Shaffer and Emerson - Attachment

Shaffer and Emerson - Attachment

1. Procedure

   • The participants were a group of working class Glaswegian children and their mothers
   • Longitudinal study - Participants were studied each month for the first five years of their lives and again at 18 moths
   • two research methods used; observations and interviews
   • attachment was measured in two ways
     • separation protest; this was assessed through everyday situations. The infant left alone in a room, left alone with others, in a pram etc
     • Stranger anxiety; Assessed by researcher starting each home visit by approaching the infant to see if that the distressed the child

2. Findings

   • 1)most infants started to show seperation protest when parted from their attachment figure at between 6-8 months, with stranger anxiety around about a month later
   • 2)Strongly attached infants had mothers who responded to their needs quickly and gave more oppotunities for interaction .Weakly attached infants had mothers who responded less quickly and gave less opportunit to have interaction
   • 3)Most infants went to develop multiple attachments at 18 months 87% had at least two attachments with 31% having five or more attachments
   • 4) Attachments to different people were of a smiliar nature, with infants behaving in the smae way to different atachment figures
   • 5) 39% of infants prime attachments was not to the main caregiver

3. Conclusions

   • There is a pattern of attachment formation common to all infants, which suggests the process is biologically controlled (1,2,3)
   • Attachments are more easily made with those who display sensitive responsiveness, recognising and responding appropriately to an infants needs rather than those spending the most time with a child (2)
   • Multiple attachments are the norm and of similar quality, which opposes Bowlby's idea that attachments are a hierarchy of one prime attachment and other minor ones. There is nothing to suggest that mothering can't be shared by several people (3,4,5)

4. Evaluation of research methods

   • Naturalist observation because conducted in real life setting
     • S- ecological validity
       • W- less control
   • overt
     • High ecological validity
       • Can be generalised to other setting
     • cause and effect (W)
       • causality cannot be intferred since the variables are only observed not manipulated so little control of extraneous variable
   • data collected in diaries,interviews and observations
     • Mother could biased for theirchild not wanting to write anything bad