attachment

what alert phase is

when a baby signals they are ready for interaction

how often mothers pick up on baby’s alert phases

2/3 of the time

when alert phase happens more often

3 months. verbal signals and facial expressions.

why is attachment a secondary drive

hunger is primary drive as its an innate biological motivator.

sears et al said that hunger becomes generalised to caregivers as they provide us with food. this makes attachment a secondary drive, learned from the association between caregivers and the satisfaction of a primary drive.

learning theory explanation of attachment eval

conflicting animal research - harlow and lorenz showed imprinting and attachment to things that didn’t feed them. learning theorists believed non-humans and humans were equal so this shows that attachment isn’t a result of feeding.

other factors ignored - reciprocity and interactional synchrony are ignored. if food causes attachment, this means there is no need for these. we wouldn’t expect to find an association between these and quality of infant-caregiver attachment.

conflicting human research - in s + e’s study, the infants gained a primary attachment to their mother despite other adults doing the feeding. this shows there is no unconditioned stimulus or primary drive involved.

what reciprocity is

responding to the other and eliciting a response

who initiates reciprocity

mother and baby play active role. both initiate.

what interactional synchrony is

repeating the others actions in a co-ordinated way

two observations to support interactional synchrony

meltzoff and moore - observed adults and infants. adults did 1 of 3 gesture or facial expression. infant filmed and investigated by independent observers. found association between adult action and infant action.

isabella et al - observed 30 mother and infant to find associated between mother-infant attachment and interactional synchrony. increased IS meant better degree of mother-infant attachment.

strength of interactional synchrony and reciprocity

controlled observation helped capture fine details - multiple angles. no demand characteristics from babies ofc. increased validity.

limitation of interactional synchrony and reciprocity

don’t know if behaviour has a special meaning - observed very small details like actions. dont know if the baby did this with conscious effort. dont know babies perspective.

feldman says we still don’t know the purpose of IS + R - only described actions. not that useful. however, some research shows IS + R helped mother-infant attachment and stress relief.

schaffer and emerson role of father

attachment forms with mother first.

in 75% of infants studied, they formed secondary attachments with father by 18 months.

grossman role of father

longitudinal study to find relationship between parents behaviour and quality of attachment in children.

mothers and fathers play different roles.

father are for play, mothers are for nurturing.

field role of father

wanted to find out why fathers can be the primary caregiver.

filmed 4 months old in face-to-face interactions with primary caregiver mother, father, and secondary caregiver mother.

found that PC fathers took on a maternal role and were more nurturing.

suggests level of responsiveness is more important than gender of parent.

role of father eval

inconsistent findings - research into father has different aims: why fathers are secondary caregivers and why they’re primary caregivers. the former found fathers act different from mother. the latter found fathers took on a maternal role.

grossman vs other studies - grossman said that fathers have a role in development but other studies have differed. found that same-sex parent infants with no father don’t differ from other. this suggests secondary caregiver fathers arent important.

fathers don’t tend to become primary caregivers - traditional gender roles where mothers are more nurturing. female hormones (oestrogen) biologically make mothers more nurturing.

schaffer and emerson glasgow study

60 infants - 31 boys, 29 males. wanted to measure attachment and stranger anxiety. all working-class families studied at own home. visited 1 month until 1 year old, then visited at 18 months. mothers had to answer questions on if the baby experienced stranger or separation anxiety in 7 everyday separations.

at 25-32 weeks, 50% showed separation anxiety and formed specific attachments. at 40 weeks, 80% had specific attachments, 30% had multiple.

schaffer and emerson glasgow study eval

longitudinal study - not cross-sectional design. no participant variables. same babies over long time.

good external validity - done at home. no unnatural behaviour because mother observers behaviour, not researcher.

limited sample characteristics - all working class in glasgow. done 5 years ago. lacks temporal validity. cant generalise.

stages of attachment and short desc

1. asocial (first few weeks) - behaviour towards humans and inanimate objects are the same. slight preference over adults that calm them.

2. indiscriminate (3-7 months) - preference to humans. recognises familiar adults. cuddly to all adults.

