4.1.3 ATTACHMENT

What is an attachment?

An emotional bond between two people: it’s a two way process that endures over time. It can lead to certain behaviours such as clinging and proximity seeking with the aim of protecting the infant.

Why do we study animals in psychology? Give 2 points.

1. to study the formation of early bonds between animal parents and offspring

2. attachment-like behaviour is common across lots of species so perhaps can help understand humans.

What did Lorenz do?

Studied imprinting in ducklings and related it to his theory that imprinting happens in the first few hours of birth/hatching between the infant and the mother figure.

Explain Lorenz’s ducklings. (procedure)

• divided a clutch of eggs into 2: group one hatched with a mother, the other in an incubator where the first thing they saw was Lorenz. The control group (G1) followed the goose everywhere whereas G2 followed Lorenz. He marked the goslings to show which group they were in and put them into an upturned box - each went to their mother.

What research did Harlow do to determine that attachment is not due to feeding, as predicted by the learning theory? (Procedure)

Harlow separated 8 monkeys from their mothers after birth and placed the, into a cage with access to 2 mothers: a wire one and a cloth one. 4 monkeys got their food from the wire mother and the other 4 from the cloth mother. They were studied for 165 days.

What did Harlow’s research show?

Both groups spent more time with the cloth mother - they’d only go to the wire one out of hunger.

If a frightening item was placed in the cage the infant took refuge with the cloth mother and they would explore more if the cloth mother was present.

This suggests infants do not attach due to feeding, but due to comfort.

What were the long-lasting effects of Harlow’s research?

-motherless monkeys developed abnormally and were unable to form attachments to other monkeys.

-motherless monkeys could recover if they spent time with peers before 90 days - a critical period for attachment.

-motherless monkeys who had the wire mother were unable to recover from this after 6 months.

Why is Harlow’s research ineffectual (evaluation)?

• confounding variables - the cloth and wire mother’s heads were different

• generalisation - difficult to generalise to humans

• unethical - lasting emotional harm to some.

What is the evolutionary approach?

• infants are born with a drive to become attached

• attachment is adaptive - it’s good for reproductive success.

• attachment gene is perpetuated and infants are born with the drive to attach

What were the 2 reasons Bowlby believed attachment was beneficial?

The baby is born defenceless - attachments allows survival

Attachments form the basis of social relationships - promoting survival and reproduction

What is the critical period and what age is it in humans?

A certain window of time where it is most likely and easiest for an attachment to form. This is an innate window of time - if the baby doesn’t make an attachment from 3-6 months it will be very hard to ever form an attachment.

What is a social releaser?

When infants elicit care giving in the form of a behaviour that babies are born with. These behaviours attract the attention of their caregiver.

Give some examples of social releasers.

cooing, scrunching faces/hands, crying, smiling and giggling.

What is Bowbly’s theory of monotopy?

Infants from 1 special relationship which is imperative for their emotional and social development. The person the infant develops this special relationship with becomes the primary caregiver.

What is the internal working model (IWM)?

Infants develop an IWM based on their relationship. It’s a schema - the behaviour of the caregiver becomes a model of what the infant will expect from others - the infant internalises this model.

Why is the IWM useful in the short term?

It provides the child with an understanding of their caregivers behaviour. It also helps the child influence their caregiver’s behaviour to establish a true two-way partnership.

Why is the IWM useful in the long term?

It creates a template for the child to refer to in the future as it generates expectations about what an intimate and loving relationship is like. It also influence our parenting style.

What is the continuity hypothesis?

Babies that have a strong and secure attachment will be a socially and emotionally competent adult - the same goes for the opposite.

What is Bowlby’s theory of ASCMI? (A Snap Chat Makes Images)

A- adaptive

S- social releasers

C- critical period

M- monotropy

I- IWM

Does Lorenz’s study support Bowlby? If so, how?

Yes - attachment = adaptive and an innate drive for survival. Also had a critical period of 1-3 hours.

Does Harlow’s study support Bowlby? If so, how?

Yes - critical period = monkeys after 90 days couldn’t form other attachments. Also monotropic evidence (preferences).

What did Hazan and Shaver do?

Printed a love quiz in a local newspaper to compare early attachment to later attitudes and experiences in love.

What did Hazan and Shaver find?

3 things:

Secure attachments = happy, lasting and trusting attachments

Insecure resistant = worried their partners don’t love them

Insecure avoidant = fear of intimacy

How was Hazan and Shaver useful or bad?

Early relationships = internalised and used to form templates for future. (supports Bowlby)

Bad - people may lie - social desirability

How does classical conditioning explain attachment?

Children learn to love whoever feeds them due to associating their mother with the pleasant feeling of being fed and eventually their mother’s presence will provide this pleasurable feeling.

How does operant conditioning explain attachment?

• A child will have drive to remove their discomforts - ie hunger.

• Being fed removes this discomfort and therefore is pleasurable for the child.

• The behaviour which leads to being fed (crying) is repeated as it is rewarded by being satisfied.

• The food becomes the primary reinforcer and the parent is the secondary reinforcer as they’re the source of reward.

• The food has negative reinforcement as it removes the feeling of hunger.

What was Dollard and Miller’s drive theory?

• based on operant conditioning

• they believed infants have drive states.

• discomfort is a drive state - the drive motivation is to try to find a way to stop this feeling (ie howling) and the infant is fed.

• Now satisfied (drive reduction) the infant is rewarded and reinforced

• person who fed them = secondary reinforcer. The infant becomes attached due to wanting to be with the source of the reward.

Does Harlow support/oppose the learning theory? How?

Opposes due to both infant monkey groups spending time with the cloth mother (comfort), not the wire mother (food). Attachment is seen to be for comfort.

Does Shaffer and Emerson support/oppose the learning theory? How?

Opposes as research shows attachment is dependent on who gives the best pleasure and it’s not always who feeds the infant as less than 50% of the infants where attached to the person who fed, bathed and changed them.

Does reductionism support/oppose the learning theory? How?

Opposes as reducing attachment to being fed doesn’t show a realistic picture. However, it may demonstrate a correlation.

What is reciprocity?

Responding to an action with another action - the actions of one individual elicits a response from the other -the responses are not necessarily similar.

What is interactional synchrony?

Both the caregiver and infant reflect the actions and emotions of each other: they mirror each other.

Describe the still face experiment.

A controlled observation where the mum and baby begin by playing and a cue is given to the mother so she stops playing with the child and has a still face.

What did the still face show about the babies?

The babies which were very upset (crying to try to gain attention) but repaired quickly were normal. The infants which didn’t react showed that the neglect was normal and doesn’t trust the mother.

Describe Meltzoff and Moore’s experiment on interactional synchrony.

A controlled observation where 4 different stimuli were presented (3 different faces and 1 hand gesture). Reactions of the child were recorded and judged by independent observers who didn’t know what the child had seen. Observers were asked to note all instances of these 4 categories: mouth opening, mouth closing, tongue out and tongue in.

What did Meltzoff and Moore’s experiment highlight? How could we challenge the research?

There is an assoication between the infant behaviour and the adult model. However, children make faces all the time, can we distinguish if it’s normals behaviour?

Good points for Meltzoff and Moore.

• overcame internal validity concerns as they used independent observers to judge if infant behaviour was natural or interactional synchrony.

Limitations for Meltzoff and Moore.

-difficulties in testing infant behaviour (infants are constantly moving and internal validity is questioned due to not being able to tell between general activity and specific imitated behaviours.

-Caregiver infant interactions are not found in all cultures (Le Vine et al found that Kenyan mothers have little physcial contact with their infant but the infants are still securely attached)

-ethnocentric research - ignores attachments formed differently and can only explain western cultures, therefore, validity is reduced as the research cannot be fully generalised.

Is imitation learnt or innate? (M+M vs Piaget)

-M+M = imitation - intentional and the infant is deliberately copying what the other person is doing.

-piaget = imitation doesn’t develop until the end of the 1st year - imitation +operant conditioning (psuedo-imitation, not real imitation)

Why is it important to study the role of the father?

