AO1
Dollard & Miller (1950) state attachment is a learned behaviour that is acquired through both classical and operant conditioning. It is a nurture theory. According to classical conditioning, food (unconditioned stimulus) produces pleasure (unconditioned response). The child simply associates food and mother together. The mother becomes the conditioned stimulus and happiness becomes the conditioned response - an attachment has formed.

Attachment by Classical Conditioning
1.Before conditioning:
Food ---------------> Happy baby
(Unconditioned (Unconditioned
stimulus) response)

2.During Conditioning:
Mother + Food ---------------> Happy baby
(Neutral (Unconditioned (Unconditioned
stimulus) stimulus) response)

3.After Conditioning:
Mother ---------------> Happy baby
(Conditioned (Conditioned
stimulus) response)

Attachments can also be learned by operant conditioning. The presence of the caregiver is reinforcing for the infant. The infant gains pleasure/reward as they are being fed. The behaviour of the infant is reinforcing for the caregiver (the caregiver gains pleasure from smiles etc - reward). The reinforcement process is therefore reciprocal (two way) and strengthens the emotional bond/attachment between the two.

Dollard & Miller (1950) use the term secondary drive hypothesis to describe the processes of learning an attachment through operant and classical conditioning. Secondary drive hypothesis explains how primary drives - which are essential fr survival, such as eating when hngry - become associated with secondary drives, such as emotional closeness. They extended the theory to explain that attachment is a two way process that the caregiver must also learn, and this occurs through negative reinforcement when the caregiver feels pleasure because the infant is no longer distressed.

A03
Schaffer and Emerson found less than half of infants had a primary attachment to the person who usually fed them.

Harlow's research suggested that monkeys became attached to the soft surrogate mother rather than the one who fed it. This goes against the learning theory of attachment.

Lorenz found goslings imprinted on the first moving object they saw which suggests that attachment is innate and not learnt.

	Created by Tom Povey over 10 years ago

Learning Theory and Bowlby's Monotropic Theory