Attachment

Attachment

1. Definition: A close two-way emotional bond between two individuals, in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security. Attachment in humans takes a few months to develop

2. Maccoby (1980) describes four characteristics of attachment

   • seeking proximity - desire to be close to the person your attached to
   • Separation anxiety - distress that results from being separated from the person your attached to
   • Pleasure when reunited - relief of observable joy when reunited with the person your attached to
   • General orientation of behaviour towards the caregiver - the child’s awareness of where the person is, and the reassurance they feel by them being close.

3. Reciprocity - Reciprocity is where the mother and infant respond to each other’s signals and each elicits a response from the other.

4. Interactional synchrony – mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and they do this in a co-ordinated, synchronised way.

   • Meltztoff and Moore (1977): first systematic study of interactional synchrony - found that infants as young as two or three weeks old imitated specific facial and hand gestures. The study was conducted using adult model who displayed one of three facial expressions or hand movement where the fingers moved in a sequence. A dummy was placed in the infants mouth during the initial displayed to prevent any response. Following the display, the dummy was removed and the child's expression was filmed. The found that there was an association between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model