Attachment

Define reciprocity?

A description of how two people. Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both the mother and infant respond to each other's signal and give responses to each other. Responses are similar but not necessarily the same. E.g. a smile (from mother), then a giggle (from baby).

Babies have periodic 'alert phases' and signal they are ready for interaction, mothers pick up on this 2/3rds of the time. From 3 months, this interaction tends to be more frequent, and involves facial expressions and verbal signals.

Define interactional synchrony

Mother and infant reflect both the simultaneous actions, and emotions and do this in a coordinated (synchronised) way. Responses are the same/mirrored, e.g. a giggle (by mother), followed by a giggle (by baby).

Difference between sociability and attachment

Sociability:
- Seeking and being especially satisfied by rewards from social interaction
- Preferring to be with others.
- Sharing activities with others.
- Being responsive to and seeking responsiveness from others.

Attachment:
- Attachments are selective - they are formed with specific individuals
- Attachments involve proximity seeking - efforts are made to be physically close or near to the attachment figure.
- Attachments provide comfort and security.
- Attachments lead to distress on separation from the attachment figure and pleasure on reunion.

What is the invisible tie and what did Bowlby say about it?

The Invisible Tie: for the relationship to be effective it needs to work both ways - the infant is tied to the caregiver and the caregiver is tied to the infant - the attachment also depends upon interactions rather than two people just being together.

Bowlby - a strong, long-lasting emotional tie to a particular individual. "Mother love in infancy and childhood is as important mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical Health"

Why do we need to from attachments?

- Innate to survive, it is inborn
- Increases reproductive success
- Forms basis for emotional relationships
- Bowlby suggested that early attachments influence development via an internal working model which generates expectations of other relationships

What are the most common infant-caregiver interactions

Bodily contact: physical interactions help form attachments, especially right after birth.

Mimicking: infants have an innate ability to imitate their carers facial expressions which suggests it is a biological device to aid the formation of attachments.

Caregiverese: adults use a modified form of vocal language (baby voice) which is high pitched, song-like and slow/repetitive. This aids communication between carer and infant and serves to strengthen the attachment bond.

Interactional synchrony

Reciprocity

Meltzoff and Moore 1977: study into interactional synchrony/mimicking

AIM: to demonstrate infant imitation of adult facial expressions and therefore interactional synchrony.

PROCEDURE:
Selected four different stimuli (three different faces plus a hand gesture), and observed the behaviour of infants in response. The study was conducted using an adult model who displayed facial and hand gestures. (A dummy was placed in the infant's mouth during the initial display to prevent any response.) Following the display the dummy was removed and the child's expression was filmed on video. Each observer was asked to note all these behavioural categories: abrupt jaw opening, return of lips to their closed resting position, forward thrust of tongue.

FINDINGS: It was found that infants as young as two/three weeks old imitated specific facial gestures. Each observer scored the tapes twice so that both intra-rater (1 observer doing it 2 times) and the inter-observer (2 separate observers) so that reliability could be calculated. All scores were greater than 0.92 (anything above 0.8 is reliable).

CONCLUSION: There is an association between infant and adult behaviour. The imitation is intentional, the infant is deliberately copying what the other person is doing

Meltzoff and Moore study into interactional synchrony/mimicking evaluation

Support from a later study by Meltzoff and Moore 1983 demonstrated the same synchrony with infants only three days old. This rules out the possibility that the imitation behaviours are learned, so the behaviour response must be innate/natural/inborn.

Problems with testing infant behaviour and its reliability: infants mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently (sticking tongue out/ yawning/ smiling). This makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specifically imitated behaviour. To overcome this problem, Meltzoff and Moore measured infants responses by infants, and then asking an observers (who has no idea what behaviour was being imitated) to judge their behaviour from the video. So are the infants really responding to the carer or is it just natural movement? This highlights difficulties in testing infant behaviour, but also suggests a way of increasing the internal validity of the data.
(They also increased the internal validity by them having 2 observers, making the checklist secure by checking they are sticking their tongue out properly for example)

High IOR = 0.92

Individual different between infants, they all have different relationships with their carer which means every response is different. Isabella et al found that more strongly attached pairs showed greater interactional synchrony

Jean Piaget 1962 would disagree and believed that true imitation only develops towards the end of the first year and anything before this is a kind of response training - what the infant is doing is repeating behaviour that is rewarded (operant conditioning). For example an infant might happen to stick its tongue out after seeing a caregiver do the same, but the caregiver then smiles - a rewarding experience for the infant encouraging the infant to repeat the same behaviour next time.

Schaffer's Stages of Attachment

Pre-attachment phase (0-3 months):
From 6 weeks, humans became attracted to other humans, preferring them as objects and events. Shown by smiling at people's faces. Happier in presence of humans.

Indiscriminate attachment phase (3-7/8 months):
Begin to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar people. Smiling more at known people. Though they will still allow strangers to handle and look after them. Not different towards any other person (indiscriminate). No separation anxiety.

Specific/ discriminate attachment phase 7/8 months onwards)
Infants begin to develop specific attachments, staying close to particular people and becoming distressed when separated from them. They avoid unfamiliar people and protest if strangers try to handle them.

Multiple attachments stage (9 months onwards):
Infants form strong emotional ties with major caregivers (grandparents), and non caregivers (other children). The fear of strangers weakens, but attachment to the mother figure stays strong

Schaffer and Emerson Glasgow Babies study procedure - stages of attachment

A longitudinal study (took course over a long period of time, gives rich/ qualitative data but dropouts may happen so unrepresentative) was conducted upon 60 newborn babies (31 male, 29 female). From a working class area of Glasgow. Mothers and babies were studied each month for the first year of their lives in their own homes and again at 18 months.

