Attachment

Attachment

1. Learning theory

   • Children learn to become attached to their care giver because they're given food
     • classical conditioning
       • llearning through association
     • operant conditioning
       • learning through reinforcment

2. evolutionary theory

   • innate
     • Bowlby
       • Lorenz
         • Imprinting
           • offspring follow the first large moving object encountered
         • Critical period
           • a specific time period within which an attachment must form
         • monotropy
           • an innate tendency to become attached to one particular adult.
       • Social releases
         • crying
           • attracts attention
         • looking,smiling,vocalising
           • maintains parental attention
         • Following/clinging
           • gains/maintains physical closeness with adult
       • internal working model
         • cognitive framework comprising mental representation for understand the world,self and others
           • Hazan and shaver(1987)
             • support for IWM
           • maternal deprevation hypothesis
             • delinquency
             • depression
             • increased aggression
             • reduced intelligance
             • affectionless psychopathy
             • THE PDD MODEL
               • Protest
               • Despair
               • Dettachment
       • EVALUATION:
         • The mother isnt special in the way he claims
         • multiple attachments are the norm
         • Fathers can do all the same jobs as mothers do too

3. STUDIES:

   • Schaffer& Emerson(1 964)
     • there's more to human attachment than cupboard love
     • studied 60 babies
       • every 4 weeks for the 1st yr
         • again at 18months
     • mothers were asked about their babies protest in various seprations
     • babies were clearly attached to people who weren't invovled in their physical care (fathers)
     • 39% of the cases the mother wasnt the (main caregiver) main attachment figure.
   • Harlow(1959)
     • separated newborn monkeys from their mothers
       • raised in a cage alone but had a baby blanket
         • monkeys became very distressed when the blanket was removed
     • attachment isn't based on association with food.
   • Strange situation