Attachment

Page 1

Caregiver-infant interactions

Reciprocity -

Research showed the infant coordinate their actions with caregivers in a kind of conservation.

e.g. as one person speaks then the next person replies

Interactional synchrony -

Meltzoff and Moore conducted the first study of interactional synchrony and found that infants as young as 2/3 could imitated specific facial and hand gestures.

Study was done by having an adult who displayed 3 facial expressions and child then repeated the expressions

They did another study where infants were only 3 d.o., same findings therefore, this behaviour isn't learned.

AO3

Problems with testing infant behaviour

difficult to rely on infants behaviour. Their mouth is constantly moving and the expressions that are tested can occur frequently. This makes it difficult to distinguish what is normal behaviour and what is specific imitated behaviours. To overcome this, the researchers asked someone to watch a filmed video of the infants and the judge had no idea what the behaviour was. This increased internal validity of the data.

Individual differences

Isabella et al found that strongly attached infant-caregiver pairs showed greater interactional synchrony.

Herman found that infants who showed a lot of imitation from birth have a better quality relationship at 3 months. Although, it isn't clear if the imitation is a cause or an effect of early synchrony.

Page 2

The development of attachment

KEY STUDY:

Schaffer and Emerson:

60 babies

From Glasgow

Skills working class families

Infants an mothers visited every month for the 1st year

Researcher asked mother questions about infants protest in everyday separations

Findings:

25-32 weeks, 50% of infant showed signs of separations anxiety (usually towards mother)

By 40 weeks, 80% of infants had specific attachments and 30% showed multiple attachments

Stage 1: Indiscriminate attachments

From birth, infants produce similar responses to all objects

Towards the end, infants show greater preference to social stimuli (smiling face)

Stage 2: the beginnings of attachments

4 months, infant becomes social, they prefer human company to inanimate objects.

Comfortable around anyone, don't show stranger anxiety yet. can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces

Stage 3: Discriminate attachment

7 months, infant shows different types of protest when a certain person puts them down, separation anxiety.

They also show joy at reunion with one person and form a specific attachment with them (primary attachment figure) This is the person who interacts with the infant the most

Infant also displays stranger anxiety

Stage 4: Multiple attachments

The infant also shows multiple attachments as soon as they have a primary attachment. In Schaffer and Emerson study they found that 29% of infants had secondary attachments within a month. Within 6 months it was 78%

AO3:

Unreliable data:

The data collected was based on mothers reports. Some mothers may have been less sensitive to their infants protest and therefore less likely to report them. This created a systematic bias which challenges the data validity.

Baised sample:

The sample was from a working-class population and then the findings may apply to their social group and not others.

It was also conducted in the 1960s and parenting has changed since them as much more women work and fathers stay at home.

Stage theories:

Developmental psychologists uses stages to describe the child's behaviour changing as they age. However, this suggests that the development is inflexible.

e.g. it suggests that single attachment comes before multiple attachments. however, in some situations and cultures, multiple attachment comes first. These families would then be seen as abnormal.

Page 3

Animal studies of attachment

Lorenz research -

Procedure: