Attachment

Reciprocity: Strong emotional bond requiring mutual engagement between infant and primary caregiver.
- Infants respond to caregivers (e.g., smiles), and caregivers respond to infants’ cues.
- Demonstrated by Brazleton et al. showing infants as young as 2 weeks can imitate caregivers.
- Important for teaching communication, allowing caregivers to interpret infants’ needs more effectively.
Interactional Synchrony: Synchronization in interactions between infant and caregiver, where they can mirror each other’s behavioral cues.
- Condon and Sander (1974): Infants synchronize movements with adult voice.
- Brazleton et al.: Infants copy facial expressions, enhancing communication over time.
- Ensures accurate observation through controlled studies, enhancing validity and data reliability.
- Main concern: Interpretation of infant behavior—is it meaningful if they lack motor coordination?

Aim: Identify stages of attachment formation between infants and parents.
Participants: 60 babies from a single estate in Glasgow.
Procedure:
- Analyzed caregiver-infant interactions and conducted interviews.
- Mother maintained diaries on separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, and social referencing.
- Longitudinal study lasting 18 months with monthly visits.
Findings:
- Sensitive responsiveness correlates with stronger attachments.
- Quantity of interaction not as significant as the quality of responsiveness.
- Four stages of attachment:
- Asocial stage (0-6 weeks): Responds similarly to people and objects; preferential response to faces.
- Indiscriminate attachments (6 weeks – 6 months): Differentiation among people, comfort from anyone.
- Specific (7 months +): Preference for a primary caregiver; signs of separation and stranger anxiety.
- Multiple attachments (10/11 months +): Forming attachments with multiple figures.
Evaluation:
- Population validity: Limited due to socio-economic homogeneity of the sample.
- Internal validity: Reliance on parental diaries may introduce biases.
- Asocial stage: Behavioral vs. understanding disconnect; caution against over-interpreting behaviors.

75% of infants formed secondary attachments to their fathers by 18 months.
Fathers not necessarily primary attachment figures; can achieve this role with attentiveness (Tiffany Field).
MacCallum & Golombok’s findings: No significant differences in attachment from children in same-sex or single-parent families.
Gender roles may influence attachment development.
Social sensitivity: Single parents face societal pressure regarding child attachment outcomes.

Concept of imprinting: Attachment to the first moving object post-birth.
- Demonstrated with geese. Critical period for forming attachments.
Sexual imprinting: Animals develop mating preferences based on first attachments found post-birth.
Issues: Generalizability to mammals and attachment's emotional intensity.
- Guiton et al. found imprinting can be altered with experience.

Study with rhesus monkeys: Preference for cloth mother over wire mother providing food.
- Highlights the role of contact comfort over food in forming attachments.
Harlow's monkeys showed social deficits, indicating importance of secure attachments in the critical period for healthy emotional development.
Practical implications in animal care within zoos.
Ethical considerations regarding harm inflicted in research, stressing a need for cost-benefit analysis.

Proposes attachment is learned through conditioning (classical and operant).
Classical Conditioning: Infants associate caregivers with pleasure derived from feeding.
Operant Conditioning: Caregivers reinforce infants' behaviors like crying, increasing seeking behavior.
Contradictory evidence: Harlow's findings of comfort importance over food.
- Learning theory overlooks reciprocity and interactional synchrony.

ASCMI model:
- Adaptive: Attachment evolved for survival.
- Social releasers: Cute traits that elicit caregiving.
- Critical period: Window of opportunity for attachment formation (up to 3 years).
- Monotropy: One primary attachment figure.
- Internal working model: Template for future relationships.
Evidence from the 44 juvenile thieves study linking maternal deprivation to emotional and intellectual deficits.
Issues: Social stigma on mothers, cultural differences highlighting limitations in applicability of monotropy.

Experiment to classify child attachment styles through a controlled environment with multiple stressful stages.
- Types of attachment:
- Secure (65%): Distress upon separation but easy comfort upon caregiver's return.
- Insecure resistant (3%): Ambivalent behaviors, high distress, and contradiction in seeking comfort.
- Insecure avoidant (20%): Indifference towards caregiver and minimal emotional response.
Evaluation:
- Focused solely on mothers potentially misclassifying attachment quality, ethical concerns of emotional distress.
- Tested predominantly in Western culture, raising issues regarding cultural bias and ecological validity.

Meta-analysis by van Izjendoorn: Patterns across cultures indicate variations, such as lower secure attachments in Italy.
Cultural factors (e.g., maternal employment) impact attachment security.
Suggests findings may be confined to cultural contexts, not accounting for intra-cultural variations, representing imposed etics.

Maternal deprivation linked with negative outcomes such as attachment issues and emotional deficits.
Conducted through interviews with juvenile thieves highlighting correlations with affectionless psychopathy.
Lewis et al. challenged Bowlby, showing no clear link between maternal deprivation and future relationship difficulties.

Studied 65 British children in institutional care.
- Findings indicated emotional privation; children struggled with peer relationships despite later placements.

Rutter’s work with Romanian orphans showed age of adoption critical for recovery and attachment formation dynamics.
- Disinhibited attachments observed in those adopted after six months.

Recognized as psychiatric conditions, manifesting as disrupted attachments during development.
- Reactive attachment disorder (withdrawn) vs. disinhibited attachment (over-friendly).

Bowlby's continuity hypothesis explains how early attachments shape future relationships.
Bailey’s findings: Majority maintain same attachment type from childhood into parenthood.
Meta-analyses: Confirm the link between early attachment and later adult relationships, though methodological critiques exist.