Introduction to Attachment

Introduction to Attachment

1. A close to way emotional bond

   • Proximity
   • Separation Distress
   • Secure-base bahviour

2. Caregiver-infant Interactions

   • Reciprocity
     • Babies and mothers spend a lot of time interacting
     • Babies have periodic 'alert phases' and signal when ready to interact
     • Feldman: Mothers respond to signals 66% of the time
     • how two people interact
     • Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both respond to signals and elicit a response from the other
     • Brazleton et al described this interaction as a dance because each responds to the other's moves
   • Interactional Synchrony
     • 'co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour'
     • Meltzoff & Moore
       • Adult did gesture, child's response filmed
       • Association between gesture and action of baby
       • observed babies as young as 2 weeks
     • Isabella et al
       • researchers assessed quality of attachment
       • High synchrony associated with better attachment
       • observed 30 mothers and their child to assess degree of synchrony
   • Evaluation
     • It is hard to know what is happening when observing infants
     • Controlled observations capture fine detail
     • Observations don't tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity

3. Attachment Figures

   • Parent-infant Attachment
     • Schaffer & Emerson
       • 75% of infants studied attached to father by 18 months
       • This was determined by infants protesting when father walked away
       • Found that majority of babies became attached to mother first and formed secondary attachments a few weeks/months later
   • Role of Father
     • Grossman
       • Infant attachments to mother was related to children's attachments in adolescent years. This suggests father attachments are less important
       • Quality of fathers play with infants was rekated to quality of adolescent attachments. Suggests fathers have a play role than nurture
       • Looked at parent's behaviour and quality of children's attachments into their teens
   • Fathers and Primary Caregiver
     • Evidence to suggest when fathers are the main caregiver they adopt typical mother behaviour
     • Tiffany Field
       • Filmed 4 month old babies in interaction with primary caregiver mothers, fathers, and secondary caregiver fathers
       • Primary fathers spent time smiling, imitating and holding baby than secndary
     • The key to attachment is the level of responsiveness not the gender of parent
   • Evaluation
     • Inconsistent findings on fathers
     • If fathers have a distant role, why aren't children without fathers different?
     • Why don't fathers generally become primary attachments?