Observations and interviews were conducted with the mothers, with questions being asked about whom infants smiled at, whom they responded to, who caused them distress etc. Also asked mothers about the kind of protest the child shows in seven everyday 'separations'. (E.g. adult leaving the room).

Attachment was measured in two ways:

Separation protest - this was assessed through several everyday situations: the infant being left alone in a room, left alone with others, left in a pram outside the house, left in a pram outside the shops, left in the cot at night, being put down after being held and being passed by while sitting in chair/cot or pram.
Stranger anxiety - the infants anxiety response to unfamiliar adults. This was assessed by the researcher starting each home visit by approaching the infant to see if this distressed the child.

The findings of the study?

Separation protest = 6-8 months

Stranger anxiety one month later
.

Strongly attached infants had mothers who responded to their needs quickly and gave more opportunities for interaction

.

Weakly attached infants had mothers who responded less quickly and gave fewer opportunities for interaction.
.
Multiple attachments = 18 months

87% had at least two attachments, with 31% having five or more attachments.

Conclusions of the study?

There is a pattern of attachment formation common to all infants, which suggests the process is biologically controlled

Attachments are more easily made with those who display sensitive responsiveness, recognising and responding appropriately to an infant's needs, rather than those spending the most time with a child.

Multiple attachments are norm and of similar quality, which opposes Bowlby's idea that attachments are a hierarchy of one prime attachment and other minor ones.

Schaffer commented that there is nothing to suggest that mothers can't be shared by several people.

Evaluation points for Schaffers stages of attachment?

Problems with the pre-attachment phase: babies are young and have poor coordination, they are pretty much immobile. Therefore it is hard to make judgements on them based on observations, there just isn't much observable behaviour at all! This makes the evidence cannot be relied on (unreliable as the weakness).

Conflicting evidence on multiple attachments: there's no doubt that children form multiple attachments at some point, it's just unclear when. Some research indicates that most babies form attachments to a single main carer before they become capable of developing multiple attachments. (Bowlby). However other psychologists believe babies form multiple attachments from the outset.

Problems with measuring multiple attachments: just because a baby gets distressed when an individual leaves the room, doesn't mean they are a true attachment figure. Bowlby says that children have playmates as well as attachment figures and may get distress when a playmate leaves, but this doesn't signify attachment. This is a problem for Schaffer and Emerson stages because their observation does not leave us a way to distinguish between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and shown towards playmates.

A strength is that it has high external validity. It was carried out in their own homes and was done by parents during everyday activities and reported to researchers later. This means that the baby's behaviour is unlikely to be affected by the presence of observers, so acted more naturally. However methodological issues: They conducted retrospective data (mother is interviewed AFTER). Unreliable and memory may be worse after. Or social desirability from mother. Also was a longitudinal study so attrition may occur (dropout of people over time) which makes it less reliable, this is because it takes place over such a long time (18 months). But it also gives rich and qualitative data

A weakness is that the sample is small, only 60 people, and therefore may be a problem if they get dropouts. It was done over 50 years ago which is also a limitation. It also takes into account only one culture (Glasgow), and one class so does not generalise to other social or historical contexts. Lacks population validity

What is the role of the father?

Father's offer play rather than comfort, seems to contribute to children's attachment. Most children are attached to fathers by 18 months

What are the factors affecting the father-child relationship?

• Degree of Sensitivity: the more sensitive to their child's needs, the more secure attachment.

• Type of attachment with own parents: single-parent fathers tend to form similar attachments with their children that they had with their own parents.

• Marital Intimacy: the degree of intimacy a father has within his relationship with his partner affects the type of attachment he will have with his children

• Supportive Co-parenting: the amount of support a father gives to his partner in helping to care for children affects the type of attachment he will have with his children

Attachment to fathers (research against being primary attachment)

Schaffer + Emerson

Research that fathers are much less likely to become babies’ first attachment figure compared to mothers: found that the majority of babies first became attached to their mothers around 7 months, in only 3% of cases the father was first. In 27% of cases the father was joint first with the mother. They also showed 75% formed attachment to their fathers by 18 months, determined by protesting when he walked away.

Grossman et al

Longitudinal study where babies attachments were studied at 6, 10 and 16. They compared the mother/father’s behaviour and its contribution to the quality of their baby’s later attachments to other people. Found that being sensitive rather than playful means more contributions to a child's later attachments. Found that the quality of fathers’ play was related to their early attachments, suggesting they have a different role from mothers -  one more to do with play and stimulation and less with emotional development.

Attachment to fathers (research for being primary attachment)

Field filmed 4 month-old babies in face-to-face interaction with primary caregiver mothers/fathers, and secondary caregiver fathers. Primary caregiver fathers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding babies (part of interactional synchrony- part of process of forming attachments) than secondary caregiver fathers, their behaviour was similar to primary caregiver mothers. So fathers have the potential to be the more emotion-focused primary attachment figure. They can provide the responsiveness required for a close emotional attachment but perhaps only express this when given the role of primary caregiver.

Evaluation points for the role of the father?

• There is research evidence that provides support for the role of the father as a playmate. Research by Geiger found that fathers' play interactions were more exciting in comparison to mothers. However, the mothers' play interactions are more affectionate and nurturing. This suggests that the role of the father is in fact as a playmate and not as a sensitive parent he responds to the needs of their children. These results also confirm that their mother takes on more of a nurturing role

• However, research suggests that fathers are able to form secure attachment with their children if they are in an intimate marriage. Belsky et al found that males who reported higher levels of marital intimacy also displayed a secure father infant attachment, whereas males with lower levels of marital intimacy displayed insecure father-infant attachment. This suggests that males can form secure attachments with their children. However, the strength of the attachment depends on the father and mother relationship.

