Attachment

Attachment

1. Animal studies

   • Lorenz (Imprinting)
     • Irreversible and permanent
     • Takes place within critical period
     • Has effect on later sexual behaviour
     • Took a group of goslings and was the first living thing they saw The goslings always followed Lorenz, even when the birth mother was present
       • Strength: supporting evidence from Guiton , who found that leghorn chicks imprinted on the rubber gloves that fed them
       • Weakness: Issues generalising findings to humans
       • Weakness: Contradictory evidence from Guiton who found that imprinting was reversible
   • Harlow
     • Put baby monkeys in a cage with 2 surrogate mothers, one made of wire that provided food and one made of cloth that didn’t provide food
       • The monkeys clung to the cloth mother for up to 22 hours a day, favouring security and comfort over food
       • Unethical, however the findings have helped better care for human and primate infants
       • Extraneous variables: The surrogate mothers had different faces
       • There are issues generalising the finding to humans

2. Learning theories of attachment

   • Classical Conditioning
     • Food(UCS) = pleasure(UCR)
       • Food(UCS) + Mother(NS)= pleasure(UCR)
         • Mother(CS) = Pleasure(CR)
   • Operant Conditioning
     • Infant is rewarded when it cries for mum
       • Food is this primary reinforcer
         • Infant repeats behaviour and mum becomes secondary reinforcer
   • Weakness: Reductionist. Reduces attachment to a set of learnt behaviour
   • Weakness: Contradictory evidence from Harlow
   • Weakness: Contradictory evidence from Schaffer and Emerson. 39% of attachments not to person who fed them
   • Strength: Learning theories may still be used in part of attachment

3. Bowlby’s monotropic theory

   • Attachment is evolutionary and innate
     • It develops an internal working model
       • This affects later relationships and is known as the continuity hypothesis
   • There is a critical period of 6 months to 2.5 years
   • Infants form a special and unique bond to one specific person, the primary attachment figure
   • Infants release social releases to which the parent responds with a internal parental response