Caregiver-infant interactions

• Process of interacting builds emotional bonds and results in the infant showing separation anxiety

• Interactional synchrony- mirror each other’s actions at the same time to sustain communication

• Reciprocity- taking turns in responding to each other’s actions

• Sensitive responsiveness- adult responding appropriately to infant, e.g. crying prompts giving milk

• Caregiverese- adult using baby talk

:) Still-face study- when caregivers stopped responding to infants’ actions and stared blankly the infants showed distress and tried to get their attention, eventually stared blankly too

:) Modern studies use frame-by-frame video analysis of the actions- can go through each frame and observe sequences, scientific objectivity

:( Have to make inferences on internal mental states as infants are unable to communicate their thoughts

:( Socially sensitive- caregivers who have to return to work and not spend as much time with their infant may feel bad

Stages of attachment

• Pre-attachment (0-3 months)- babies respond to objects similarly to humans

• Indiscriminate attachment (3-7 months)- babies recognise and prefer familiar people but don’t have an attachment to one person

• Discriminate attachment (7-9 months)- form a strong attachment to one caregiver

• Multiple attachment (9 months+)- begin to form attachments with other people

Schaffer and Emerson

• Longitudinal study of 60 Glaswegian babies and their families in everyday lives

• Measured strengths of attachments by observing stranger and separation anxiety and conducted interviews on family members

• Found evidence for stages of attachment, 87% formed multiple attachments, main attachment figure wasn’t always main caregiver, strongest attachments had sensitive responsiveness

:) Study had mundane realism- visited in own home every 4 weeks so normal for the babies

:( Lack of cultural and temporal validity- childrearing practices vary across cultures and time

Learning theory

• Cupboard love- babies become attached to their caregiver because they learn the caregivers fulfil physical needs like food

Classical conditioning

1. Food (UCS) = Pleasure (UCR)

2. Food (UCS) + Caregiver (NS) = Pleasure UCR)

3. Association

4. Caregiver (CS) = Pleasure (UCR)

Operant conditioning

• Crying for caregiver means they are given food- positive reinforcement

• Staying near caregiver means they get food and avoid being hungry- negative reinforcement

• Giving food to the baby means the crying stops- negative reinforcement for caregivers

:) Babies are fed over 2000 times by caregivers in first year- lots of opportunity to form the association

:( Environmentally reductionist- explains complex caregiver-infant interactions and emotions as simple stimulus-response links and patterns of reinforcement

:( Harlow’s monkeys attached to the cloth mother whether it provided milk or not- wanted contact comfort

:( Metapelets- in some parts of Israel, babies spend their days in communal nurseries and are cared for by metapelets who feed them but do not spend much time with each one. They still attach to their mothers who provide love and comfort

Bowlby’s monotropic theory

• Babies have an innate attachment drive to survive- attachment = security = survival

• Caregivers have an innate attachment drive to protect babies from danger

• Programmed through evolution- babies who form a strong attachment to their caregiver are more likely to survive and have babies of their own

  • Behaviour is passed down through generations

• Monotropy- a unique strong attachment to a single caregiver

• Critical period- attachment must happen in the first 2.5 years, failure results in negative impairments

• Internal working model- attachment provides a schema for future relationships, acts as a guide

• Social releasers- babies instinctively use signals to attract caregiver’s attention (e.g. crying, smiling, crawling, following) and adults are biologically pre-programmed to respond to these

:) Lorenz- geese attached to a single caregiver and remained with it, had to form an attachment in a critical period

:) Metapelets- babies form attachment to the person who provides love and comfort, only form one attachment (monotropy)

:) Positive everyday applications such as longer visiting hours for children in hospitals and longer parental leave

:( Schaffer and Emerson- in the multiple attachment stage, 87% of babies formed two or more attachments

:( Socially sensitive- some right-wing media twisted it to say that women shouldn’t work and should stay at home with children, caused reduction of women in the workforce

Animal studies of attachment

Lorenz

• Half of a group of goose eggs hatched in an incubator so they imprinted on Lorenz, half normally near the mother so they imprinted on her

• When the two groups were placed together, the ones that imprinted on Lorenz continues following him

