Attachment

Feldman & Edelman (2007)

• Babies tend to have period of ‘alert phases’ and signal to their primary caregiver that they are ready for interaction

• Found mothers typically pick up on this signal two thirds of the time

Meltzoff & Moore (1977)

• Observed beginning of interactional synchrony in babies 2 weeks old

• Babies exposed to 4 different stimuli (3 facial & 1 manual gesture)

• Found babies between 12-27 days old could imitate both facial expressions and manual gesture

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Ev:

• Well controlled procedure, recorded then later analysed so has good internal validity

• Babies don’t know behaviour is being observed - good internal validity

• However we cannot know for certain what is happening from infants POV - low validity

• Observations do not tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity
  

Isabella et al (1989)

• Observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed their degree of synchrony

• Found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachment

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Ev:

Social sensitivity as mother feels guilt/pressure to respond to infant, may prevent her returning to work

Grossman et al (2002)

• Carried out a longitudinal study of babies attachment until their teens

• Only qualities of attachment of the baby with their mother, but not their father was related to attachments to other people in adolescence

• However quality of father’s play was related - suggests fathers have a role more to do with play and stimulation; less emotional development

Field (1978)

• Filmed 4 month old babies in face to face interaction with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers and primary caregiver fathers

• Seems that they have potential to be more emotion focussed primary attachment figure, but perhaps only express this when given the role of primary caregiver

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Ev:

• Research into attachment figures may be biased by stereotypical accounts and images of parenting roles - may cause observer bias when they ‘see’ what they expect

• May also be a cause of social sensitivity

Schaffer & Emerson (1964)

Procedure:

• Longitudinal study where they followed 60 infants from a mainly working class background over a 2 yr period

• Attachment was measured in 2 ways:

  • Separation anxiety in 7 everyday situations

  • Stranger anxiety - every visit the researcher would approach the infant and note when they began to whimper in anxiety

• Data came from direct observation or mother keeping diaries

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Findings:

• 50% showed first specific attachment between 25-32 weeks

• Tended to be the caregiver most interactive and sensitive to the infant signals and facial expressions

• By 10 months 50% had more than one attachment and by 18 months 87%

• At 10 months 30% had multiple attachments

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Ev:

(+) :

• High external validity - done in their own home

• Longitudinal research (18m) - no ppt variables as it used the same families over time, so can establish change over time

(-) :

• Lack of generalisability: sample of working class mothers in Glasgow - more likely to be collectivist groups so may not be representative

• Issues with validity as parents gathering data

• Lacks historical validity - over 50 yr old research

Lorenz (1952)

• Randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs so half of them stayed with their mother, the other half hatched in an incubator and the first thing they saw was him

• Found that the incubator group followed him everywhere and the control group followed their mother

  ↳ Happened even when the two groups were mixed up

Guiton (1966)

• Found that chicks exposed to a caretaker wearing yellow rubber gloves from an early age imprinted on them

• Even later perceived them as their adult form displayed mating behaviour towards them suggesting that imprinting influences later behaviour

• Unlike Lorenz’s claim, imprinting was reversible with experience.

Harlow & Harlow (1958)

Procedure:

• Separated 16 new-born Rhesus monkeys from their biological mother and placed them in a cage

• 2 wire ‘surrogate mothers’ - one covered in cloth, other was bare (chose which one provided milk)

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Findings:

• Preferred and sought comfort from the cloth-covered mother regardless of which one dispensed milk

• Shows ‘contact comfort’ was of way more importance to monkeys than food in attachment behaviour

• Harlow’s research found that maternally deprived monkeys showed long-term dysfunction, with those raised by wire mothers being the most affected; they were more aggressive, less social, struggled with mating, and some neglected or attacked their offspring.

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Ev:

(+) Real world value :

• Helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor allowing them to intervene to prevent poor outcomes

• Also now understand importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes

(+) (-) Generalisability to humans :

• Rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than Lorenz’s birds

• However the human brain and behaviour is still more complex than that of monkeys

(-) Ethical issues :

• The monkeys suffered greatly as a result of Harlow’s procedures with some even dying

• Species is seen as similar enough to humans to be able to generalise findings, meaning their suffering was presumably quite human-like

Mary Ainsworth (The Strange Situation) (1978)

Procedure:

• Aimed to assess the quality of attachment between infant and mother

• Did this by making the child experience eight ‘episodes’

  • (Beginning) Caregiver and baby enter an unfamiliar playroom

  • Baby is encouraged to explore - tests exploration and secure base behaviour

  • Stranger comes in, talks to caregiver and approaches the baby - tests stranger anxiety

  • Caregiver leaves baby and stranger together - test separation and stranger anxiety

  • Caregiver returns and stranger leaves - tests reunion behaviour + exploration / secure base

  • Caregiver leaves baby alone - tests separation anxiety

  • Stranger returns - test stranger anxiety

  • Caregiver returns and reunited with baby - tests reunion behaviour

Findings:

