Attachment

Attachment

1. Caregiver-infant Interactions

   • Reciprocity
     • when an infant responds to the actions of another person in a turn-taking.
   • Interactional Synchrony
     • When infants mirror the actions or emotions of another person, for example, their facial expressions.
       • Meltzoff and Moore
         • An adult - one of three facial expressions, or a hand gesture. Child had a dummy placed in his/her mouth to prevent a facial response. Following action the dummy was removed and the child’s expressions were filmed.
           • There was a clear association between the infants’ behaviour and that of the adult
           • IS is innate
   • Stages of Attachment
     • Asocial (0-2m), indiscriminate (3-6), discriminate (7-12), multiple attachments (12+)
     • Schaffer and Emerson
       • 60 Scottish babies aged 5-23 weeks visited in their homes, every month and then again at 18 months
       • At 25-32 weeks, 50% of children showed separation anxiety towards mothers. By 40 weeks, 80% had specific attachment and 30% had started to form multiple attachments
   • Role of the Father
     • Men not able to form atachments - lack of oestrogen in men is reason for this.
     • Fathers provide a different role, as a playmate.
     • Can demonstrate attachments through responding to the children's needs but not instinctively

2. Animal studies

   • Lorenz
     • Testing imprinting in geese
     • Hatched two sets of geese, one was natural with their mother, the other with Lorenz making sure that he was the first large moving object the goslings saw
     • The goslings followed the first thing they saw, Lorenz or the mother goose.only occurred over a critical period (4-25 hrs)
   • Harlow
     • The extent to which contact comfort and food influences attachment behaviour
     • 2 surrogate mothers, wire and towelling mother. 4 different controls. the monkeys were scared to see their response for stress.
     • Monkeys have an innate drive to seek contact with comfort, suggesting that attachment is because of comfort not food.

3. Explanations of attachment

   • Learning theory
     • Attached to their primary caregiver through the process of either classical conditioning or operant conditioning.
     • classical conditioning
       • UCS - food + UCR - pleasure
         • NS - mother + no response
           • UCS + NS = pleasure
             • CS = CR
     • operant conditioning
       • Infants cry in order to receive comfort. When the caregiver provides food, a feeling of pleasure is produced for the infant which is rewarding and this is called positive reinforcement. this means that they are likely to reproduce this crying to feel comfort again.
   • Bowlby's theory of attachment
     • Children are born with an innate tendency to form attachments with their parents in order to increase chances of survival.

4. Ainsworth's strange situation

5. Cultural variations

6. Maternal deprivation and institionalisastion

7. Early attachment