A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital' (Film)

A documentary by James Robertson illustrating acute toddler distress during hospital separation, which led to widespread reform in pediatric hospital visitation policies.

Critical Period vs. Sensitive Period

A critical period is an inflexible, fixed window of time necessary for developmental bonding; a sensitive period is an optimal timeframe where bonding occurs most easily, though it remains possible later with greater difficulty.

Ultrasonic Infant Cry Components (Hashimoto et al., 2001)

Acoustic cry frequencies above the human conscious hearing threshold that nevertheless trigger measurable physiological responses in mothers.

Prevalence of Maternal Bonding Difficulties

Epidemiological rates indicating that approximately $24\%$ of mothers experience mild-to-moderate bonding difficulties and about $11\%$ experience severe bonding difficulties.

Maternal-Fetal Attachment (MFA)

The emerging emotional bond, cognitive investment, and behavioral commitment a pregnant parent establishes with the unborn fetus.

Maternal-Fetal Attachment Scale (MFAS)

A self-report questionnaire designed to measure prenatal bonding, developed by Cranley in $1981$.

Prenatal Attachment Inventory (PAI)

A clinical self-report scale that assesses the specific emotional relationship and bond established between the expectant mother and fetus.

Maternal Antenatal Attachment Scale (MAAS)

A standard assessment tool measuring prenatal attachment across two dimensions: the quality of attachment (emotional investment) and the intensity of preoccupation.

Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) Scale Adaptation

An innovative pictorial assessment using overlapping circles for expectant mothers to visually represent their psychological closeness and connection to the unborn child.

First Nations Maternal Bonding Framework

An Indigenous bonding perspective showing that parent-infant attachment extends beyond the dyad to encompass ancestral heritage, spiritual connection, lineage, and the land.

Micro-Longitudinal Bonding Dynamics

Empirical evidence showing that $43\%$ of the variance in maternal-fetal bonding scores is intra-individual, highlighting significant day-to-day fluctuations.

3D Ultrasound Randomized Controlled Trial (2020)

An experimental trial showing that an intervention featuring 3D ultrasound visualization produced nearly double the MAAS bonding gains compared to standard control care by making the infant concrete and enhancing facial recognition.

Maternal Sensitivity

The caregiver's ongoing capacity to accurately perceive infant communicative cues, interpret their meaning correctly, and respond promptly and appropriately.

Insensitive Care

Caregiving marked by missed infant signals, misinterpretation of emotional needs, intrusive interference, and inconsistent or rejecting responsiveness.

Strange Situation Procedure

Mary Ainsworth's standardized laboratory paradigm consisting of eight structured episodes designed to evaluate the quality of an infant's attachment and secure-base behavior toward a caregiver under stress.

Second Reunion (Strange Situation)

The final episode of the Strange Situation that specifically confirms the infant seeks the caregiver directly for soothing rather than merely crying due to being left alone in the room.

Secure Attachment (Group B)

An attachment classification seen in $65\text{--}75\%$ of normative infants, characterized by exploring freely from a secure base, showing distress or greeting on departure, seeking comfort readily upon reunion, and swiftly returning to play.

Insecure-Avoidant Attachment (Group A)

An attachment classification present in $10\text{--}15\%$ of infants, characterized by little outward distress during separations, deliberate avoidance or turning away from the caregiver during reunion, and maintaining emotional distance.

Insecure-Ambivalent/Resistant Attachment (Group C)

An attachment pattern in which infants show intense distress across separations, combine proximity-seeking with angry resistance or pushing away upon reunion, and fail to settle back into play.

Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment (Group D)

An infant attachment classification characterized by anomalous, contradictory, or fragmented behaviors (e.g., freezing, stereotypic posturing, simultaneous approach-avoidance) caused by an unresolvable fear paradox where the caregiver is both the source of and haven from alarm.

Disorganized Attachment Prevalence

The baseline rate of disorganized attachment in low-risk community samples, documented at approximately $13\%$.

Preschool Manifestation of Disorganization

The developmental shift wherein infants classified as disorganized often display controlling-punitive or controlling-caregiving (role-reversing) behavioral strategies toward their parents by preschool age.

