Section C: Attachment

Section C: Attachment

1. Caregiver-infant interactions in humans

   • Reciprocity - which is where an infant responds to the actions of another person. The actions of one person elicit a response from the other.
   • Interactional synchrony - which is where an infant mirrors the actions of another person, for example, their facial expressions and body movements - moving their body in tune with the rythym of their carer
     • KEY STUDY: Meltzoff and Moore
       • Aim: To examine interactional synchrony in infants
       • Method: Using a controlled observation, an adult model displayed one of 3 facial expressions or hand gesture . To start with, the child had a dummy in their mouth to prevent a facial response and then was removed and the child's expression was filmed
       • Results: There was a clear association between the infants and the adult. Found the same results in a 3 day old infant.
       • Conclusion: These findings suggest that interactional synchrony is innate and reduces the strength of any claim that imitative behaviour is learned

2. Stages of attachment identified by Schaffer

   • ASOCIAL - birth to 2 months - An infant shows similar responses to objects and people. Towards the end of this stage they show preference to faces
   • INDISCRIMINATE - 2 months to 6 months - An infant shows a preference for human company over non-human company. They can distinguish between different people, but are comforted by anyone and doesn't show stranger anxiety yet
   • DISCRIMINATE - 7 to 12 months - Shows a preference for one caregiver, displaying separation and stranger anxiety. The infant looks to a particular person for security and protection.
   • MULTIPLE ATTACHMENTS - 1 year onwards - Attachment behaviours are now shown towards several diferent people and are referred to secondary attachments.
   • KEY STUDY: Schaffer and Emerson
     • Aim: To examine the formation of early attachments
     • Method: 60 babies from working class families in Glasgow participated and Researchers observed the children and interviewed the mothers.
     • Results: At 25-32 weeks, 50% of the children showed seperation anxiety, At 40 weeks, 80% of the children had discriminate attachments and 30% had multiple.
     • Conclusion: The results provide some support for Schaffer's stages of attachment and suggest that attachment develops through a series of stages

3. Multiple attachments and the role of the father

   • The role of the father may have been limited, as fathers had to go to wok to provide resources whilst mothers would stay home and take care of the children howver the role of the father has significantly changed.
     • Some researchers claim that men are simply not equipped to form an attachment, they point to biological evidence which suggests that the hormone oestrogen underlies caring behaviour in women and the lack in men is why they cannot form close attachment.
       • Hrdy: found that fathers were less able to detect low levels of infant distress in comparison to mothers. These results appear to support the biological explanation that the lack of oestrogen in males means that the fathers are not equipped innatley to form close attachments. This provides further evidence that fathers are not able to provide a sensitive nurturing type of attachment as they are unable to detect stress in their children.
     • Other Researchers argue that fathers do not take on caregiver role and in fact provide a different role as a playmate.
       • Geiger: found taht father's play interactions were more exciting in comparison to a mothers'. However, the others play interactions were more affectionate and nurturing. This suggests that the role of the father is in fact as a playmate. These results also confirm that thre mothers take on the nurturing role.
     • Some researchers argue that fathers can demonstrate sensitive responsiveness and respond to the needs of their children and therefore can form a stronger emotional bond

4. Animal studies of attachment

   • KEY STUDY: Lorenz and Harlow
     • Harlow
       • Aim: to investigate the nature of attachment in baby monkeys.
       • Method: 8 Rhesus monkeys were placed in a cage with two surrogate mothers one made of wire and one made of cloth. For half the monkeys the food was attached to the wire mother, whereas for the other half the food was attached to the cloth mother.
       • Results: Harlow found that all of the monkeys spent most of their time with the mother wrapped in cloth
       • Conclusion: Monkeys develop attachments based on contact and comfort and not based on food.
       • Evaluation
         • Harlow was critiscised heavily for the ethics of his study on baby rhesus monkeys. The monkeys sufferered greatly in terms of emotional seperation from their biological mothers at such an early age due to the procedure Harlow used.
         • Harlows study provides insight into attachment formation. This has important real world applications, for example, Howe reports that the knowledge gained from Harlow's research has helped social workers understand risk factors in neglect and abuse cases with human children which can serve to prevent it from happening
     • Lorenz
       • Aim:To investigate imprinting in baby geese
       • Method: Lorenz divided a clutch of goose eggs into two groups: one group was left with their natural mother, the other group was placed in an incubator. Lorenz made sure that when the eggs in the incubator hatched, he was the first moving object they saw. After this, he marked the two groups and returned them to their natural mothe.
       • Results: The geese that had attached in the incubator continued to follow him, while those who had hatched naturally continued top follow their mother
       • Conclusion: Goslings are programmed to imprint onto the first moving object they see highlighting the rapid formation of attachment in animals.
       • Evaluation
         • The results cannot be generalised as he only studied non-human animals. The attachment formation in mammals appears to be very different to bird species with parents . So we cannot draw wider conclusions from the results
         • Guiton et al found that chickens would imprint on a yellow plastic glove if that was the first object they saw that was moving and so they would try to mate with it as an adult, the chickens could eventually prefer mating with other chickens showing that the imprinting would not last very long and is not permanent