-traditionally, fathers play a minor role in parenting as marriages had roles (women=housewife, man=worker)

-now the norm is mothers having a job and 9% of single parents are men)

What 3 studies and psychologists demonstrated men are an unimportant role in attachment?

• Grossman - quality of attachment between mother and infant and NOT the father was related to attachments in adolescence.

• Shaffer and Emerson - majority of children form a secondary attachment with the father (after the mother)

• Men do not have enough oestrogen to make them sufficiently nurturing to form attachments.

What 3 studies and psychologists demonstrated that men are an important role in attachment?

• Grossman - fathers play a role in play rather than nurturing attachment, they’re important in different ways to the mother

• Field - fathers can be the more nurturing attachment figure as the key to attachment is the level of responsiveness.

• Fathers are less sensitive and promote problem solving and communication skills, enabling infants to learn new skills

What are the weaknesses of exploring the role of the father?

• inconsistent findings

• it doesn’t explain why children without fathers don’t develop differently

• numerous influences which may impact a child’s emotional development

• doesn’t explain why fathers don’t often become primary attachment figures.

What and when are the 4 stages of attachment?(PISM)

-Pre-attachment (0-2 months)

-indiscriminate (4-7 months)

-specific (7-9 months)

-multiple (10+ months)

Explain the first stage of attachment.

Pre-attachment is when an infant elicits similar responses to all objects and they enjoy human contact. They get upset when ignored and smile at familiar faces (comforted easily by primary caregiver). This is when they are establishing relationships through reciprocity and interactional sychrony.

Explain the second stage of attachment.

The indiscriminate stage is when the infant prefers humans to inanimate objects (general sociability) and they can tell who’s familiar and who’s not, but they still do not experience stranger anxiety.

Explain the third stage of attachment.

In the specific stage the infant experiences separation anxiety from one particular person. They try to stay close to this person due to stranger anxiety.

Explain the last stage of attachment.

During multiple attachments, the infant attaches to others and by 18 months most form multiple bonds.

What is stranger and separation anxiety?

Stranger - distress shown by an infant hen approached by someone unfamiliar. This begins to show during stage 3 as they’ve formed one special relationship.

Separation - distress shown when separated from their caregiver and the infants will show a significant protestment when put down by the caregiver.

Describe the Shaffer and Emerson Glasgow infant attachment experiment.

60 babies (31m, 29f) from 1960s working class families from Glasgow were studied. Researchers visited the children in their homes once a month for 12 months and then again at 18 months. The mothers of the children were interviewed and they observed the infants in relation to separation and stranger anxiety.

What did Shaffer and Emerson find in the Glasgow infant attachment experiment?

The results supported the stages of attachments - 25-32 weeks 52% of infants showed separation anxiety, in line with stage 3 of the stages of attachment. At 40 weeks, 80% had specific attachments and 30% had formed multiple attachments.

What were the conclusions of Shaffer and Emerson in the Glasgow infant attachment experiment?

It provided support for the idea that attachment develops through a series of 4 stages.

What are the limitations of the stages of attachment?

-unreliable data (data was based on mother - social desirability, systematic bias)

-biased sample (only working-class Scottish kids, so not generalise-able, parenting has changed since then)

-problems with stage models (only 4 fixed stages, if a child develops differently it may reflect badly on the parents)

Who carried out the strange situation?

Mary Ainsworth (a student of Bowlby’s).

What are the first 4 stages of the strange situation experiment?

1. Caregiver and child enter an unfamiliar room.

2. Caregiver reads a magazine whilst the infant is encouraged to play/explore

3. A stranger enters and tries to approach/interact with the child

4. The caregiver leaves and the stranger interacts with the child

What are the last 4 stages of the strange situation experiment?

5. the caregiver returns to comfort the child and the stranger leaves

6. The caregiver leaves the child again

7. The stranger returns and tries to interact with the child

8. the caregiver returns and is reunited with the child

What are the three types Mary Ainsworth suggested?

Type A- avoidant insecure (20%-25% of British infants from 12-18 months exhibit this attachment type.

Type B - secure (most common as 60-75% of British infants from 12-18 months are this attachment type.