Evaluation points for the role of the father? Maybe only learn 2 or 3 points

• Weakness: findings may vary due to methodological issues. Grossman (longitudinal study) found fathers as secondary attachment figures and had an important role in a child's development, however MacCallum and Golombok found children growing up in same-sex parent or heterosexual families do not develop any differently from those in two parent heterosexual families. This would seem to question that the fathers role as a secondary attachment figure is not important. So, if fathers have a distinct role why aren't children without fathers any different? This means that the question to whether fathers have a distinct role remains unanswered

• Why dont fathers generally become primary attachments? Could be the result of traditional gender roles, in which women are expected to be more caring and nurturing than men. Therefore fathers don't feel they should act like this. On the other hand it could be that female hormones liken oestrogen create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically predisposed to be the primary attachment figure (Taylor et al)

• Strength: real-world application. Research into the role of the father can be used to give advice to parents. Parents could stress over who should take on the primary role and mothers could feel pressured to stay at home because of stereotypes, equally fathers may feel pressured to work rather than parenting. So research can be used to offer reassuring advice to parents, e.g. heterosexual parents can be informed that fathers are quite capable of being primary attachment figures and lesbian-parents/ single-mother families informed that not having a father around doesn’t affect a child's development. This is  strength as it means parental anxiety about the role of fathers can be reduced.

What are animal studies in psychology?

Animal studies in psychology are carried out on non-human animal species rather than on humans, either for ethical or practical reasons. Practical as animals breed faster than humans and researchers are interested in seeing results in more than one generation of animals.

Define ethology

The study of animal behaviour.

Define imprinting

New born animals attach to the first moving object they see.

What does the ‘critical period’ mean'?

The most important/ critical hours in which imprinting happens in. Imprinting must occur within a few hours after birth (animals)

What is sexual imprinting?

 Birds show courtship behaviour towards whatever species they imprint on. 

What is Lorenz’s study details? What’s his critical period?

His critical period was 0-24 hrs after hatching

Aim: To observe the phenomenon of imprinting 

Procedure: Classical experiment - randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment. The other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.

Findings: The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed their mother. These findings stayed the same even when the two groups were mixed up together.

Conclusion: This phenomenon is called imprinting, where bird species which are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see. Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place, if imprinting does not occur during that time Lorenz found that chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure. Supports imprinting.

Lorenz evaluation

• Research support for imprinting: Many other studies have also demonstrated imprinting in animals. For example, Guiton showed that chicks exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding them during the first few weeks, became imprinted on the gloves. Male chick later tried to mate with the gloves, showing that early imprinting is linked to later reproductive behaviour. This largely corroborates with the findings originally found in Lorenz’s study as this suggests the long-lasting effects of the study as this is an irreversible change affecting social and sexual behaviour known as sexual imprinting. This increases the reliability of Lorenz's conclusions by showing that similar imprinting behaviours occur in other species under controlled conditions.

• Further research challenges Lorenz’s idea that imprinting is irreversible. For instance, Guiton himself later found that when the same chicks were allowed to spend time with their own species, they eventually engaged in normal sexual behaviour. This suggests that imprinting effects are not permanent, and that learning and experience can override early attachments, thereby reducing the strength of Lorenz’s claim. This undermines the validity of the critical period as a rigid, one-time window for attachment formation and implies a greater role for plasticity and social learning in development.

• Generalisability to humans: there is a problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans, the mammalian attachment system is different to that of birds. For example, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to the young than birds do, and mammals may be able to form attachments at any time. This means that it is not easy to generalise any of Lorenz’s findings to humans. This undermines the external validity of the conclusions and suggests that Lorenz’s theory of imprinting may only partially help us understand the complexities of human bonding.

Harlow’s study details

As mothers some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases.Harlow observed that newborns kept alone in a bare cage usually died but that they usually survived if given something soft like a cloth to cuddle.

Procedure: Harlow tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model mothers. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in a second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother.
Findings: It was found that the baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that 'contact comfort' was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.

What did Harlow do after his study?

Maternally deprived monkeys as adults- follow up study

Harlow later observed the monkeys who had been deprived of a 'real' mother into adulthood to see if this early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect. 

The researchers found severe consequences. They were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and they bred less often than is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at mating

What was Harlow’s critical period for imprinting?

Like Lorenz, Harlow concluded that there was a critical period for this behaviour - a mother figure had to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible.

Harlow evaluation

• Confounding variables: One criticism that has been made of Harlow's study is that the two stimulus objects varied in more ways than being cloth-covered or not. The two heads were also different, which acted as a confounding variable because it varied systematically with the independent variable ('mother' being cloth-covered or not). It is possible that the reason the infant monkeys preferred one mother to the other was because the cloth-covered mother had a more attractive head. Therefore the conclusions of this study lack internal validity.

• Ethical issues: The monkeys endured suffering. This species is considered similar enough to humans to be able to generalise the findings, presuming the suffering was quite human-like. Harlow was self-aware of the suffering, he referred to the wire mothers as ‘iron maidens’ after a medieval torture device

• Generalisability to humans: The ultimate aim of animal studies is to be able to generalise the conclusions to human behaviour. However, humans differ in important ways - perhaps most importantly because much more of their behaviour is governed by conscious decisions. Nevertheless, a number of studies have found that the observations made of animal attachment behaviour are mirrored in studies of humans. For example, Harlow's research is supported by Schaffer and Emerson's findings that infants were not most attached to the person who fed them. Animal studies can act as a useful pointer in understanding human behaviour but we should always seek confirmation by looking at research with humans.