Universal Secure-Base Hypothesis (Posada et al., 1999)

Cross-cultural research confirming that infants across diverse cultures universally utilize their primary caregiver as a secure base, with maternal sensitivity serving as the consistent primary predictor.

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)

A semi-structured clinical interview developed by Mary Main that evaluates how adults cognitively and narratively organize their childhood attachment memories, prioritizing discourse coherence over emotional evaluation.

Narrative Coherence (AAI)

The structural quality of an AAI transcript wherein general autobiographical claims are seamlessly supported by specific episodic recollections without logical contradictions.

Grice's Conversational Maxims (in AAI)

The linguistic criteria (Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner) used in coding the AAI to evaluate narrative coherence; violations signify defensive deactivating or hyperactivating states of mind.

Secure-Autonomous Adult Attachment

An AAI classification where the speaker offers coherent, balanced, and collaborative reflections on early attachment relationships, supported by vivid episodic memories, regardless of whether childhood was favorable or adverse.

Dismissing Adult Attachment

An AAI classification marked by idealized evaluations of parents that lack episodic corroboration or are contradicted by specific memories, alongside the devaluing of attachment relationships.

Child Attachment Interview (CAI)

A developmental adaptation of the AAI for school-aged children that evaluates representations of parents, instances of hurt or illness, and current relational functioning using shorter prompts and fewer requested adjectives.

Earned Security

A developmental phenomenon wherein individuals who experienced unsupportive or harsh early caregiving achieve a secure-autonomous state of mind through coherent mental processing in adulthood.

Attachment Stability/Continuity Rate

The degree of longitudinal continuity in attachment classifications across the lifespan, demonstrated to be approximately $70\%$ in stable, low-risk community samples.

Johnson et al. (2007) Visual Habituation Findings

Experimental research demonstrating that secure infants implicitly expect a mother figure to comfort a crying child, whereas avoidant infants expect the mother to ignore and withhold comfort.

Still-Face Paradigm

An experimental procedure created by Edward Tronick in which a parent abruptly adopts a blank, unresponsive facial expression, reliably producing infant distress, regulatory attempts, and disorganized behaviors.

Biobehavioral Synchrony

The fine-grained mutual temporal coordination between relational partners spanning nonverbal communication, neural attunement, cardiac rhythms, and neuroendocrine systems such as oxytocin.

Self-Contingency vs. Interactive Contingency

Self-contingency describes the predictability and stability of a single individual's behavior across time; interactive contingency describes the probability that one partner's behavior shifts in response to the other's.

Mother-Chase Infant-Dodge Pattern

A dysfunctional dyadic interaction observed via micro-analytic coding wherein a mother continuously invades an infant's space as the infant repeatedly averts gaze or turns away.

Frightened or Frightening Caregiving (FR)

Anomalous caregiver behaviors—such as dissociative freezing, looming postures, unintegrated fear, or sudden hostility—that elicit disorganization by frightening the infant who seeks them for safety.

Caregiver Disorientation

A sudden micro-dissociative lapse in caregiver affect, characterized by a sudden vacant stare, frozen expression, or unprovoked fearful facial display.

Turton and Fonagy Stillbirth Study

A study revealing that approximately half of mothers who harbored unresolved trauma from a prior stillbirth had subsequent infants who exhibited disorganized attachment.

Mentalizing / Reflective Functioning (RF)

The parent's capacity to perceive and interpret their own and their child's behavior as rooted in intentional, internal mental states such as feelings, desires, beliefs, and goals.

Marked Mirroring

A caregiving behavior wherein the parent reflects the infant's emotional affect in an exaggerated or modified manner, signaling clearly that the emotional state originates in the infant rather than the parent.

Epistemic Trust

The learner's willingness to accept received cultural and social information from another person as trustworthy, authoritative, personally meaningful, and generalizable.

Bimodal Principle of Parental Mentalizing

The operational rule stating that parental mentalizing must simultaneously or alternatingly address two distinct psychological realms: the internal state of the self and the internal state of the child.

Hierarchical Principle of Parental Mentalizing

The developmental principle dictating that parents generally need to identify, regulate, and comprehend their own mental states before they can successfully interpret their child's mind.