Type C - resistant insecure (only 3% of British infants from 12-18 months have this.

What does a Type A child look like/do? How might this affect future relationships?

-doesn’t seek proximity with parent (parent isn’t secure base used to explore)

-shows no distress when parent leaves

-doesn’t make contact with parent upon return

-they may avoid intimacy and push people away

What does a Type B child look like/do? How might this affect future relationships?

-child plays independently but seeks proximity and regularly returns to the caregiver (parent is a secure base used to explore)

-infant shows moderate distress and displays separation and stranger anxiety

-infant requires comfort and will accept it from the caregiver at reunion

-they will be happy and attach easily in a happy and secure relationship

What does a Type C child look like/do? How might this affect future relationships?

-explores less than other attachment types, intensely seeking proximity to caregiver

-very distressed when separated and left with a stranger

-Resists comfort when reunited with caregiver

-they may be clingy and push people away but crave it

Why is the strange situation good?

• observational study, so easy to replicate

• real life application as intervention strategies have been developed

• supports Bowlby’s monotropic theory

Why is the strange situation bad?

• it was an overt observation, so mother may have altered her behaviour

• lacks ecological validity as it doesn’t reflect real life situations

• Breaks ethical guidelines as the child is put into a stressful situation

• low internal validity

What does culture mean?

Refers to the shared beliefs of a particular society. Members of a different culture may not necessarily share the same ‘norms and values’ as other cultures.

What does a collectivist culture value? How might their infants behave?

• group effort

• interpersonal development

• sharing

• interdependence

• Less antisocial behaviour

It’s a culture which emphasises family above individual needs, high degrees of interdependence so children may be highly secure.

What does an individualist culture value? How might their infants behave?

• personal achievement

• independence

• intiative

• more anti-social behaviour

A culture which emphasises personal independence a at the expense of group goaks, so children may grow up to be more selfish.

Define: Meta-analysis, inter-cultural and intra-cultural.

MA= a type of research where a researcher combines and studies the findings of different studies

INTER = Differences that exist between cultures and countries

INTRA= Differences that exist in the study within cultures and countries.

Who did the key meta-analysis study for cultural variations in attachment?

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg.

What did Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg aim to investigate in their meta-analysis?

TO see whether there would be evidence that inter-cultural and intra-cultural differences existed.

Describe the meta-analysis cultural variation experiment method and findings.

A met-analysis of 32 studies and examined over 2000 strange situation experiments in 8 different countries. Across all cultures secure attachment (attachment type B was most common). Germany had the highest number of avoidant children compared to Japan which had a higher proportion of children who were resistant. There was 1 and a ½ more variations within cultures.

What are the limitations with Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg?

-imposed etic - made in the US by a US psychologist (mary Ainsworth) and so is suited to Western cultures

-sample sizes varied dramatically - only one study used from Sweden and Uk so it can’t be generalized to a whole nation

-issues with comparing different researchers and making comparisons

What was Takahashi’s procedure into cultural differences in attachment?

He studied 60 one-year old infants from middle class Japanese families. They were observed in the strange situation.

What did Takahashi find?

No infants were insecure avoidant but there were high rates of insecure resistant children - 32%. Most (68%) were securely attached. All children were distressed being left alone - 90% of the study had to be stopped due to this.

Evaluate Takahashi’s study.

Only strength is that he demonstrated a difference in cultures

LIMITS:

-ethical issues - not PFH

-cannot be replicated in other cultures

-population validity - only middle class families

How does the IWM impact future relationships?

• Like a schema it’s made of past experiences with relationships (particularly with our caregiver).

• We’ll seek, form and maintain relationships in a way that mirrors our IWM.

• The continuity hypothesis proposes that children’s IWM will influence their adult relationships.

Evaluate the IWM impacting future relationships theory.

-Research is only correlational

-unsure whether attachments can be influenced by other things.

How does Hazan and Shaver’s research support the influence of early attachment on future adult relationships?

-Researched the influence of the IWM in future relationships - published a questionnaire in a newspaper asking q’s about current attachments, attachment history and attitudes to love.