Harlow evaluation part 2

• Theoretical and practical value: Most importantly Harlow showed that attachment does not develop as the result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort. Harlow also showed us the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children.

• Practical value: It has helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and so intervene to prevent it (Howe 1998). Of course these findings are also important in the care of captive monkeys; we now understand the importance of proper attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and also in breeding programmes in the wild.

• Impact of isolation:  The monkeys suffered long -lasting psychological impacts. Harlow 1959) continued to study his monkeys as they grew up and noted many consequences of their early attachment experiences. Не reported that the motherless monkeys, even those who did have contact comfort, developed abnormally. They were socially abnormal: they froze or fled when approached by other monkeys. And they were sexually abnormal: they did not show normal mating behaviour and did not cradle their own babies. Like Lorenz, Harlow also found that there was a critical period for these effects. If the motherless monkeys spent time with their monkey 'peers' they seemed to recover but only if this happened before they were three months old. Having more than six months with only a wire mother was something they did not appear able to recover from.

What is the learning theory as an explanation for attachment?

A set of theories from the behaviourist approach that emphasises the role of learning behaviour. Explanations for learning of behaviour include classical and operant conditioning.

Learning theorists Dollard and Miller (1950) proposed that caregiver-infant attachment can be explained by learning theory. Their approach is sometimes called a 'cupboard love’ approach because it emphasises the importance of the caregiver as a provider of food. Put simply they proposed that children learn to love whoever feeds them!

What is classical conditioning?

Learning by association. The child learns to associate the carer with food. Food is an unconditioned stimulus which is associated with pleasure. At the start the carer is a neutral stimulus which produces no response. Over time when the carer regularly feeds the child, they become associated with the food and becomes a conditioned stimulus which evokes pleasure (the sight of the caregiver produces a conditioned response of pleasure), which is how attachment develops

Never talk about dogs/pigeons in this topic, only for approaches

What is operant conditioning?

If a behaviour results in pleasant consequences it is likely to be repeated, but if results in bad consequences it is less likely to be repeated. This behaviour has been reinforced.

If crying results in feeding, then the consequences are pleasant and crying is reinforced. Escaping from an unpleasant stimulus is also good so it is a reinforcer. 

Operant conditioning explains why babies cry for comfort, crying leads to a response from the caregiver, for example feeding. As long as the caregiver provides the correct response, crying is reinforced. The baby then directs crying for comfort towards the caregiver who responds with comforting behaviour. This reinforcement is a two-way process. At the same time as the baby is reinforced for crying, the caregiver receives negative reinforcement because the crying stops - escaping from something unpleasant is reinforcing.

Evaluation for the learning theory

• Research support that feeding/cupboard love is not the basis of attachment: Schaffer & Emerson (The Glasgow Babies), they contradicted the learning theory approach by finding that infants were not most attached to the person who fed them, nor with the person who spent most time with them. They were most attached to the person who was most responsive and interacted with them (interactional synchrony, reciprocity). Si it is very hard to relate these findings with that of cupboard love, if attachment developed purely of feeding then we wouldn't expect to find relationships the interactions of baby/caregiver and their relationship.

• Research support that feeding/cupboard love is not the basis of attachment: Fox (1977) – Studied attachment bonds between mothers, babies and metapelets on Israeli kibbutzim communal farms. Metapelets are specially trained, full time carers of newborn infants, allowing mothers to work (though some time is spent with parents) Generally children were more attached to their mothers than the metapelets. As the metapelets did the majority of the feeding this suggests the Learning Theory is invalid.

• Should also take into account Bowlby’s theory: the learning theory is a reductionist view as reduces complex human behaviour to a SR association, but it takes the nurture stance as suggests attachments are learned. So we should also consider Bowlby’s theory as it takes the nature stance, suggesting attachments are innate mechanisms. So better to consider both nature and nurture in explaining attachments

• Bowlby’s Theory is a more creditable theory: Bowlby suggests that babies want to spend 24 hours a day with their mothers, not just for food. And this learning theory suggests that babies attach to their mothers through food pleasure but in reality babies want to spend all their time with their mothers. We obviously have an innate need for survival, and attachment offers that protection - we seek our mothers out to not only provide food but to ensure we do not get picked off by predators. Mothers also protect their young to ensure they survive and go on to reproduce themselves so the mother and father's genes still go on. Perhaps infants are attached to those people who are most responsive because then they can be sure of their protection.

What are the features of Bowlby’s theory as an explanation for attachment?

• internal working model

• monotropy

• critical period

• social releasers

What is the internal working model according to Bowlby

Bowlby proposed that children form a mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver called an internal working model. It serves as a model of what relationships are like, so affects future relationships.

People tend to base their parenting on their own experiences of being parented, which explains why children from functional families tend to have similar families themselves.

What is monotropy according to Bowlby?

Infants are born with the innate need to create one main and special bond with an attachment figure (mother)

Bowlby's theory is described as monotropic because he emphasises the importance of a child’s attachment to one particular caregiver, and this caregiver is different/ more important than others. He called this the mother (does not need to be biological). He believed the more time spent with this person the better. He put forward 2 principles to clarify this: 

• The law of continuity: the more constant and predictable a child’s care, the better quality of attachment 

• The law of accumulated separation: states that the effects of every separation from the mother add up, and so the best dose of separation is zero dose

What is the critical period according to Bowlby?

Attachment is adaptive as seeking closeness/proximity to an adult is likely to promote an infant's survival. 

Based on Lorenz’s research in finding critical periods for birds imprinting on mothers, Bowlby proposed a critical period for attachment in humans of 2 and a half years where the infant attachment system is active; he viewed this as the sensitive period. If an attachment is not viewed at this time, it will be hard to form one later. He strongly emphasised the importance of the role of the mother.

What are social releasers according to Bowlby?

Bowlby suggested that babies are born with innate behaviour like smiling that encourages attention from adults, and called these social releasers. He said attachment was a reciprocal process, both the mother and baby have an innate predisposition to become attached, and social releasers trigger that response in caregivers. 

Evaluation for Bowlby’s theory

• Research support: The monotropy hypothesis also predicts that even within a network  of multiple attachments, there is a hierarchy. This is supported by Tronick et al.’s (1992) study of an  African cultural group, the Efe, who live in extended family groups. Infants are cared for and breast-fed by various relatives, but usually sleep with their mother and show a primary attachment to her at 6 months. This supports the monotropy hypothesis because the mother is at the top of the hierarchy although an infant has various relationships with relatives. This also supports Bowlby’s view that the mother is (the most) important role to an infant.

• Research support Black & Schutte: If Bowlby’s concept of an internal working model is true, then there should be a correlation between childhood attachment and relationships later in life. They interviewed 205 young adults on their feelings regarding current adult relationships and relationships with adults as children. (Lists of words to describe their childhood relationship with both parents and description of childhood events).They completed three measures to assess childhood and adult attachment types.They found a link between types of childhood and adult relationships. For example, those who recalled positive and loving relationships with their mothers were more trusting, open and more likely to seek comfort from their partners. And those who had positive relationships with their fathers were more likely to rely on their partners. Supports his theory of IWM as link shown between childhood and adult attachment/ relationships

Research support for the internal working model

Bailey et al (2007) found that mothers who reported poor attachments to their own mothers (measured by questionnaire), also had poor quality attachments to their children (measured by observation). This supports the internal working model idea.

Research support for social releasers

Brazleton et al showed that cute infant behaviours initiate social reactions and that is important to babies. He observed mother-baby interactional synchrony. Then in an experiment, primary caregivers were instructed to ignore social releasers from babies. He found babies became distressed and showed signs of depression

What was the aim of the strange situation observation by Ainsworth?

To observe 100 middle class American infants key attachment behaviours, assessing the quality of a child's attachment to a caregiver. Infants are assessed on responses to strange situations (unfamiliar room, left alone, stranger, reunion)

What did the Strange Situation test

Tested:

• Proximity seeking: stay close to caregiver

• Exploration and secure-base behaviour: confident to explore using caregiver as a secure base to make feel safe

• Stranger anxiety

• Separation anxiety 

• Response to reunion

Procedure of Strange Situation

7 episodes - child and caregiver enter an unfamiliar room with toys for 20 mins. Each ep lasts 3 mins:

Episode	Behaviour tested
Child encouraged to explore	secure -base/ exploration
Stranger enters + tries to interact	Stranger anxiety
Caregiver leaves stranger + child together	Separation + stranger anxiety
Caregiver returns and stranger leaves	Reunion behaviour + secure base/exploration
Caregiver leaves child alone	Separation anxiety
Stranger returns alone	Stranger anxiety
Caregiver returns and reunited	Reunion behaviour

Strange Situation Findings?

Ainsworth Identified 3 main types of attachment

1. Secure Attachment (type B) - most desirable. Explore happily but regularly go back to the caregiver (proximity seeking/secure-base behaviour). Moderate separation distress + stranger anxiety. Require + accept comfort at reunion (60-75% toddlers, found 70% to be so)

2. Insecure-avoidant attachment (type A) - low anxiety and weak attachment. Explore freely but don’t seek proximity or show secure-base behaviour. Little reaction when leaves/returns. Little stranger anxiety. Require no comfort at reunion stage (20-25% toddlers, found 15% to be so)

3. Insecure-resistant attachment (type C) - want greater proximity and so explore less. Huge stranger/separation anxiety. But resist comfort at reunion. (3% toddlers, found 15% to be so)

What causes differences in attachment types?

• The sensitivity of the mother

• The temperament (nature) of the baby

• The family circumstances

• The Culture

Strange Situation Evaluation

• Good inter-rater reliability: has good inter-rater reliability, other observers watching same strange situation generally agree on attachment type of each child. This is because it’s under controlled conditions and the behavioural categories are easily observable. Bick et al studied inter-rater reliability on trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment for 94% of tested babies. This means it’s clear that the attachment type of babies identified in the strange situation doesn't just depend on who is observing them. Also Ainsworth achieved a 0.94 (1.00 would be perfect) agreement between raters which means the observers can be rated as reliable

• Culture-bound: the strange situation doesn't have the same meaning all around the world (outside of Western Europe/USA). This is because childhood experiences and caregiver behaviour will differ between cultures, so children will respond differently. E.g. Takahashi said the test doesn't work in Japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their children, so would display separation anxiety. Also, in the reunion stage Japanese mothers ran and scooped them up so hard to record responses

• Lacks validity: the strange situation only identifies the type of attachment to the mother, ignoring other caregivers like the father or grandmother. This means it lacks validity as it’s not measuring a general attachment style but instead an attachment specific to the mother, and it thus criticised

• Biased sample: 100 middle class American families So it is difficult to generalise the findings outside of America and to working class families.

