Attachments

Attachments

3.1 Caregiver-Infant interactions
1. Reciprocity
  1. A description of how two people interact. An interaction shows reciprocity when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them.
2. Interactional synchrony
  1. Defined as "the temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour"
  2. Takes place when caregiver and baby interact in such a way that their actions and emotions mirror each other, in a synchronised manner.
    1. Isabella et al (1989): observed 30 mothers and babies together and assessed degree of synchrony. Found high levels of synchrony was associated with better quality attachment.
3. Evaluation
  1. Strengths:
    1. Filmed observation- means distractions can be removed, and observation is recorded and can be analysed later. Also babies dont know they are being filmed so doesnt change its behaviour in response.
  2. Weaknesses:
    1. Babies lack co-ordination, cannot be sure of the meaning
    2. Feldman (2012)- points out that ideas like synchrony only give names to patterns of observable behaviour. Cannot be certain that they are important for development.
3.2 Stages of Attachment
1. Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - studied 60 babies, all from Glasgow, from similar class backgrounds. Visited mothers in their own homes at one year and 18 months, interviewed mothers about the babies behaviour to measure attachment.
  1. Stages:
    1. 1. Asocial Stage - Little distinction between humans and inanimate objects, tend to show preference for eyes and company of people familiar to them.
      1. 2. Indiscriminate attachment - 2-7 months, show clear preference for other humans rather than objects. Recognise and prefer familiar people. Do not show separation or stranger anxiety.
        3. Specific attachment - 7 months +, display stranger and separation anxiety. Said to have formed a primary attachment to a certain person, most commonly the mother.
        4. Multiple attachments - 1 year, begin to form multiple secondary attachments, show clear anxiety and attachment behaviours. 29% formed secondary attachments within a month of forming a primary one.
2. Evaluation
  1. Strengths:
    1. Good external validity. Most observations were made by parents during ordinary activities, highly likely that behaviour was natural.
    2. Practical application. Parents' use of daycare can be planned alongside attachment stages.
  2. Weaknesses:
    1. Bias. Issues with the mother as the observer as they are unlikely to be objective.
    2. Poor evidence for asocial stage. Young babies are fairly immobile so their actions may have been subtle. Therefore difficulty in observing and picking up signs.
3.3 Role of the father
1. Found that attachment to fathers as primary caregiver in only 3% of cases. 27% of cases where father is joint first object of attachment with the mother
  1. Schaffer and Emerson : found that 75% of babies studies formed an attachment with their father after 18 months.
2. Grossmann et al: found that quality of fathers attachment was less important than mothers, but suggested also that father has different role from mother, one related more with stimulation and play.
3. Tiffany et al : filmed babies in face to face interaction with primary caregiver mother, primary caregiver father and secondary caregiver fathers.
  1. Found that fathers have potential to be the more emotion focused parent but perhaps only when they are the primary caregiver.
4. Evaluation
  1. Strengths:
    1. Real world application. Can be used to offer advice to parents, reducing parental anxiety.
  2. Weaknesses:
    1. Confusion due to lack of clarity of research questions. Difficult to offer a simple answer as to what the role of the father is.
    2. Conflicting evidence. Longitudinal studies suggested that fathers as secondary attachments have a distinct role, however doesn't account for single parent families, or same sex parents.
3.4 Animal studies
1. Lorenz (1952)
  1. Observed the phenomenon of imprinting using ducklings.
    1. Procedure: Divided a group of goose eggs into those which would be hatched with the mother goose, and those that would be hatched with Lorenz in an incubator.
      1. Findings: Incubator group followed Lorenz around, and those born with the mother followed her around. When the two groups were mixed, the incubator ones continued to follow Lorenz. He identified a critical period for imprinting which varies from species to species.
        Sexual imprinting was also investigated, which showed that the if a bird was imprinted on a human, then it would end up showing courting behaviours towards humans. E.g. a peacock which was reared in a reptile house, ended up trying to mate with exclusively tortoises.
    2. Evaluation:
      1. Strengths:
        Supporting research, a study by Regolin and Vallortigara showed that if exposed to simple moving shape combinations, chicks would follow the original closely. Supports the view that animals have an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object during the critical period.
      2. Weaknesses
        Cant generalise between birds and humans. Lorenz's study focuses on birds which have different attachment mechanisms to humans. Not a good idea to generalise his findings to humans.
2. Harlow (1958)
  1. Observed the importance of contact comfort using rhesus monkeys.
    1. Procedure: He used 16 rhesus monkeys and tested two conditions. One plain wire monkey which gave out milk, and one which was covered in cloth.