3. specific (from 7 months) - stranger and separation anxiety. primary attachment figure is the reciprocal adult.

4. multiple attachment (little bit after specific) - s + e’s study found 1 month after specific, 29% babies formed multiple attachment. by 1yo, majority have multiple.

stages of attachment eval

difficulty distinguishing multiple attachments - bowlby found separation anxiety was also from playmates, not just attachments. makes it harder to distinguish if attachment is occurring in s + e’s study.

conflicting evidence - in collectivist cultures, they found multiple attachments form to begin. this is because multiple adults work together for babies.

difficulty studying asocial stage - babies are too young and immobile. not much to observe. can’t rely on evidence.

lorenz experiment and findings

divided a clutch of goose eggs into half. half hatched with mother (control), half hatched in incubator and the first moving object they saw was lorenz. the control group followed mother everywhere, and the incubator group followed lorenz everywhere, even when groups mixed. this is imprinting.

lorenz found sexual imprinting occurred. those who followed lorenz would try and mate with humans. in a case study, where a peacock hatched in a reptilian area of a zoo, the first moving object being a giant tortoise, would try and mate with other giant tortoises when adult.

lorenz eval

can’t generalise to humans - mammalian attachment systems are very different from geese. mammals show more emotional attachment to their offspring and can develop attachments at any time.

lorenz can be questioned - guiton et al found chickens which imprinted on a yellow rubber glove would try and mate with it as an adult, but as it gains more experience, it starts to mate with fellow chickens. unlike what lorenz said, sexual imprinting is not permanent.

harlows experiment and findings

wanted to test if a soft object had the qualities of a mother.

16 baby monkeys. 2 conditions - milk dispensed by wired mother and dispensed by cloth mother.

in both conditions, the monkeys seeked comfort and cuddles from the cloth mother. suggests contact comfort is more important than food.

harlow eval

ethical issues - monkeys went through a lot of suffering. harlow knew this and called the wire mother ‘iron maiden’ after the torture device. monkeys are very human-like, so their suffering is too.

application in practical contexts - we understand the importance of proper attachment figures for monkeys in zoos. social workers also know now the risk factors in child neglect and abuse, helping them prevent it.

better understanding of mother-infant relationships - contact comfort is the most important. we know the importance of quality of earlier relationships and how they impact future relationships and child bearing.

who came up with the explanation of attachment using the learning theory?

dollard and miller

classical conditioning in attachment

food - unconditioned stimulus. pleasure - unconditioned response. caregiver - neutral stimulus.

the caregiver will give food to the baby who will then feel pleasure. an association will then be formed between the caregiver and the food.

the caregiver becomes the conditioned stimulus, and pleasure becomes the conditioned response.

operant condition in attachment

babies will cry which will lead to comfort from the caregiver, which is a pleasant consequence. crying will become reinforced and the caregiver will respond with a comforting ‘social suppressor’ behaviour.

this is a two way process as babies will get the comfort, and the caregiver receives negative reinforcement as they want to reduce the unpleasant behaviour (crying). mutual reinforcement strengthens the attachment.

bowlby’s evolutionary explanation

innate system that gave a survival advantage. imprinting and attachment occurs to keep children close to their caregivers and away from hazards.

monotropy

proposed by bowlby. the idea that you have an attachment to one primary attachment figure which is different to the rest. called them the ‘mother’, didn’t have to be biological mother. the two principles to clarify this were the law of continuity and the law of accumulated separation.

what is the law of continuity

idea the more constant and predictable the child’s care is, the better quality of their attachment.

what is the law of accumulated separation?

every separation from the mother adds up. better to not leave the baby at all.

bowlby’s critical period

2 years. referred to as sensitive period as children are maximally sensitive at the age of two. if an attachment is not formed in this time, it’ll be harder for attachments to form later.

social releasers

bowlby. innate cute behaviours that activate the adult’s attachment system. reciprocal process. both mother and baby have an innate predisposition to become attached.

bowlby’s internal working model

the internal working model is a child’s mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver. this is a template for their future relationships. sensitive caregivers = stable future relationships. bad caregivers = unstable future relationships. affects the type of parent the child may become.