• Ethics: criticised on ethical grounds because the child is put under stress (separation and stranger anxiety), the study has broken the ethical guideline protection of participants. Lacks informed consent from children

• Low ecological validity: because the child is placed in a strange and artificial environment their behaviour may be unnatural as they aren't comfortable or in their homes. Mothers had to follow the procedure’s predetermined script

• Nature/Nuture debate: what is behaviour down to? nurture: securely attached children have mothers who give more physical touch and are more loving and caring, but less secure attached children have mothers who are insensitive and less physical touch . So a child’s behaviour is down to the sensitivity of the mother. Nature: because children have inborn behaviours that determines behaviour in the strange situation, and it’s not their mother who has affected their behaviour. End with: its both because…

What are the conclusions of studies of cultural variations in attachment?

Bowlby’s theory suggests that attachment evolved to provide protection for the infant and so enable its survival. If attachment is an innate process, secure attachment should be the most common regardless of cultural variations.

If, however, secure attachment is found in particular cultures and not others then attachment can not be innately determined, but is the result of different child rearing practices in different cultures.

Culture - the norms and values that exist within a group of people. Cultural variations are the differences in these between cultures.

Define cross cultural study

 A systematic study investigating cultural differences in behaviour and phenomenon between two or more cultures.

Define ethnocentrism

Evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.

The tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture

Belief that one owns culture is superior to another

What is a collectivist culture and Individualist culture?

Stresses the importance of the community, people are considered "good" if they are generous, helpful, dependable, and attentive to the needs of others

Individualistic cultures are those that stress the needs of the individual over the needs of the group as a whole.

What is a kibbutzim?

A communal living situation unique to Israel.

What is imposed etic?

A construct from one culture is applied inappropriately to another

Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg 1988 

Dutch psychologists conducted a meta–analysis of the findings from 32 studies of attachment behaviour using the Strange Situation. Looked at differences inbetween cultures (inter) and differences within the same culture (intra) 8 countries, 2,000 babies.

They were interested to see whether there would be evidence that inter-cultural differences existed (between countries/cultures). And that intra-cultural differences existed (within a culture), e.g. differences in findings from same culture. 

15 out of the 32 studies were in the USA, which is an individualist culture which is more insecure-avoidance. But collectivist cultures are more insecure-resistant. 

Findings: 

• in all countries secure attachment was most common (70%)

• insecure-resistant was overall the least common

• insecure-avoidant was most common in germany and least common in japan 

• the most variation was between insecure avoidant and resistant in all countries

• Variations between the same culture were actually 150% greater than those between different countries. So more difference within a culture than between. E.g. USA, one study found 46% to be secure and another 90%.

• Lowest percentage of secure in china (50%)  and highest in Great Britain (75%)

Evaluation for Cultural Variations in Attachment

• Methodology: meta-analysis considering attachment behaviours of large numbers of infants. The large sample size meant findings were generalisable to the population. It’s replicable meaning high internal validity so is reliable. As it was a meta-analysis there are no direct ethical issues as they did not carry out research themselves. However, 18 of these 32 studies were in the USA so may be biassed and therefore ungeneralisable 27 of these were carried out in individualistic cultures so the sample used may not be truly representative. The strange situation was developed in the USA so there was imposed etic because their classifications may be inappropriate for other cultures and thus produce invalid measures. 

• Supports Bowlby’s theory: Bowlby said attachment was innate and universal so the fact there’s a broad similarity in attachment patterns in different cultures suggests attachment is universal, as Bowlby said. There is also some variation, which fits with Bowlby’s theory as he said quality of attachment is influenced by primary caregivers behaviour. Lead to RLA inform parents globally of importance of forming secure attachments early in life, encouraging responsive caregiving

• This research could be socially sensitive because it is essentially saying if you are from a certain culture e.g. Japan, then your child will be resistant to your love based on how you brought them up. So it is blaming the parents for their child's potential insecure-resistance. As a result, when doing research into cultural variations in attachment we should be more careful of the representation of our findings in the media, because it can be used to judge other cultures which isn’t protecting their best interests

• Sample is unrepresentative of culture: Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg’s study claimed to study cultural variations but their comparisons were between countries, not cultures. Within countries there are multiple cultures. This research set out to study cultural variation in attachment styles, however we cannot assume that their cultures are different just because they are from different countries. Future research should focus on studying the difference in attachment styles across cultures in one country.

Cultural variation AO1 points

Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) conducted a meta-analysis of the strange situation to explore attachment types across 32 countries which included 2000 babies. They aimed to investigate how attachment types differ across cultures and explore how the 3 different attachment types applied. 18 of these 32 studies were in the USA and 27 of these individualist countries. They were interested to find out whether there was more intra-cultural (within a country) difference compared to inter-cultural (between countries) difference. Using a meta-analysis they calculated an average percentage for each attachment type in each country (secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant). 

The most common attachment type was secure attachment (70%). The lowest percentage of secure attachment was in China (50%), and the highest was in Great Britain (75%). Results showed that individualistic countries that support independence such as Germany had the highest of insecure-avoidance because german cultures. Whereas collectivist countries like Japan and Israel had high levels of insecure-resistant. This may be because in Japan child rearing practices are highly valued and mothers rarely leave their children and in Israel, there is a kibbutz system (sharing possessions and homes with people they are close to). The most variation was between insecure avoidant and resistant in all countries. There was 150% more intra-variation than inter-variation.

What is maternal deprivation?

the permanent breaking of a bond, whichresults in the hypothesis later damage

What is the difference between separation and deprivation?

Separation: child not in presence of mother, the absence of the caregiver, which usually creates distress but not necessarily permanent bond disruption. E.g. due to work commitments, divorce or hospitalisation. 

