Week 3 - early development in context of caregiver-child relationship

Week 3

Parents as “socialisation” agents

• Modelling and observational learning

• Social signals - conveying social and emotional info

• Managing interactions

Social signals

Conveying social and emotional info

Early signs of active participation as a social partner

• Imitation: instances of ‘correlated’ or mutual seeing and doing – fostering connectedness

Attachment

A selective, enduring, affective tie of infant to their caregiver based on the infant’s need for protection, comfort and nurturance.

Infants are born with what behaviours?

Proximity-promoting behaviours: e.g. crying, calling, seeking, clinging - seeking protection from caregiver

Healthy development dependent on interplay between…

Attachment behavioural system and exploration system

What is triggered when an infant feels threatened?

Attachment behaviours (e.g. crying) to achieve proximity to caregiver and regulate distress

What is triggered when an infant feels secure?

Exploration behaviours (to learn about the world)

Attachment organisation variation

How successful the proximity is in comforting the child – varies across individuals

Early attachment argued to…

Provide template for later relationships and social adjustment

Bowlby (1969) - Development of attachment

Attachment undergoes distinct shifts in each phase, but he emphasized that the boundary between one phase and the next is blurred

Phase 1 (0-3m) - non-focused orientating and signalling

Baby begins with a set of innate behaviour patterns that orient him towards others—proximity promoting behaviour, roots of attachment

Phase 2 (3-6m) - Focus on one or more figures

Behaviour directed at more specific caregiver/caregivers, behaviours more regularly targeted at those caregivers. Bowlby called this ‘attachment in the making’

Phase 3 (6m +) - Secure base behaviour

Attachment behaviours are evidently and flexibly altered to achieve the goal of proximity – an attachment can be inferred.

Goal-corrected behavior begins to be evident, as the infant begins to use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore the environment and as a safe haven to retreat to in times of threat or challenge.

The infant will use the most important person as a safe base.

Signs of secure base behaviour

Proximity seeking behaviours - infant does not want to be separated from their caregiver

Separation anxiety & Stranger weariness - don’t like to be with just anyone, they want to be with their preferred caregiver

Phase 4 (around 3 years)

Formation of a goal-corrected partnership between the child and caregiver

Goal-corrected partnership

Infants begin to understand that other people have thoughts and needs for themselves, therefore infant and parent can negotiate more, and the infant can begin to understand that the parent has needs too

What is fundamental to the operationalization of individual differences in attachment security?

The distinction between attachment behaviours and the attachment behavioural system - what matters is the organization of such behaviour around the caregiver within specific contexts

Disorganised Attachment (Main & Solomon, 1990)

Break down in organized strategy (exploration, comfort seeking/checking back, weariness, being comforted etc.) during SSP:

• Infant displays disorganized or disoriented behaviour; there is no clear pattern of exploration, checking back, comfort seeking, being comforted; the infant displays inconsistent or bizarre responses to separation/reunion.

van IJzendorn et al. (1999)

• secure:  62%

• insecure-avoidant:  15%

• insecure-ambivalent:  09%

• disorganised:  15%

Based on normal middle-class samples.

% disorganised in high risk samples much higher (~50%)

Representational measures of attachment

• Story-stem paradigms either through means of doll-play or picture-response procedures - involve the presentation of a series of scenarios of attachment-relevant events (e.g., a child watches the parent leave, or a child is hurt – the parent is nearby) and the child is asked to complete the story

• Parent reported questionnaires

• Child-attachment interview

• Child self-report questionnaire

• Behavioural observations based on the separation-renunion paradigm

Quality of adult parental attachment assessed using…

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)

Adult attachment according to AAI

Autonomous (secure), dismissing (avoidant), preoccupied (anxious), unresolved

Autonomous (secure)

Describe childhood and parents objectively, freely and flexibly regardless of supportive or difficult memories

Dismissing (avoidant)

Defensively distance themselves from emotional content, normalize harsh experiences, idealise parents

Preoccupied (anxious)

Confused and ambivalent toward parents, emotionally overwhelmed, angry/enmeshed narratives

Unresolved

Unable to resolve feelings relating to the death of loved one or abuse/neglect they may have suffered

Disorganised attachment style

Breakdown in the predictive style of attachment behaviours, dysregulation of attachment behaviour, doesn’t effectively regulate proximity and distress when the caregiver is present

AAI

Semistructured interview to talk about attachment-related events in their lives, asked to recall examples of attachment-related events, how readily and eaily accessible these memories of these events are and how easily they can talk about them

Fearon et al. (2016)

The majority of adults, classified as secure-autonomous, produce narratives characterized by the ability to freely and flexibly evaluate childhood experiences

• Smaller, although substantial, number of adults defensively distance themselves from the emotional content of the interview by normalizing harsh experiences

• Small minority of adults are classified as insecure-preoccupied and are unable to discuss early attachment-relevant experiences without becoming emotionally overwhelmed

• Individuals may also be classified as unresolved if their discourse becomes disorganized in the context of discussing the loss of a close loved one or experiences of abuse

Pinquart et al. (2013)

Reported evidence for moderate stability in attachment security across early childhood, and that the effect was significantly weaker in at-risk samples than in not at-risk samples

Secure infant’s caregiver’s behaviour

Mother is responsive, sensitive and has appropriate expectations; parent is emotionally available and attuned to the child ‘s signals

Avoidant infant’s caregiver’s behaviour

Mother is rejecting, or frequently withdraws from contact with child, child develops strategy  of minimizing attachment behaviours

Ambivalent infant’s caregiver’s behaviour

Mother is inconsistently and unreliably available, child develops strategy of heightening, or emphasizing the expression of attachment behaviours

Disorganised infant’s caregiver’s behaviour

Parental behaviour is frightening, confusing, abusive, unpredictable for child; parent may have mental health problems

Mind-mindedness

Reading infant’s signals appropriately, may be better predictor of attachment security than sensitivity

Ainsworth identified…

Sensitivity as the parent’s ability to be appropriately responsive to the child’s attachment cues, and distinguished four aspects:

1. Awareness of the child’s cues

2. Appropriate interpretation of the child’s cues

3. Timeliness of the parent’s response

4. Appropriateness of the parent’s response

What predicts secure attachment?

Evidence for direct/main effects of temperament and genes on child attachment is weak and inconsistent, Fearon et al. (2016) conclude that attachment is largely environmentally mediated.

Mechanism put forward by Michael Lamb

The continuities we observe between early attachment and later social functioning are a result of stability of the quality and characteristics of the parent-child relationship

Fearon et al. (2010)

Security associated with higher levels of social competence and lower levels of externalizing and internalizing symptomatology

Insecure subtypes associated with lower levels of social competence and higher levels of externalizing and internalizing symptomatology

Meta-analytic studies of the significance of early attachment for later development demonstrate that…

1. Effects are modest to moderate across time.

2. The effects are enduring across time.

3. Early parent-child attachments appear to have the strongest implications for later social, interpersonal relations, and important but comparatively weaker implications for psychopathology.