Attachment

Attachment

1. What is attachment? and How is it seen?

   • An emotional tie or relationship between two people. It is seen through seeking proximity, distress on separation, joy at reunion and general orientation.

2. Bowlby's theories

   • Adaptive- All children have an innate instinct to form attachments and the behaviours are adapted through natural selection.
   • Social releasers- All children are adapted to cry and smile etc. in order for aduts to want to care for us and form attachments.
   • Critical Period- A period of time in which something has to happen in order for survival e.g. limbs developing between 24-26 days of conception.
   • Monotropy- Forming one main attachment to the primary cargiver
   • Internal working model- The model for building future relationships.
   • Continuity hypothesis- Future relationship is based on your first attachment.
   • 44 Theives study- Bowlby interviewed 44 adolescents who were referred to a child protection program in London because of stealing- i.e. they were thieves. Bowlby selected another group of 44 children to act as ‘controls’. Controls: individuals referred to clinic because of emotional problems, but not yet committed any crimes.
   • Issues- Does not take into account peer or father relationships.
   • Advantages- Most evidence does suggest that attachments formed as children effect future relationships.

3. Ainsworth's Types of attachment

   • Secure (Type B) 70%-Happy to explore room but showed distress on separation, seeked affection at reunion.
   • Insecure-avoidant (Type A) 15%- Distress at separation but did not seek comfort at return.
   • Insecure-resistant/ambivalent (Type C) 15%- Very upset at separation but rejected affection on reunion.

4. Cultural variations on attachment

   • Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg- meta analysis- Both collectivist cultured-countries e.g. Japan, China & Israel and individualistic cultured-countries such as N. America, UK and Germany. Most securely attached was UK, least was China. Most insecure-resistant was in Japan- backed up by Takashi.

5. Privation Studies

   • Koluchova Twins study- brought up in care after the death of their mother. At 18 months they went to live with their father + stepmother where they suffered privation for 7 years. When they were discovered they had no speech, had malnutrition and were very scared. They got fostered by two sisters and formed normal secure attachments.
   • Genie- Extremeley privated for most of her life. Had no speech, or mental abilities, she got fostered and gained slight abililties but never formed secure attachments for the rest of her life.
   • Tizard & Hodges- Quasi-experiment. 65 children brought up in a children's home until around the age of 4. Staff were discouraged to form attachments with the children and so the children were unable to form them. When adopted the majority were able to form attachments at 8 (20/21) and 16 (17/21). Whereas if restored to biological parents it was a great deal less at both 8 (6/13) and 16 (5/9)

6. Learning theory

   • Bandura argues that children and indeed adults learn many behaviours through observation and imitation of other peoples behaviour. This was shown in the bobo dolls study conducted by Bandura focussing on aggression in a matched-pairs experiment whereby 72 children were split into groups and asked to watch a film of someone older than them playing with a doll type toy. In one film the adult would get angry and fight with the doll, in the other they would just play nicely. It was found that when the children were asked to play with the dolls they themselves would demonstrate the behaviour seen in the film tthey watched.
   • Vespo argues that parents act as role models for their children
   • Klaus & Kennell said that early skin-to skin contact led to closer bonds being formed between mothers and their babies.

7. Schaffer & Emerson

   • Glasgow babies study looking at separation anxiety and stranger distress through interviews and observation of mothers and their children in their homes. They found out that attachments were first formed at 6-8 months(shown by separation anxiety). They also found that 65% of the child's attachment was their mother, 3% was the father and 27% was joint. However this study is quite old and so it is argued that nowadays these findings would be outdated.

8. Classical conditioning

   • Classical conditioning is learning by association. E.g. Pavlov's dogs whereby the dogs associated the sound of a bell with their food.

9. Operant conditioning

   • Operant conditioning is learning through positive and negative reinforcement. E.g. Skinner's rats study whereby they were placed in a cage and every time they pressed a button they were rewarded with food. This reward encouraged the rats to continue with the behaviour which was rearded

10. Daycare

    • Campbell, Lamb & Hwang studied daycare in Sweden (best country for daycare). Studied children from 18 months- 3.5 years, 9 being in family care, 30 in nursery and 9 switch between each compared to those who do not recieve daycare. It concluded that children who spent longer in daycare were less socially competent.
    • What makes good quality daycare?- Good adult:child ratio, low staff turnover. well trained staff, structured day, clean/safe environment,
    • It was also found that the longer children spend in daycare, the more signs of aggression they show.