Deprivation: extended separations lead to deprivation: the loss of emotional care from the caregiver, for a long period of time. This causes harm and affects psychological development

What is privation?

The lack of any attachments at all in childhood, due to the lack of an attachment figure.

Results from international conflict or extreme neglect.

Causes permanent emotional damage or ‘affectionless psychopathy’ (a condition diagnosed by Bowlby). Involves permanent emotional damage. 

What is the maternal deprivation hypothesis?

A bond disruption can lead to permanent breaking of the attachment bond, leading to long-term, serious, irreversible, emotional, social and intellectual damage, or even become ‘affectionless psychopathy’’

What is affectionless psychopathy?

Inability to experience guilt or strong emotions for others, prevents development of normal relationships. Associated with criminality so lack remorse for their actions

What reduces effects of separation, the expected behaviours due to separation, and factors affecting response to separation?

Reduce effects of separation

• Consider who the child is left with

• Quality of the care. Should be able to develop their social, cognitive and intellectual abilities

• Reduce amount of time spent separated

Expected behaviours due to separation

• Protest (screaming, crying)

• Despair (refuse others’ attempts to comfort them) 

• Detachment (engage with others, reject caregiver on return, anger)

Factors affecting response to separation

• Age of child

• Type of attachment

• Gender

Bowlby’s 44 Thieves Study

Aim: His research to support maternal deprivation hypothesis (maternal deprivation leads to “affectionless psychopathy”)

Procedure:

• Bowlby compared 44 juvenile thieves (teenagers accused of stealing) with a control group of emotionally disturbed juveniles who were not thieves

• He gathered data from the following: personality tests, interviews with them for signs of affectionless psychopathy and interviewed their families to see whether they had prolonged early separations from mothers. The control group of non-criminals but emotionally disturbed were studied to see how often maternal separation/deprivation occured.

Findings:

• He found that ⅓ of thieves were affectionless psychopaths, and 12 of these 14 experienced prolonged separation in the first 2yrs of life. 

• None in the control group were affectionless psychopaths, and only 2/44 experienced long separations

• 86% of affectionless psychopathy has experienced early separation.

Conclusions:

• Concluded that prolonged separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy.

• the maternal deprivation hypothesis was supported by his research

Evaluation for maternal deprivation

• Poor evidence: Bowlby’s evidence for maternal deprivation came from studies like  his study of 44 thieves study and orphans during WW2. However, these are flawed because war-orphans were traumatised and often had poor after-care, therefore these factors may have been the cause of later developmental problems rather than separation like Bowlby suggests. The 44 thieves study has flaws: bias. Bowlby himself carried out the interviews for affectionless psychopathy and the family interviews, knowing what he hoped to find could have meant leading questions were used, so the results may be unreliable and biassed. Also, the responses from mothers could be unreliable as it relied on memory. His study also isnt representative as it was just boys and just those referred to a clinic

• Contradicting research by Hilda Lewis: she replicated the 44 thieves study on a larger scale with 500 young people. She found that a history of early prolonged separation from the mother did not predict criminality or difficulty forming close relationships (affectionless psychopathy). This is a problem for the theory of maternal deprivation because it suggests that other factors may affect the outcome of early maternal deprivation.

• Supported by animal studies of maternal deprivation: Levy et al (2003) showed the long term effects through separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had permanent effects on their social development, though not other aspects of development. However, although this research supports what Bowlby’s says, it could be argued that animal behaviour isn’t generalisable to humans due to our physiological and thought processing differences. 

Supporting evidence for maternal deprivation

• They filmed 2 year-old Laura during an 8-day stay in hospital for a minor operation. The films were carefully controlled thus not biassed

• Pictures were taken at regular intervals (time-sampling), at the start Laura switched between sobbing for her mother and being composed whilst talking quietly with the nurse.

• When she went, she had anxiety and would cling to her mother, also be quite aggressive

What is institutionalisation?

A type of privation. A term for the effects of living when in an institutionalised setting. A place like a hospital or orphanage where children live for long periods of time. There is little emotional care provided which has effects on child development

Rutter’s ERA (English and Romanian Adoptee) Study. PFC

Institutionalisation arose in Romania in the 90s when the Romanian president wanted all women to have 5 children in order to increase the population, and banned abortion, but many parents couldn't afford this and so they ended up in orphanages in poor conditions. When the regime collapsed in 1989, people became aware of orphans in institutionalised care, who spent days alone in cribs and were malnourished and uncared for 

Procedure: Rutter had a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain, to test what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions. He assessed physical, cognitive and emotional development on arrival in Britain, and then at ages 4,6,11 and 15. Control group was 52 British children adopted around the same time. 

Findings: 

• On arrival, 50% of Romanian orphans were ‘retarted’ in cognitive functioning and were underweight/malnourished. The control group did not show these.

• Average IQ for those adopted under 6 months was 102, compared with 86 adopted between 6 months and two years. And IQ 77 for those adopted after 2 years. These differences stayed the same at 16 years old 

• Those adopted after 6 months showed an attachment style called disinhibited attachment (attention seeking, clinginess). But those adopted before 6 months did not show this.

• At 4 years, Romanian orphans showed great improvements in physical and cognitive development, with those adopted under 6 months doing as well as the British adopted children

  Conclusion: This study suggests long-term consequences may be less severe than was once thought if children have the opportunity to form attachments. When children don’t form attachments, the consequences are likely to be severe.

Zeanah’s BEI (The Bucharest Early Intervention Project) 2005. PF

Procedure:

• Assessed attachment in 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 (critical period) months who had spent 90% of their time on average in institutionalised care.