-Results showed that the prevalence of attachment types was similar to those in infancy (found a positive correlation between attachment types and love experiences).

Evaluate Hazan and Shaver’s research.

-self-report methods may not be reliable

-social desirability bias

-memory of childhood may not be accurate and recall may be influenced by current experiences/attitudes.

-However numerous studies have showed the same results as H&S.

What is the procedure for Simpson’s study on the effects of early attachment on adult relationships?

-Simpson et al carried out a longitudinal study over 25yrs, studying 78 participants. - 1yr = parents reported infant attachment

-6-8yrs teachers reported peer interactions

-16yrs close friends described them

-adulthood = romantic partners were asked to describe their relationships.

Evaluate Simpson’s study.

-Securely attached infants had a higher social competence

-longitudinal study by Zimmerman found that childhood attachment types wasn’t a good predictor of attachments in adolescence - life events altered secure attachments to insecure attachments in adulthood.

-Main et al found that secure adults produced securely attached children

What is maternal deprivation?

Defined as the loss of attachments through separation. Deprivation occurs when the child suffers a loss of emotional care for a period of time.

What are the 3 stages of separation (PDD model)?

1. Protest

2. Despair

3. Denial/detachment

What were the 3 things Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation highlighted? Define them.

Value of maternal care - infants need a warm, continuous relationship with the mother to ensure good emotional development.

Critical period - without emotional care from 2.5-5 years, the infant may become emotionally disturbed.

Long term consequences - deprivation could lead to emotional maladjustment/mental health problems.

What are the effects of deprivation?

-deprivation dwarfism (Gardner suggested that emotional disturbances may affect production of growth hormones)

-affectionless psychopathy (acting impulsively with little corn/affection for others)

-anaclitic depression (appetite loss, impaird social and emotional development)

-emotional maladjustment

What was the procedure of Bowlby’s 44 thieves study?

88 infants from 15-16 (all had been referred to the child guidance clinic where Bowlby worked)

44 of them accused of stealing. 16 of these thieves were identified as affectionless psychopaths.

44 had not committed any crimes, they were emotionally maladjusted (they displayed no signs of anti-social behaviour and none were diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths).

Bowlby interviewed the children and their families to build a record of their early lives.

What did the 44 thieves study find?

86% of the thieves diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths had experienced “early and prolonged separation from their mothers”.

only 17% of the other thieves had experienced separations

Even fewer, 4% of the control groups had separations.

Strength of the 44 thieves study.

-real life application - mums stay in hospital

Limitations of the 44 thieves study

-evidence is correlational

-self-report methods are unreliable (SDB and bad recall)

-temporal validity - done in 1944

-external factors

-rutter questions deprivation vs privation

What is privation?

Happens in conditions of abuse, neglect or in other conditions of inadequate parental care.

What is institutionalisation?

The effects of institutional care - specifically how time in an orphanage can affect the development of children. There’s often little emotional care provided.

What are the 4 effects of institutionalisation?

1. psychical underdevelopment - deprivation dwarfism where a lack of emotional care can lead to issues with physical development.

2. Intellectual under-functioning - cognitive development affected by emotional deprivation

3. Disinhibited attachment - children don’t discriminate between caregivers and strangers. Over-friendliness and attention seeking behaviours towards a stranger

4. Poor parenting - Quinton found woman raised in institutions experienced difficulties and more likely to parent children who spent time in care.

Describe Rutter’s procedure for research into institutionalisation.

165 Romanian infants were observed at the ages 4,6,11 and 15. 11 were adopted before the age of 2, the rest were adopted after 2.

They were compared to a control group of 52 British children.

What were the results of Rutter’s research?

Those adopted before 2 caught up with British kids quickly but those adopted later had significant cognitive, social and physical development problems.

1/3 adopted late required intervention of an educational psychologist and showed signs of autism.

What is good about Rutter’s study?

• High ecological validity

• longitudinal (long term effects shown)

What is bad about Rutter’s study?

• lacks ecological validity (very severe)

• ethical issues

• scientific nature/not replicable

• other factors (family who adopted)

• correlational due to extraneous variables