      1. Findings: Monkeys, when presented with a frightening situation, cuddled the cloth covered monkey in preference to the plain wire regardless of which dispensed the milk. Showed that contact comfort was more important than food when it comes to attachments.
        Critical period for attachment, 90 days.
      2. Later followed these monkeys into adulthood to see the effect of maternal deprivation. Found severe consequences, monkeys reared by plain wire mother were the most dysfunctional. All the monkeys did not develop normal social skills, becoming more aggressive and less sociable. Also were unskilled at mating but if they had young, would typically attack and kill them.
    2. Evaluation:
      1. Strengths:
        Real life application. Helped social workers understand the risks of lack of bonding experience.
      2. Weaknesses:
        Lack of generalisability. Rhesus monkeys are more similar to humans than Lorenz's geese, but still humans have a more complex brain.
        Ethical issues. Caused long term distress to these monkeys.
3.5 Learning Theory
1. Dollard and Miller (1950) proposed that attachment can be described by learning theory. Children love whoever feeds them.
  1. Classical conditioning
    1. Learning to associate two stimuli together. An unconditioned stimulus (eg food) comes in contact with a neutral stimulus (caregiver). Over time as caregiver provides food, baby learns to associate them with food. Caregiver becomes a conditioned stimulus and produces a conditioned response, pleasure of eating.
  2. Operant conditioning
    1. Learning from consequences of behaviour. If a behaviour produces an unpleasant consequence, less likely to be repeated. It is a reinforcement, if a baby cries it is more likely to receive comfort, so repeats this.
      1. Reinforcement is a two way process. Baby is reinforced for crying but caregiver receives negative reinforcement because crying stops.
  3. Evaluation:
    1. Strengths:
      1. Elements of conditioning involved in attachments. Baby may associate feeling of warmth with particular adult so may influence their choice of particular attachment.
    2. Weaknesses:
      1. Lack of support from animal studies. Factors other than food association involved in attachment.
      2. Lack of support from human studies. Schaffer and Emerson found that babies form main attachment to mother regardless of who fed them.
  4. As caregivers provide food, primary drive of hunger is associated with them and attachment becomes a secondary drive associated between caregiver and satisfaction of primary drive.
3.6 Bowlby's Theory of Monotropy
1. Looked at whether attachments were an innate biological process, an evolutionary explanation.
  1. Monotropy is an emphasis on a childs attachment with a particular caregiver. Put forward two principles to clarify that a baby should spend a lot of time with primary attachment
    1. Law of continuity: the more constant and predictable a child's care the better the attachment.
      1. Law of accumulated separation: the effects of every separation from mother add up.
  2. Babies born with innate 'social releasers' which help them get attention. Hard wired to become attached.
    1. Critical period of attachment at around 6 months, a sensitive period where forming an attachment is best.
      1. Internal working model formed, a babies first attachment would provide an outline for all future relationships.
  3. Evaluation:
    1. Strengths:
      1. Support for social releasers. Observed babies that triggered reactions from caregivers with actions. Babies became distressed when these were ignored.
      2. Support for internal working model. Bailey et al assessed relationships of mothers and their children compared with the mothers' own attachments. Those who had poor attachments ended up having poor attachments with their children.
    2. Weaknesses:
      1. Concept of monotropy lacks validity. Found that significant minority of babies formed multiple attachments.
3.7 Strange Situation
1. Ainsworth (1969)
  1. Controlled observation designed to measure the security of attachment. 5 behaviours judged, proximity seeking, exploration, stranger and separation anxiety, reunion
    1. 1. baby explores 2.stranger comes in and approaches the baby 3. baby and stranger left 4. caregiver returns 5. baby left alone 6. stranger returns 7. reunion
  2. Findings: 3 attachment types
    1. B: secure attachment. Moderate separation distress and stranger anxiety. Require and accept comfort during reunion.
    2. A: insecure avoidant. Little to no reaction when caregiver leaves. Make little effort and may avoid contact at reunion.
    3. C: insecure resistant. Seek greater proximity, high levels of separation and stranger distress, but resist comfort when reunited.
  3. Evaluation:
    1. Strengths:
      1. Predicts aspects of later development. Showed that securely attached babies had better later attachments. Suggests the strange situation measures something real.
      2. Interreliability between observers.
    2. Weaknesses:
      1. May not be valid in other countries.
3.8 Cultural Variations
1. Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)
  1. Did a meta analysis across 32 studies where the strange situation was used.
    1. Findings: Individualist cultures had under 14% rates of type C, but collectivist cultures had rates above 25%.
2. Other studies
  1. Italian studies
    1. Simonelli (2014) conducted a study in italy, 50% secure 36% insecure avoidant. Suggests that patterns of attachment types are not static.