• Critical period of 32 hours- if a gosling did not see a large moving object to imprint on, it did not imprint at all

• Suggests imprinting is a strong evolutionary feature of attachment in certain birds

:) Supports Bowlby’s monotropic theory- biologically pre-programmed, critical period

:( Results have not been replicated, one study found imprinting with chickens could be reversed and imprint attachment could later be lost

:( Results cannot be generalised to humans, may have different attachment mechanisms

Harlow

• Baby monkeys were removed from biological mothers and placed in cages with surrogate mothers

• Surrogate mothers were either cloth or wire, and one of them provided milk

• Monkeys with cloth mothers always preferred its company (contact comfort), even if the wire mother provided milk, and returned to it when frightened

• Monkeys without cloth mothers showed signs of stress-related illness

• The maternal deprivation caused permanent social disorders like difficulty in mating behaviour and raising their own offspring

:) Lab experiment- could control extraneous variables

:( Surrogate mothers’ heads looked different- confounding variable

:( Ethical issues- intentionally depriving monkeys of their mothers and subjecting them to high levels of stress that caused serious issues in later life

:( Hard to generalise- monkeys are genetically similar to humans but there are significant differences in biology and social environments

Ainsworth’s strange situation

• Structured observation in a controlled lab setting

• Observed safe base behaviour, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety and reunion behaviour

• Found 70% secure, 15% insecure-avoidant, 15% insecure-resistant

Attachment types

:) Highly controlled, clear standardised procedure- reliability, replicability

:( Culturally biased towards Western cultures- other cultures score more insecure types due to different childrearing practices, e.g. babies in Germany are left alone more so would be labelled avoidant

:( Lab setting- unusual for babies, may lack ecological validity

Cultural variations in attachment

• Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg- meta-analysis of strange situation studies across 8 countries

• Secure was most common across all countries

  • Globally preferred attachment style

• Germany had the most avoidant at 35%

  • Value independent, non-clingy children and promote self-reliance

• Israel had the most resistant at 29%, then Japan at 27%

  • Japanese mothers spend more time with their infants, explains reaction to separation

:) Simonelli- strange situation on modern Italian families. Secure down to 50%, insecure-avoidant up to 36%- suggests a healthy shift to more independent children that can cope with new demands of modern life e.g. complex childcare

:) Large sample- any extraneous variables will have only a small effect on the overall result, increases validity

:) Secure was most common- supports Bowlby’s theory of an innate drive to parent in a way that provides secure attachments

Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation

• Maternal deprivation is not receiving suitable emotional care from an attachment figure

• If adequate attachment is disrupted or not formed in the first 2.5 years of life, it causes negative consequences

  • Impaired behavioural development- bad behaviour and delinquency

  • Impaired emotional development- struggle to control emotions and form relationships

  • Impaired cognitive development- low IQ, poor language skills, difficulty with attention and memory

• Continuity hypothesis- lack of internal working model, leads to difficulty in friendships and relationships later in life

• Short-term separation follows PDD model- protest, despair, detachment

  • Protest- anger and upset at attachment figure leaving

  • Despair- giving up on anger and becoming sad and withdrawn

  • Detachment- rejection when attachment figure returns

44 Thieves

• Interviewed 44 children accused of theft and control group of 44 non-thieves

• Affectionless psychopathy assessed

• Caregivers asked about periods of separation

• Found 14/44 thieves matched criteria for affectionless psychopathy (none in control), 12/14 had prolonged separation in critical period (2 in control)

:) Little John- separated from mother for 9 days and placed in nursery, followed PDD model and behaved badly for months after, suggests lasting damage

:) Led to changes in child welfare, such as extended visiting times for caregivers in hospitals

:( 44 Thieves study is correlational, there may be a third factor like poverty that causes both

:( Can be reversed- case study of twins who were deprived until 7, as they got older their development improved, ended up having above average intelligence

:( Too simple- Rutter argued privation (never having a loving caregiver) is worse than deprivation (being separated)

Institutionalisation

• Institutions include children’s homes, hostels and hospitals

• Extended stays can alter normal functioning such as adopting rules and norms (institutionalisation)

