Attachment (p96)

Attachment (p96)

1. Intro to attachment

   • Caregiver-infant interations
     • Interactions - Babies have frequent and important interactions with their caregivers
     • Reciprocity - Mothers respond to their infants alertness. From 3 months close attention between mother and infant
     • Interactional synchrony - Interactions become co-ordinated. Isabella et al.: quality of attachment related to synchrony
     • Hard to know what is happening - Observe simple gestures and expressions, and assume infants intentions
       • Controlled observations - captures fine detail of interactions
         • Purpose of synchrony and reciprocity - Feldman: just observations, purpose not entirely understood
   • Attachment Figures
     • Parent-infant - Traditionally mother-infant, other attachment figures like the father may also be important
     • The role of the father - Grossman et al.: attachment to fathers less important but fathers may have a different role - play and stimulation
     • Fathers as primary carers - Field: fathers as primary carers adopt attachment behaviour more typical of mothers
     • Inconsistent findings - different research questions overall picture unclear
       • Children without fathers aren;t different - Suggest the father role is not important
         • Fathers not primary attachments - may be due traditional gender roles or biological differences (hormones etc)
           • Evaluation extra - Socially sensitive research: working mothers

2. Schaffer's stages of attachment

   • KEY STUDY: Schaffer and Emmerson
     • AIms - To investigate the age of attachment formation and who attachments are formed with
     • Method - Mothers of 60 Glasgow babies reported monthly on separation anxiety
     • Findings - Most babies showed attachment to a primary caregiver by 32 weeks and developed multiple attachments soon after this
     • Good external validity - observations were in participants natural environments
       • Longitudinal design - Same ppts were observed at each age, eliminating individual differences that confound
         • Limited sample characteristics - All families were from the same area and over 50 years ago, so may lack generalisability
   • Stages of Attachment
     • Asocial stage - first few weeks - Little observable social behaviour
       • Indiscriminate attachment - 2-7 months - More observable attachment behaviours, accepts cuddles from any adult
         • Specific attachments - 7 months - stranger anxiety and separation anxiety in regard to one particular adult
           • Multiple attachments - 8 months+ - attachment behaviour directed towards more than one adult (secondary attachments)
     • Asocial stage - social behaviour is hard to observe in the first few weeks but this doesn't mean the baby is 'asocial'
       • Conflicting evidence - van Ijzendoorn et al.: research in different contexts has found multiple attachments may appear first
         • Measuring multiple attachments - just because child protests when an adult leaves does not necessarily mean attachment
           • Evaluation extra - Schaffer and Emerson used limited measures of attachment

3. Animal studies of attachment

   • Lorenz's Research
     • Procedure - Goslings saw Lorenz when they hatched
     • Findings - Newly hatched chicks attach to the first moving object they see (imprinting)
     • Sexual Imprinting - Adult birds try to mate with whatever species or object they imprint on
     • Generalisability - Birds and mammals have different attachment styles so Lorenz's results may not be relevant to humans
       • Some observations questions - Guiton et al.: birds imprinting on rubber gloves did later prefer their own species
   • Harlow's Research
     • Procedure - Baby monkeys given cloth or wire 'mother' with feeding bottle attached
     • Findings- Monkeys clung to cloth surrogates rather than wire one, regardless of which dispensed milk
     • Maternally deprived monkeys - Grew up socially dysfunctional
     • The critical period - After 90 days attachments wouldn't form
     • Theoretical value - demonstrated that attachment depends more on comfort than feeding
       • Practical value - Howe: informs understanding of risk factors for child abuse
         • Ethical issues - Suffering of the monkeys would be human like
           • Evaluation Extra - Can Harlow's findings be applied to humans?

4. Explanations of Attachment: Learning Theory

   • Classical conditioning - caregiver (neutral stimulus) associated with food (unconditioned stimulus). Caregiver becomes conditioned stimulus
     • Operant conditioning - Crying behaviour reinforced positively for infant and negatively for caregiver
       • Attachment as a secondary drive - attachment becomes a secondary drive through associated with hunger
   • Animal studies - Lorenz and Harlow showed that feeding is not the key to attachment
     • Human research - Schaffer and Emerson: most primary attachment figures were the mother even when others did most feeding
       • Ignores other factors - cannot account for the importance of sensitivity and interactional synchrony