Attachment

Attachment

1. Attachment: an emotional tie or bond between two people, such as infants and caregivers, shown through their behaviour.

2. Maccoby argued that we can see that two people have an attachment by looking at their behaviours.

   • Seeking Proximity: the desire to be near each other. A young child will cry if their caregiver is too far away.
   • Distress on separation: where the infant shows distress (upset/crying) if the caregiver leaves, even for a short period of time.
   • Joy on reunion: An infant will welcome back their caregiver - often by clinging to them or hugging them - even if they have been gone a short period of time.
   • General orientation of behaviour: Both infant and caregvier direct their attention to each other, trying to engage in activities together.

3. Konrad Lorenz, an ethologist, noticed the tendancy for newborn, orphaned animals to form an attachment to the first large moving object they saw. This attachment takes place in precocial animals, such as goslings. Lorenz haatched gosling eggs from an incubator and was the first large, moving object they saw. He found that gosling's formed a rapid attachment to him, following him around as if he were their mother. Lorenz called this rapid formation of attachment 'imprinting'.

   • Lorenz argued that imprinting had to take place within the 'window of development' --> he called this the 'critical period'.
     • Lorenz proposed that if imprinting does not occur in this time period then it never will. Lorenz suggested this is to do with natural selection as behaviour involving following, promotes the survival of the young.

4. HOWEVER, in contrast to precocial species, human babies are not mobile immediately after birth, and in their immobile state they would have been vulnerable to predators. Therefore, the formation of an early protective bond from an adult (particularly the mother) wpuld have ensured the babies survival.

   • Klaus and Kennell tested the hypothesis that early skin-to-skin contact led to closer bonds being formed between new mothers and their babies, through studying women who gave birth in hospital.
     • Klaus and Kennell took two groups of young mothers in a Northern American maternity hospital and followed them from birth until their babies were a year old.
       • The control group had routine contact whereas the eperimental group had extended contact.
         • They found a variety of differences in the behaviour of the routine and extended contact mothers, for example, the extended contact mothers showed more soothing behaviours and maintained a closer proximity. --> Klaus and Kennell concluded that these behaviours indicated that the mothers had formed closer bonds with their babies, therefore,this study implies that there may be a special time or 'sensitive period' immediately after birth that may be important for bonding to occur.
           • AO2: this study was conducted in northern america and therefore results may have cultural bias, as they represent westernised values, and may not be able to be generalised to the whole population.
             • HOWEVER, these findings were supported by De Chateau et al, who carried out a variation using 42 middle-class swedish mothers and their babies. They found that babies from the extended contact group laughed and smiled more, whereas the babies from the control group cried more.
               • This implies that the differences seen in the original study by Klaus and Kennell can't simply be explained by the specific group of mothers studied but that early skin to skin contact can indeed facilitate the formation of bonds between mothers and their babies.