bowlby’s explanation of attachment eval

support for social releasers - brazelton et al changed his observation (interactional synchrony) into an experiment by getting the mothers to ignore their baby’s social releasers. initially the baby’s showed distress, then they curled up motionless on the floor. this shows social releasers are significant.

mixed evidence for monotropy - while schaffer and emerson found primary attachments formed first, a significant minority of babies formed multiple attachments at the same time. it is also unclear if there’s something special about this first attachment or if it’s just stronger (not different in quality).

support for internal working model - bailey et al assessed 99 mothers with one year olds. they did interviews with their own mothers to see the quality of attachment, then assessed the mothers attachment to their baby by observation. the mothers with a poor relationship to their mother tended to have poor attachment with their baby. they all tended to have the same attachment types.

strange situation procedure

ainsworth. controlled lab observation. two-way mirror. tested 5 things: separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, exploration and secure-base, response to reunion, proximity seeking. the caregiver and baby enter a foreign playroom.

steps:

1. child has opportunity to explore

2. stranger comes in and tries interacting

3. caregiver leaves

4. caregiver returns and stranger leaves

5. the caregiver leaves, the child is alone

6. the stranger returns

7. the caregiver returns

strange situation findings

found three types of attachment.

secure attachment - 60-75% of british toddlers. they explore but also go back to their caregiver. moderate stranger and separation anxiety. accept comfort when caregiver returns.

insecure-avoidant - 20-25%. explore freely, don’t seek proximity. dont care when the caregiver leaves or comes back. little stranger and separation anxiety.

insecure-resistant - ~3%. lots of stranger and separation anxiety. refuse comfort when caregiver comes back. seeks proximity, explores less.

strange situation eval

support for validity - those labelled as secure went on to have good relationships. those labelled as insecure-resistant had the worse relationships and were more likely to have experience with bullying.

good inter-rater reliability - multiple observers. bick et al found agreement of attachment type on 94% of babies. could be because of the highly controlled conditions and easy to observe behavioural categories.

culture-bound - findings will be different in each country due to different childhood experiences and different ways of raising children. takahashi found you couldn’t do this experiment in japan as most babies faced immense separation anxiety, and when reunited, the mother ran to scoop their babies up before the reaction could be seen.

van ijenzdoorn

tested cultural differences. conducted 32 studies of strange situation in 8 dif countries (15 in america). meta-analysed the results.

most common was secure attachment, ranging from 75% in britain to 50% in china. insecure-resistant was in 3% for britain, 30% for israel. insecure-avoidant was least in japan, most in germany.

other cultural studies (strange situation)

italy (simonella et al) - assessed 76 one year olds. 36% insecure avoidant. 50% secure which is a lower rate than what other studies found. may be because parents tended to work longer hours away from their baby.

korea (jin et al) - 87 children. of all the insecure children, one was insecure-avoidant, the rest were insecure-resistant. this is similar to japan as they have similar child-rearing behaviours.

strange situation cultural studies eval

large samples - nearly 2000 children in ijenzdoorn’s study. increases internal validity and reduces the amount of anomalous results.

unrepresentative of culture - tested differences between countries, not cultures. ijenzdoorn and sagi found in tokyo, attachment was similar in western countries, but in rural areas of japan, there were more insecure-resistant babies.

bias - strange situation made by an american person, based on a british person’s theory (bowlby). while american culture may think small separation anxiety is a bad thing, in germany they think of it as independence.

bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

maternal deprivation = issues with psychological development

bowlby said the critical period is 30 months. if deprived of maternal emotional care during this time (for an extended period), psychological damage would occur.

intellectual development would be interrupted. goldfarb found lower iq of children in institutions compared to children who were fostered (and had higher emotional care).

emotional development will be interrupted. more likely for them to become affectionless psychopaths and be associated with criminality. they feel a lack of remorse for their victims.

bowlby’s 44 thieves study

44 teenagers accused of stealing. interviewed them to see if they had any signs of an affectionless psychopaths. interviewed their family to see if they had prolonged early separation. control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people too. 14 described as affectionless psychopaths, 12 had prolonged separation. 5 of the remaining 30 had prolonged separation. in control group, 2 had prolonged separation.