• Secure: 60-75%

• Insecure avoidant: 20-25%

• Insecure resistant: 3%

Mary Ainsworth (The Strange Situation) (1978): Evaluation

• (+) Predictive validity - Babies assessed as secure tend to go on to have better outcomes eg. friendships in adulthood. Insecure resistant associated with the worst outcomes eg, bullying in later childhood (Kokkinos 2007) and adult mental health problems (2006)

  ↳ Counter - Kagan (1982) suggests genetically influenced anxiety levels could account for variations in attachment behaviour

• (+) Good reliability - Johanna Bick et al tested inter-rater reliability and found agreement on attachment type in 94% of cases (easily identifiable + observable movements)

• (-) Other attachment types - Mary Main + Judith Solomon (1986) identified a 4th category of attachment - disorganised Type D, w a mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours

  ↳ Counter - However, they are unusual, generally experienced severe neglect/abuse and most go on to develop severe psychological disasters by adulthood

• (-) Cultural differences - Eg. Takahashi (1986) - Japanese study, they displayed high levels of separation anxiety, many Type Cs - as in Japan mother-baby separation is very rare

Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg (2008)

• Carried out a meta analysis of other Strange Situations

• 32 studies of attachment types in 8 countries

• Findings:

  • In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification (despite variations)

  • In individualist cultures rates of insecure-resistant attachment were very low - similar to Ainsworth’s original sample, however this was not true for collectivist samples from China, Japan + Israel where rates were above 25% (+insecure avoidant attachment reduced)

Ev of cultural variation studies

(+)

• Large scale meta-analysis so greater reliability of results

• Researchers were indigenous (of the same cultural background as participants) - avoids misunderstandings of language used or bias because of one nation’s stereotypes of another’s

  ↳ However this is not true about all cross cultural attachment research

(-)

• Confounding variables - within each country there are different cultures in child-rearing due to poverty, for example - samples tended to be unrepresentative of these

• Imposed etic - occurs when we assume an idea or technique that works in one cultural context will work in another

  ↳ Eg. In UK/US babies lack of response to reunion may indicate an avoidant attachment, but might be interpreted as independence in Germany

Bowlby & Robertson (1952)

Conducted naturalistic observations of young children (aged 1-4 yrs) who were temporarily placed in residential nurseries or foster while their mothers were absent, Identified a 3 stage response to separation:

• Protest - cried, screamed and clung to the caregiver, showing distress

• Despair - refuses comfort and seems withdrawn and uninterested in anything

• Detachment - rejects caregiver on return and shows signs of anger

Rutter et al (2011) English and Romanian Adoptee (ERA)

Procedure:

• 11 adopted before age of 2, further 54 by the age of 4

• Tested at regular intervals to assess physical, cognitive + social development

• Compared to a control of 52 adopted British children

Findings:

• When they first arrived in the UK, ½ showed delayed intellectual development and majority were severely undernourished

• The mean IQ of those adopted before 6 months was 102 compared with 86 fir those between 6 months and 2 yrs abs 77 for those adopted after 2 yrs

  • Children adopted after 6 months displayed disinhibited attachment - attention seeking clinginess, social behaviour directed to both familiar and unfamiliar adults

Zeanah et al (2005) (Bucharest early intervention)

Procedure:

• Assessed attachment in 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care

• Compared to a control group of 50 children who had lived in an institution

• Measured attachment using strange situation and carers asked about attention seeking behaviour

Findings:

• 74% of control classed as secure, however only 19% of institutionalised

• Disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of institutionalised compared to less than 20% of control

Kerns (1994)

• Securely attached babies tend to go on to form the best quality childhood relationships

• Insecurely attached babies tend to have friendship difficulties

Myron Wilson & Smith (1996)

• Securely attached children were very unlikely to be involved in any bullying

• Insecure avoidant children were most likely to be victims and insecure resistant children were most likely to be bullies

Bailey (2007)

• 99 mothers and babies - mother and baby attachments were assessed during the strange situation

• The mother’s attachment to their own mother assessed using attachment interview

• Majority had the same attachment classification to their babies and their mothers

Simpson (2007)

• Found securely attached ppts as infants had higher social competences as children, closer to their friends at 16, more expressive and attached to their partners in early adulthood

• Suggests it does predict later attachment

Fearon & Roisman (2007)

• Concluded early attachment type n later development predicts later attachment to own children

• Means that secure attachment as a baby appears to convey advantages for future development while disorganised attachment appears to severely disadvantage children

Becker Stoll et al (2008)

• Followed 43 individuals from one year of age and then assessed adult attachment at 16; found that there was no evidence of continuity

• This means that it is not clear to what extent the early attachment really predict later attachment

Hazan & Shaver (1987)

• Tested Bowlby’s hypothesis with their ‘love quiz’

• Had nearly 100 questions, they received 620 replies and drew the following conclusions:

  • 56% classified themselves as secure, 25% as avoidant and 19% as resistant

  • Love experience and attitudes towards love (internal working model) were related to attachment type