Explanations of Attachment

Explanations of Attachment

1. Learning Theory

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     • Classical Conditioning: Before attachment is learned, the infant gains pleasure through being fed. Food is the UCS and pleasure is the UCR. When the infant is being fed, the infant associates the person providing the food (UCS) with the UCS. The primary caregiver is the neutral stimulus (NS), which becomes associated with the UCS of food. When the attachment has been learned, the infant gains pleasure when the primary caregiver is present, the primary caregiver is now the CS and pleasure is now the CR.
     • Operant conditioning: When an infant is hungry it is in an uncomfortable state. Relieving this state will make the infant more comfortable, and so anything it does to make itself more comfortable will be learnt through negative reinforcement. Dollard & Miller (1950) used 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 (essential for survival) become associated with secondary drives such as emotional closeness. They extended this theory to explain that attachment is a two way process that the caregiver must also learn, and occurs through negative reinforcement when the caregiver feels pleasure because the infant is no longer distressed.
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     • Learning theory provides a very plausible and scientifically reliable explanation for attachment formation. It seems highly likely that simple association between the provision of needs essential for survival and the person providing those needs can lead to strong attachments. However, the theory is extremely reductionist, and there is evidence thqt infants can form attachments with a person who is not the primary care-giver. This suggests that there is a futher component to attachments beyond the fulfilment of an infant's survival drive.
       • In support of this, Schaffer & Emerson (1964) studies the attachments formed by 60 infants from bith. They found that a significant number of infants formed attachments with a person other than the one doing the primary caregiving, and that the primary attachment was often with the father and not the mother. They found that it was the quality of interaction that was most important.
     • Harlow (1958) experimented with the attachments formed between rhesus monkeys and surrogate mothers. In this case the surrogate mothers were wire framed models that provided food and therefore satisfied the monkeys' primary needs, or ones that were comfortable and padded but provided no food. The findings were that the monkeys would cuddle up to and be more distressed at losing the comfortable padded surrogate mother that provided no food than they were the uncomfortable food-providing surrogate mother.
       • It would be easy to conclude from this that conditioning does not explain attachment in infant monkeys as they are not linking food with pleasure, but clinging could actually be essential to the survival of infant monkeys whose mothers are often active.
         • Therefore, conditioning could still adequately explain their attachment formations.
     • Drive reduction theory was very popular in the 1940s but it is no longer used by psychologists. Drive theory can only explain a limited number of behaviours - there are a number of things that people do that hjave nothing to do with reducing discomfort, and some people even do things to increase discomfort and step out of their comfort zone.

2. Bowlby's Monotopic Theory

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     • Bowlby (1969) proposed that millions of years of evolution had produced a behaviour that is essential to the survival chances of human infants. Humans are born helpless and totally dependent on the actions of a caregiver for food, warmth, shelter and safety for their well being and survival. If babies did not behave in a way that made it more likely an adult would care for them, and if adults did not become attached to babies, then human infants would not survive to reproductive age. Therefore natural selection has passed on genes that lead to attachment forming behaviours.
       • The innate nature of attachment was illustrated by Lorenz (1952) in his studies of imprinting in geese. Lorenz hatched two groups of geese eggs - one group stayed with their natural mother and the other group were hatched in an incubator. The first moving thing the incubator group saw when they hatched was Lorenz himself, and the geese immediately started to follow him around. When the incubator geese and natural mother geese were mixed together, they would quickly separate into the two original groups and follow either Lorenz or their natural mother. Imprinting of this nature in animals has a clear survival advantage as it keeps them close to their mother who would naturally protect them from predators and increase their chances of survival.
       • The types of attachment an infant experiences form a template for that infant’s future attachments. This template is called an internal working model and plays a role in guiding future adult relationships. Bowlby’s theory has three main features: Infants and caregivers (usually mothers) are innately programmed to become attached. Attachment is a biological process that takes place during a critical period or not at all. Attachment styles developed in infancy play a role in later attachment styles through the continuity hypothesis.
     • Most developmental processes take place during a critical period. This is a time frame or window of opportunity in which development of a behaviour or characteristic occurs. If the behaviour does not happen during the critical period then it may well not develop at all. Bowlby argued that there is a critical period between the ages of birth and 2.5 years (0-30 months) in which conditions must be right for an attachment to form, and if it does not form in this time then it is not possible to develop thereafter. Rutter et al (1998) studied Romanian orphans who had been placed in orphanages with minimal adult contact. When these children were adopted by US and UK families in their first year of life, they were able to form strong and stable attachments with their adopted parents.
       • Rutter et al (1998) studied Romanian orphans who had been placed in orphanages with minimal adult contact. When these children were adopted by US and UK families in their first year of life, they were able to form strong and stable attachments with their adopted parents. Bowlby’s theory argues that after 2.5 years of age the infants would not be able to form an attachment, however when older infants were also adopted by US and UK families they made slower progress than their younger counterparts, but they did develop attachments. This shows that attachments can be formed outside the critical period, but that they develop much more slowly, and that the idea of a critical period outside of which an attachment cannot be formed should be modified to a sensitive period during which attachments form more easily.
     • Bowlby argues that infants form a single special attachment with one primary attachment figure, usually the mother. This is called monotropy (moving towards one). Other attachments may develop in a hierarchy below this. An infant may therefore have a primary monotropy attachment to its mother, and below her the hierarchy of attachments my include its father, siblings, grandparents, etc. The idea of monotropy and hierarchy is supported by research into attachments formed by the Efe tribe of Congo. Efe women share the care of infants in the tribe and take turns to breast feed them, however the infants return to their natural mother at night and form a stable bond with the mother.
       • Fox (1977) studied attachment styles in Israeli kibbutzim. In a kibbutz infants are cared for by a primary caregiver (a metaplet) during the day while their mothers work, and they return to their mothers in the evenings. Despite the fact that the mothers were not the infants’ primary caregivers, the infants still formed strong emotional attachments with their mothers.
     • A key feature of Bowlby’s evolutionary theory of attachment is that the attachment style formed as an infant provides the infant with an internal working model of relationships, and that in turn guides relationship behaviour as an older child and adult. A secure child will develop a positive internal working model of itself because it has received sensitive emotional care from its primary attachment figure. An insecure-avoidant child will develop an internal working model in which it sees itself as unworthy because its primary attachment figure has reacted negatively to it during the sensitive period for attachment formation.
       • Hazan and Shaver (1987) researched the link between infant or childhood attachment types and adult relationships. They found that securely attached children, who had secure and close relationships with their parents, developed secure, stable and loving relationships with their adult partners. Insecure-avoidant children, who had cold and rejecting mothers, developed insecure adult relationships with high levels of jealousy and fear of rejection. This shows that childhood attachment styles correlate strongly with adult relationship styles, however the research is based on a self-report questionnaire with retrospective questions that try to explore childhood attachments through the participant’s own (biased) childhood memories.
     • Babies behave in ways that adults find ‘cute’ and that release emotions, particularly in females. Cooing, gurgling, smiling and laughing create happy emotions in adults. Crying, distressed facial expressions, and frustration create ‘care giving’ emotions in adults that make them want to alleviate the infant’s distress. This is an essential behaviour for survival as it makes adults want to care for infants.
     • John Bowlby
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