Developmental

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A strong emotional tie that develops over time between an infant and a caregiver. The tie is reciprocal as each partner is attached to the other.

Macoby 1980-

1) seek proximity

2)Distress when seperated

3)Pleasure when reunited

4)Behaviour aimed at partner

Classical Conditioning:

1) Stimulus produces response

2) Person providing the food gets associated with pleasure

3) The food giver becomes associated with pleasure whether they provide food or not.

Operant Conditioning:

1) When hungry you feel uncomfortable

2)The uncomfortable feeling acts as a drive

3)When you are fed you are more comfortable therefore food acts as a drive reduction. Food then acts as a reinforcer

4) The person providing the food becomes a secondary reinforcer

5) The infant wants to stay with the food giver as they are a source of reward

Harlow and Harlow 1962 -

The put an infant monkey in a cage with a wire and a towel surrogate mother. They found that food wasn't enough for attachment. They spent most time on the towel monkey and went to her if scared. Later in life the monkeys couldn't form attachments. Monkeys that had been raised with no mother but with other mokeys were fine in later life.

Schaffer and Emerson 1964

The conducted a longitudinal study of 60 infants and looked at attachment relationships. They found that attachment wasnt always to who fed them, there were multiple attachments at 7m - 29% 10m - 59% and 18m - 97%.

Bowlby

Suggests that attachment is an innate process that serves an important evolutionary process

ASCMI

Adaptive

Social releases

Critical period

Monotropy

Internal working model

Rutter showed that adopted children can form bonds even after the critical period but the older they are the less successful. He therefore named in the 'sensitive period'.

Ainsowrth and Bell 1970

They assessed the quality of attachment. The did this by placing an infant and taking away the adult to find out what their quality of attachment is.

They used 100 middle class American infants and mothers

Procedure:

Mother and child introduced to the room

Mother and child left alone, child can investigate the toys

A stranger enters the room and talks with the mother. The stranger interacts with the child.

Mother leaves the hild alone with the stranger. The stranger interacts with the child.

Mother returns to greet and comfort the child.

The child is left on its own.

The stranger returns and tries to engage with the child

Mother returns, greets the child and picks up. The stranger leaves.

66% were securely attached. This means that they explore the room, subdued when mother left and greeted postivley when returned.

Positive wokring

22% were insecure avoidant. Which means they were not concerned by mothers absence. Unacceptable working model

12% were insecure resistant. This meant they were intensely distressed and rejected their mother on her return. Need to exaggerate emotional resonses to gain attention

Strengths

Varitey of situation

Controlled

Useful

Weaknesses

Biased sample

Low ecological validity

Only attachment to mother and only on one day

Securley attached

Would explore the unfamiliar room

Subdued when mother leaves, greets positiley on return

Avoidance of stranger

Mothers were described as sensitive

Insecure-avoidant

Did not orientate to their mother while investigating the room and toys

Not concerned by her absence

Little interest when mother returned

Ignored the stranger

Mothers sometimes ignored their children

Insecure- resistant

Distressed particularly when mother was absent

Rejected her on return

Ambivalent behaviour towards the stranger

Mother behaves ambivalently towards child

Sensitive mothering - Ainsworth and Bell suggested that attachment styles were down to the type of mothering the child was exposed to.

The childs personality - Kagon suggested that certain inate personality or tempermental characteristics account for behaviour in the strange situation than the caregiver sensitivity

Individulist

USA

Scotland

Germany

Collectivist

DRC

Uganda

Israel

Japan

Strengths

over 2000 partipants

Infants under 2

Useful

Controlled

Weaknesses

Only five collectivists

American - Based on Ainsworth

Privation is when you never form an attachment relationship

Hodges and Tizard conducted a study to investigate the permanence of long-term effects of privation

Longitudinal

65 children placed in an institution when they were less than four months old.

The caregivers were not allowed to form an attachment

By the age of four, 24 of them had been adopted, 15 had returned home and the rest were still in the institution

They were assessed at the age of 8 and 16. They did this by speaking to parents, the children, teachers etc.

They found that those who had been adopted had better attachments than those who returned home.

Both groups were unsuccessful in peer relationships

This evidence does not support the maternal deprivation hypothesis

A strength of the experiment is that it was a natural experiment, therefore the independent variable cannot be directly manipulated.

A weakness of the study is that you have sample drop off as it is longitdinal and also social desirability bias.

Deprivation is when a child has formed an attachment but this is disrupted temporarily or forever

Robertson and Robertson looked into the effects of a disrupted attachment bond.

John who was 17mths old was put in a residential nursery for 9days while his mother was in hospital.

They videotaped his behaviour

They found that he was distressed as he did not have one main carer and that the staff pain more attention to noisy kids.

When he returned home he was less distressed but less happy than before.

All of these effets were classed as short-term efects of bond disruption.

They then carried out another study on Jane.

Jane was looked after by Joyce and had toys from home and was happy, she was also hapopy when she returned home.

This is a total contradiction of John

A weakness is that it was only done on two people so therefore cannot be generalised to the wider population

A strength of the study is that it was not biased as it was done by video taping.

Shea 1981

He looked at infants age between 3 and 4 and were videotaped in the playground during their first 10 weeks of nursery.

The behaviour they assessed was rough and tumble play, aggression, peer interaction etc.

Over the 10 weeks, the childrens peer interaction increased and their distance from the teach decreased.

There was a decrease in aggression and an increase in rough and tumble play.

It was mor evident in children that attended day care 5 days a week than those attending 2 days a week.

Day care causes children to become more sociable and less aggressive.

Di Lalla 1998

In a lab playroom, 62 pairs of same sex 5year olds who had not met before played together for 20mintues

They were rated on pro-social behaviour and aggression

Children who experienced little or no day care were more likley top behave prosocially

Attachment

The Strange Situation

Meta-analysis

Privation and Deprivation

Day Care