psychology - attachment

everything I need to know for attachment - will keep updating it cause we have just started the topic

care giver infant interactions

care giver infant interactions

reciprocity , interactional synchrony

reciprocity

like a conversation, there‘s a behaviour and then an appropriate response

interactional synchrony

babies mirror facial expressions and gestures

Meltzoff and Moore

• was a controlled experiment, aim was to observe how the baby reacted to 4 different stimuli - it was video tapes for proper observation

• mouth opening, termination of mouth opening, young protrusion and termination of tongue protrusion

evaluation of Meltzoff and Moore

• difficult in reliably testing infant behaviour

• failure to replicate

• individual differences

stages of attachment

asocial, indiscriminate attachment, specific attachment and multiple attachment

asocial

0 - 6 weeks - similar responses to objects and people, preference for faces/ eyes

indiscriminate

6 weeks - 6 months preference for human company, ability to distinguish between people but comforted indiscriminately

discriminate

7 months + Infants show a preference for one caregiver, displaying separation and stander anxiety. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort and protection.

multiple attachment

10/11 month + attachment behaviours are displayed towards several different people e.g siblings, grandparents.

evaluation of stages of attachment

• unreliable data - mothers less securely attached infants would be less sensitive and possibly less accurate in their reports a systematic bias

• bias sample - working class population from 1960s, results may not generalise

• challenging monotropy - Rutter argued that all relationship equivalent

role of the father

secondary attachment figures - fathers are more playful, physically active and providing challenging situation for their children

Geiger - ( says they are a play mate - father) (mothers more conventional like telling stories to their children)

Lorenz

procedure - put the eggs into two groups - one with mother and other in incubator who saw Lornez first. to test imprinting he marked the two groups and put them together ( natural mother and Lorenz were present)

findings - goslings divided themselves quickly - incubator one didn’t show any recognition to the natural mother - Lorenz said this process is restricted to the critical period ( first two days)

Long lasting effects - process of imprinting is irreversible, and early imprinting has an effect on later mate preferences - the mate will choose the same kind of object upon which they were imprinted

evaluation for Lorenz

Research support for imprinting - number of other studies show the exact same thing - (GUITON - demonstrated that leghorn chicks exposed to yellow rubber gloves became imprinted on them)

Criticisms of imprinting - there is some dispute over the characteristics of imprinting. Guiton - found that he could reverse the imprinting in chickens that he had tried to mate with rubber gloves - spending time with their own species - able to engage in normal sexual relations.

harlow

Procedure - Harlow created a wire mother each with different heads, one wrapped in soft cloth. 8 infant monkeys were studies over 165 days - 4 of the monkeys the milk was on the wire mother and the other on the cloth mother.

findings - 8 monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth - covered - they always preferred the cloth mother

Long lasting effects - he found many long lasting consequences of their early attachment experiences - he reported that motherless monkeys even if they had contact comfort developed abnormally and socially and sexually abnormal. he also found that there were critical periods for these effects.

evaluation for Harlow

confounding variables - Harlow study is that two stimulus objects varied In more ways than being cloth covered or not ( lack of internal validity).

generalising animal studies to human behaviour - humans differ in important ways and they are governed by census decisions.

Ethics of Harlows study - a study such as Harlow could not be done with humans but also should they be done with monkeys? - could be argues that the benefits out way the costs.

learning theory of attachment

classical conditioning - Ivan pavlov - innate (unlearned) response of pleasure - unconditioned and neutral - the neutral is associated with the pleasure stimulus.

operant conditioning - Skinner came up with operant conditioning and drive reduction theory - negative reinforcement and rewards - person who supplies the food is associating with avoiding the discomfort and becomes the secondary reinforcer - source of reward.

social learning theory - children observe their parents affectionate behaviour and imitate this - gives them kisses and hugs.

evaluation of learning theory and attachment

learning theory is based on animal studies - skinner and the pigeons, rats.

attachment is not based on food - for example Harlow and the monkeys

drive reduction theory is limited - many people do this to increase discomfort - or don’t to anything to decrease their discomfort - instead we do things for the secondary reinforcer - money

Bowlby‘s theory of attachment

why attachment forms? survival to protect from danger

E- Evolutionary S - social releasers Critical period S - sensitivity hypothesis C- continuity hypothesis I - internal working model M - monotropy

evaluation for bowlby

supports - attachment is adaptive - clearly important for early development but is it critical for survival. overall attachment is vital and that’s why attachment is formed

limitation - a sensitive period rather than ‘critical’ - bowl by thinks its not possible to form attachments beyond the important critical period - children who fail to form attachment through this period it difficult to form attachment but not impossible.

support multiple attachment vs monotropy - multiple attachment model proposes all attachment are simply integrated into one single internal working model - both models ( monotropy and multiple attachment ) are similar - secondary attachment - contribute to social development but healthy development requires one central person ‘higher’ than all the other hierarchy.

Ainsworth strange situation

Procedure - research room - 8 episodes each designed to highlight certain behaviours as shown in the table on the left - KEY FEATURE - of these episodes is that caregiver and stranger alternately stay with the infant or leave - ( separation from the caregiver, reunion with the caregiver, response to stranger, and a new environment to increase exploration)

findings- secure attachment - 66% , insecure avoidant - 22%, insecure resistant - 12%

secure attachment - use caregiver as a secure base from which explore and function independently, not likely to cry in separation of caregiver but if is early soothed

insecure avoidant- avoid social interaction and intimacy with others, happy to explore with or without the presence of their care giver - also characterise high levels of anxiety.

insecure resistant - seeks and resists intimacy and social interaction - children respond to separation from their caregiver with immediate and instance distress - same with strangers. reunion displays conflicting desires.

evaluation of the strange situation

Limitation - other types of attachment - Main and Solomon proposed insecure - disorganised attachment - lack of consistent patterns of social behaviour : secure - 62% , insecure avoidant 15%, insecure resistant 9%, insecure disorganised 15%.

Strength - observation had high reliability - the measurements are confirmed as meaningful if there is agreement amongst observers - observations were reliable - rated by a panel in 0.94 agreement from a 1 point scale.

strength - real world applications - circle of security project - teaches caregivers to better understand their infants signals of distress and increase their understanding of what it feels like to experience anxiety.

cultural variations studies

can ijzerdoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) meta analysis 32 studies of attachment behaviour, findings secure attachment was the most found, the next most common in all countries is insecure avoidant except in Israel and Japan. these cultural simulates support the view that attachment is an innate biological process

Cultural differences - Takahashi - used the strange situation to study 60 middle class Japanese infants and their mothers and found similar rates of secure attachment to those found by Ainsworth et al. Japanese showed no evidence of insecure - avoidant attachment and high rates of insecure -resistant attachment (32%).

conclusion - suggest that despite the fact that there are cultural variation in infant care arrangement the strongest attachments are still formed with the infants mother. - the research also shows however that there are differences in the patterns of attachment that can be related to differences in cultural attitudes and practices

evaluation of cultural variations

similarities may be due to global culture rather than innate biological influences.

Limitation - countries rather than cultures - issue with the conclusions drawn by van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg is that they actually were not comparing cultures but actually countries.

Limitation - different tools are used and there’s a question to if some of them are valid or not - observational methods such as the strange situation are related to the cultural assumptions of the designer.

theory of maternal deprivation

evaluation of maternal deprivation

the influence of early attachment

evaluation of early attachment