• Compared to 50 control group children - never lived in institutionalised care and in normal everyday life.

• Measured attachment type using the Strange Situation.

• In addition, asked carers about unusual social behaviour, eg clingy, attention-seeking towards all adults (disinhibited attachment)

Findings:

• 74% of control group securely attached but only 19% of institutionalised groups were securely attached

• 20% of control group showed disinhibited attachment, but 44% of institutionalised group did.

Impacts of institutionalisation

• Disinhibited attachment (equally friendly and affectionate to strangers and familiar people, no stranger anxiety, over clingy, overly affectionate. Explained by having multiple carers during the sensitive period for attachment formation so form no real attachments)

• Mental retardation (damage to intellectual development, a lower IQ)

• Malnourishment (dwarfism or not growing well due to malnourishment so looking younger than you are)

Factors that influence whether an isolated child recovers or not

• Quality of aftercare 

• Age at which they recovered

• Alone or with others (siblings)

Evaluation of Romanian Orphan Studies

• Ethics: Children in the Bucharest Early Intervention project were randomly allocated to conditions, which is obviously a methodological strength as it increases the validity of results by eliminating the confounding variable of which children are chosen for adoption. But this raises ethical issues because some children who would have been fostered if they were available and not in the project, had this opportunity removed. It’s unethical because they gave some children opportunities to be adopted and some not by putting them in certain conditions. This causes harm to the children because they were treated as ‘lab rats’ as they had no protection from harm, right to withdraw, lack of consent and possibly psychological harm. Cost benefit

• Long term effects unclear: these 2 studies give us an idea of the effects of early institutionalisation and adoption at youth. However, we only know effects as long as follow-ups were carried out, which was only up to adolescence, and only when participants have been followed up for their entire lives will we have a good idea what the very long term effects might be.  So for the moment any conclusions have to be tentative because these children may well catch up and lead fairly normal lives. People change over their whole life so you cant see the long term effect unless you study them their whole lives.

• Real life application: studying Romanian orphans has improved our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation, and the results have led to improvements in the way children are cared for in orphanages. For example, they now avoid having a large number of caregivers and ensure only 1/2 people play a central role  for the child (called a keyworker) which gives them the chance to develop normal attachments and help avoid disinhibited attachment. This is a strength because it shows how valuable research is in practical terms

• Fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies: there are many orphan studies that consist of children who have previously experienced trauma, neglect or abuse before institutionalisation, so it was very hard to observe the effects of institutionalisation because the children were dealing with multiple factors which were confounding variables. However, in this case of Romanian Orphan studies it ha been possible to study institutionalisation without these confounding variables, which means the findings have increased internal validity 

What is the internal working model and the 4 influences it has over our later relationships?

Internal Working Model - the basis of our assumptions about all relationships so we will seek out, and form, relationships that mirror that. We will also behave in a way that mirrors our IWM (e.g. insecure-resistant may be controlling or argumentative in relationships)

Childhood friendships - people who were securely attached in childhood were highest rated for social competence later in childhood (less isolated/more popular). Explained by IWM as securely attached infants have higher expectations that others are friendly.

Poor parenting - link between poor attachment and later difficulties with parenting. The lack of an IWM means a person lacks a reference point to form relationships with their own children.  

Romantic relationship - Hazan and Shaver's love quiz showed a link between early attachment type and later relationships. People who were securely attached had longer-lasting romantic relationships 

Mental health - the lack of an attachment during the critical period results in the lack of an IWM. This may cause attachment disorder and have no preferred attachment figure, causing inability to interact and relate to others. This disorder has been classed as a distinct psychiatric condition in the DSM

What was the love quiz by Hazan and Shaver?

Conducted a love quiz in the local newspaper, asking people about their childhood attachment and current attachment, and views on romantic love (an assessment of the IWM).

They analysed 620 responses from a cross-section of the population. They found a strong correlation between childhood attachment and success in adult relationships. Securely attached in childhood had trusting + lasting love experiences later. Insecure-avoidant = disliked intimacy. Insecure-resistant = shorter relationships. But only correlational so is not cause and effect.

What did Myron-Wilson and Smith find?

Myron-Wilson and Smith

Found that insecure-avoidant infants are most likely to be bullied while insecure-resistant infants are most likely to be bullies (questionnaire to 196 children aged 7-11 from London)

What did McCarthy find?

McCarthy (1999) 

Studied 40 women who had been assessed when they were infants to establish their early attachment type.

FOUND:

Securely Attached —-> best adult friendships and relationships

Insecure Avoidant Attachment —-> struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships

Insecure Resistant Attachment —-> problems maintaining friendships and relationships.

Evaluation of influence of early attachment on later relationships

• Lacks validity: most studies into early attachments influence on later relationships don’t use the strange situation, but use interviews and questionnaires. This lacks validity as self report techniques rely on honesty (may lie for social desirability) and memory, and looking back into childhood may be hard and thus less accurate. Also, they may not have an honest and realistic view of their own relationships as they cannot see it like an outsider can. 

• Other factors may influence later relationships: usually early attachment is associated with later relationships, however there are alternative explanations. E.g. parenting style directly affects attachment, and ability to form relationships. E.g. a child's temperament (personality), may influence attachment and later relationships. These are both confounding variables. Zimmerman found little relationship between quality of infant and adolescent attachment. So not only early attachment affects later relationships

• Internal working model is unconscious so unmeasurable: we are not aware of the influence it has on us, so impossible to get direct, empirical evidence about IWM through interviews/Qaires, because people can only self-report what they’re aware of. Limitation of research into IWM as only gives indirect evidence