bowlby maternal deprivation eval

poor evidence - drew on sources for evidence including children orphaned during WW2. these children would be traumatised and had poor after-care. these factors may have caused developmental issues, not deprivation. drew on data from poor-quality institutions where the children would be deprived of more than just maternal care. 44 thieves study was biased because bowlby carried out the interviews.

counter-evidence - lewis conducted thieves study on larger scale (500 people). found prolonged separation didn’t equal to criminality. shows other factors must affect criminality.

critical period is more of a sensitive period - twin boys from czech isolated from 18 months until 7 years (locked in cupboard). found and looked after by two loving adults and recovered fully. shows bowlby’s period is sensitive, not critical, as it can still be fixed.

rutter’s romanian orphan study

rutter followed 165 romanian orphans adopted in britain. checked emotional, cognitive and physical development at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15. a control group of 52 british children who were adopted at the same time.

children were undernourished and showed signs of delayed development when brought to the uk. their recovery depended on when they were adopted. the mean IQ for children adopted before 6 months was 102 at 11, but 86 for those between 6 months-2 years. these differences remained at 16. they also showed signs of disinhibited attachment, making them clingy to all adults (indiscriminate).

bucharest early intervention project

zeanah et al assessed attachment in 95 children who spent most of their time in institutional care aged 12-31 months using the strange situation. control group was 50 children never in an institution. asked about any unusual behaviours to do with disinhibited attachment.

found 74% of the control group were securely attached, but in the institutional group, 19% were securely attached, 65% had disorganised attachment, 44% had disinhibited attachment. 20% of disinhibited in the control.

disinhibited attachment description

equally affectionate with stranger and familiar adults. unusual as many children show stranger anxiety by second year. rutter said this was an outcome of romanian orphans having multiple caregivers, but not spending enough time with one to form a secure attachment.

mental retardation definition

in rutter’s study, many of the orphans showed mental retardation when they first came to britain. those adopted by 6 months caught up with the control group by age 4. this shows damage to intellectual development can be recovered.

romanian orphan study eval

real life application - practical value as we now understand the impacts of institutionalisation. orphanages and children’s homes now avoid having a large number of caregivers and assign a key worker to the child so an attachment can be formed, and so disinhibited attachment can be avoided.

less confounding participant variables - in many other institutional studies, the children went through abuse and trauma, which could have affected their attachment type. we could study the romanian orphans without these variables, so internal validity is higher.

unusual situational variables - the conditions of romanian orphanages were especially bad and poor-quality, so much that they can’t be compared with other institutions. this mean the study may lack generalisability.

attachment type and relationships in later childhood

insecure-avoidant (type a) - more likely to be bully victims

securely attached (type b) - best quality friendships

insecure-resistant (type c) - most likely to be bullies

relationships in adulthood with romantic partners

mccarthy studied 40 adult women who were assessed as infants to check for their personality type. found securely attached had the best relationships, insecure-avoidant had trouble with intimacy, insecure-resistant had trouble maintaining friendships.

hazan and shaver love quiz - 620 replied to a love quiz printed in an american newspaper. the first part assessed their current/most important relationship. the second part assessed their love life in general. the third part assessed their personality type by asking them to choose what applies to them the most. 56% secure. 25% insecure-avoidant. 19% insecure-resistant. secure had good relationships. avoidant were jealous lots.

early attachment on later relationships eval

mixed evidence - internal working model predicts continuity. zimmerman assessed infant attachment type and adolescence attachment to parents. found there was little relationship between the two. this is not what we’d expect if we’re going off the internal working model.

validity issues - unlike the strange situation, a lot of studies on later relationships are through questionnaires or surveys, meaning there may be social desirability bias. furthermore, you’re asking them to recall experiences from when they were very young, and memory may be remembered incorrectly.

association doesn’t mean causation - alternate explanations for continuity. for example, parenting style and the child’s temperament may affect infant attachment and quality of later relationships.