  • Can result in loss of personal identity, deindividuation, and factors identified by Bowlby

• Deprivation- loss or damage to attachment

• Privation- total lack of any attachment bond

Romanian orphan studies

• Politicians thought having a bigger population would improve economy so banned contraception and taxed people without children

• People were too poor to care for children so many were sent to orphanages, which were also too poor

• Fall of communist government in 1989 revealed conditions of 300,000 Romanian orphans suffering privation

  • Lacked physical and emotional care, many were malnourished and abused

• People in UK started adopting the orphans

Rutter- natural longitudinal study of Romanian orphans adopted into UK families (compared to a control group of British adoptees), assessed at 4, 6, 11 and 15 years

• All British adoptees showed good emotional and cognitive development- developed secure relationships

• Romanian adoptees adopted under 6 months also showed good development

  • Suggests adoption within 6 months avoids effects of privation

• Children adopted after 6 months experienced severe psychological damage

  • Struggled to form secure relationships

  • Had behavioural and cognitive problems

• Some recovered- suggests effects can be reversed

:) Goldfarb- early fostering in British children led to higher IQ and social skills

:) Research led to changed policies around adoption and care in institutions

:( Adoption not randomly assigned, more sociable infants may have been picked first

Effects of attachment on later relationships

• Internal working model- schema based on attachment to the primary caregiver as an infant

  • Acts as a template for how relationships work

  • Continuity hypothesis suggests future relationships (e.g. childhood friendships, adult partners, relationship to own child) will be shaped by this template

Hazan and Shaver’s Love Quiz

• Adult relationship types are a continuation of Ainsworth’s attachment types

• Securely attached people will be more socially capable

• :( Volunteer sample- unrepresentative of general population

• :( Self-report- social desirability bias

• :( Correlational- cannot establish cause and effect relationship

Main

• Interviewed people about childhood attachments and attachment style to their children

• Similar proportions of attachment styles as found by Ainsworth

• Attachment style with parents carried over to attachment style with own children

• :( Participants may not have been accurate and objective- memory of past events may be inaccurate and description of relationship with children may be prone to social desirability bias

• :( May have been prone to investigator effects

:) Practical applications in schools- altering IWM to address issues like bullying and loneliness in childhood and help develop later relationship stability

:) McCarthy- adult women assessed as securely attached in infancy had the most stable adult relationships

:( Deterministic- can make people feel doomed to poor relationships

Role of the father

• Some researchers say fathers lack sensitive responsiveness

  • Bowlby believed attachments were formed between babies and their mothers

• Some researchers say fathers play the role of playmate while mothers care and nurture

  • Fathers are seen to more consistently engage babies in play activities, suggests they emphasise stimulation and encourage risk taking while mothers provide comfort

• Some researchers say fathers and mothers both form similar attachments to their children

  • Schaffer and Emerson found that babies form multiple attachments and do form attachments to their fathers

• Changing cultural roles- in modern Western society parental roles have changed, mothers are more likely to work and fathers are more likely to take on caring roles

  • Likely to change attachment patterns

• Schaffer and Emerson- 65% of infants’ primary attachment figure was mum, 30% mum and another person, only 3% just dad

  • Could be cultural and temporal reasons- 1960s working class Glasgow

  • Could be biological reasons- fathers have a less important role

:) Study- longitudinal study on parents and children, found that IWM was associated with attachment strength to mother and play sensitivity of father, supports idea that mothers are carers and fathers are playmates

:) Findings that males can take on a more caring role can provide confidence to fathers in single parent or single gender families that are more common in modern society

:( Study- observation on parents and children using frame-by-frame analysis, found that mothers were typically carer and fathers were typically playmate but when fathers were the primary caregiver, they had more sensitive responsiveness- suggests fathers can take on the carer role

:( Study- when fathers spend more time with their children they form a stronger attachment and show roles typically shown by mothers, suggests fathers can take on the carer role

:( Socially sensitive- some women may find their life choices like returning to work criticised, or men who are primary caregivers may feel they are incapable of providing the same function as a woman

:( Until recently, fathers could not have paid paternity leave and were pressured to earn money for the family instead of caring