psychology

psychology

1. attachment

   • caregiver-infant interactions
     • reciprocity
       • in the 1970s research showed that infants would coordinate their actions with their caregiver almost in conversation as they would take turns. This is an example of reciprocity
     • there is a second type of interaction called interactional synchrony. Keith and Moore conducted the first study where they showed facial expressions to babies who would often copy these behaviours
     • Meltzoff and Moore stated that the copying is deliberate however Piaget believed that real interactions could not take place until the baby is one. he believes it is response training due to operant conditioning.
     • evaluation
       • there is a good reason to doubt the research findings as there are issues when testing using babies. their mouth will be constantly moving. this means its difficult to distinguish between specific and general activity
       • other studies have failed to replicate results. koepke failed to get similar results to meltzoff and marian to murray and trevarthan
       • abravanel and deyong observed infant behaviour when interacting with inanimate objects replicating tongue and mouth movements. infants between 5 and 12 weeks made little response showing that infants dont just immitate everything
   • the development of attachment
     • stage 1. from birth to 2 months babies produce a similar response to all objects. towards the end of this period they start to show greater preference towards humans
       • stage 2. around the age of 4 months become more social and prefer human company. can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people but have no stranher anxiety
         • stage 3. 7 months baby starts to show stranger anxiety if picked up by someone it doesnt know. equally they show a lot of joy when reunited with the primary caregiver.
           • stage 4. multiple attachments. soon after the main attachment is formed,the child starts to develope multiple attachments. within a month 28% of babies have multiple attachment. by 6 months 78% have attachments
     • evaluation
       • data collected by schaffar and emerson could be unreliable as it was based on mothers reports. some may have been less sensitve and some may have been more
       • the sample was biased firstly because they only used working class families. secondly the sample was from the 1960s and there have not been any new evidence. finally dads play a larger role now than back then
       • after the primary attachment, some like bowlby feel that all other attachments are different in their own way. a father will have a different attachment to grand parents. however some like rutter believe that all 0ther attachments are equivilant
   • animal studies of attachment
     • lorenz 1935
       • he took a clutch of gosling eggs and divided them into two groups. one was left with the natural mother whilst the others were kept in an incubator. when the eggs in the incubator hatched they saw lorenz and started following him around. to test imprinting he marked the two groups and then mixed them together and then stood at the end of the room with the mother goose t see who they would run to.
         • the findings were that the goslings divided themselves up into two groups and then followed their imprinted parent. lorenz believed this imprinting had to take place in a short period of time known as the critical period.
       • evaluation
         • a number of studies have demonstrated imprinting in animals and therefore supporting lorenz. guiton and rubber gloves
         • imprinting was once believed to be irreversable but now is seen to be changable. guiton was able to reverse the effects of the rubber glove experiment.
     • harlow 1959
       • harlow created two models of mothers for baby monkeys. one was furry and warm whilst the other was wire and looked cold. eight monkeys were studied for 165 days. 4 of the monkeys hadthe milk bottle on the wire monkey and 4 had the milk bottle on the cloth monkey. during the time they made observation about how long each monkey spent with each of the mothers.
         • all monkeys spent most of the time with the cloth mother whether or not there was a bottle on it and only left ro feed off of the wire mother
       • evaluation
         • criticism made that there was a confounding variable as not only were the modles different due to cloth, they also had different heads which could have acted as a confounding variable as the study only mentions the cloth.
         • ultimate aim of animal studies is to be able to generalise them to humans. however humans are different as they make a lot more decisions consciously. however some observations are mirrored in animal studies. harlows research is mirrored by schaffers and emersons
   • learning theory
     • classical conditioning first investigated by pavlov. it starts with an unconditioned response to a stimulus. for babies this is food. the unconditioned response to this is pleasure.over time the baby connects the mother to the food. the mother is a nuetral stimulus. if a NS is connected to an UCS, the response to just the NS will be the same as the UCS
     • a drive is motivation to behaviour. if a baby is uncomfortable it gets a drive to reduce the discomfort. when a baby is hungry, it gets a drive to reduce its hunger. if the drive is reduced it gives the baby pleasure. this is called positive reinforcment and means it is likely to happen again
     • social learning theory happens through modelling of adult behaviour
     • evaluation
       • learning theory relies on a lot of animal research. for behaviourists this is fine as they believe that humans are no different to animals in the way that we learn. however non-behaviourists feel that not all behaviour is the same with humans due to inate predispositions
       • main limitation is that it focuses on food as the main stimuli. however we know from harlows study that comfort and security is more important than food
       • although it does not provide a complete explanation of attachment babies do learn through reinforcement and association but food may not be the main reinforcer.
   • the strange situation
     • 9x9 foot room split into 16 squares. procedure is made up of eight episodes design to show different behaviours. the key is that the stranger and caregiver are alternated. enables observations of separation from caregiver, reunion with caregiver, response to a stranger. data collected by observers using camcorders
       • 4 main patterns of behaviour were found. secure attachment, insecure avoidant and insecure resistant
     • evaluation
       • according to main and solomon, ainsworth overlooked a 4th type of attachment. after watching over 200 strange situation tapes they decided that there was insecure disorganised where the child doesn not have a consistant strategy to deal with the separation
       • considering it is an observational study, inter-observer reliability is remarkably high. (.94)
       • real world application
   • cultural variations
     • meta analysis of 32 studies from eight different countries. secure attachment was most common in all countries then insecure avoident in all bar japan and israel