  2. Korean study
    1. Conducted a study assessing 87 babies. Those classified as insecurely attached were resistant and only one was avoidant. Might be a similarity between child rearing styles.
  3. Secure attachment most popular amongst all countries.
3. Evaluation:
  1. Strengths:
    1. Most studies conducted by indigenous psychologists, enhancing the validity.
  2. Weaknesses:
    1. Confounding variables. Not all experiments are matched in methodology and environmental variables may differ.
    2. Imposing etic. Behaviours assessed in Strange situation may have different meanings in different cultural contexts.
3.9 Bowlby's Theory of Maternal Deprivation
1. The continual presence of care from a mother is essential for normal psychological development.
  1. Separation vs Deprivation
    1. Separation only becomes an issue when the child becomes deprived of social care.
  2. Critical Period
    1. First two and a half years for psychological development, but up to 5 years for a risk
  3. Effects on development
    1. Intellectual development: Maternal deprivation results in lower IQ
    2. Emotional development: higher chances of emotionless psychopathy, associated with criminals
  4. 44 Thieves study
    1. Consisted of 44 teenagers accused of stealing. Assessed for signs of affectionless psychopathy and if the teenagers had prolonged early separations from their mothers.
      1. Found that 14/44 were affectionless psychopaths and 12/14 experienced prolonged separation in the first 2 years of their lives.
  5. Evaluation:
    1. Strengths:
      1. New line of research from Levy et al (2003) showed maternal deprivation in baby rats.
    2. Weaknesses:
      1. Flawed evidence. Bowlby himself carried out the interviews so he was open to bias.
      2. Confusion between deprivation and privation. Privation is the failure to form an attachment, which could be the case.
      3. Lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation, so critical period better seen as a sensitive period.
3.10 Effects of Institutionalisation
1. In Romania in the 1990s the president had made it a requirement for women to have 5 children, resulting in large intakes in orphanages.
2. Rutter et al
  1. Followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans that were adopted as part of the ERA study, adopted in the UK. Investigated development at ages 4,6,11,15,22-25
    1. Findings: at first arrival, adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and severe malnourishment. Mean IQ before 6 months was 102, 86 after six months to two years, 77 for those adopted after 2 years.
      1. Those adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment. Clinginess, attention seeking.
3. Zeanah et al
  1. Conducted the Bucharest early intervention program. Assessed attachment in 95 Romanian children who had spent majority of their lives in institutional care. Used strange situation and asked additional questions to carers to measure disinhibited attachment.
    1. Findings: 19% were found as securely attached compared to 74% who hadn't been in care. 44% of institutionalised children had disinhibited attachment.
4. Effects: Disinhibited attachment- an adaptation to living in care with multiple carers. Intellectual disability- lower iq, those adopted before 6 months were able to catch up with the control group.
5. Evaluation:
  1. Strengths:
    1. Real world application. Studying Romanian orphans can improve understanding of institutional care and how to present worse effects,
    2. Lack of confounding variables. Children from Romanian orphanages has been given over by loving parents so lack of previous negative experiences.
  2. Weaknesses:
    1. Lack of adult data. There will be some time before we know what the long term effects are for the Romanian orphans.
3.11 Later Attachments
1. Internal working model
  1. Acts as a template for later childhood and adulthood. Quality of baby's first attachment is crucial, those whose first experience is a loving relationship will tend to assume thats how relationships are meant to be.
2. Childhood relationships
  1. Securely attached babies tend to go on to form best quality friendships whereas insecurely attached children have friendship difficulties.
    1. Secure children unlikely to be involved in bullying. Insecure avoidant most likely to be victims and resistant were bullies.
3. Adult relationships
  1. Hazan and Shaver (1987) The love quiz - analysed 620 replies to a love quiz, assessing current relationships and attachment types.
    1. Secure - best and long lasting relationships. Avoidant - jealousy and fear of intimacy
  2. People tend to base parenting style on their own childhood.
4. Evaluation:
  1. Strengths:
    1. Supporting evidence. Early attachment CONSTANTLY predicts later attachment, wellbeing and attachment to own children.
  2. Weaknesses:
    1. Early attachments assessed retrospectively. Asking questions relies on honesty and accurate perception
    2. Confounding variables. E.G parenting style might affect attachment quality and later development.

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	Created by Alicja Klak over 3 years ago