Attachment A03

Attachment A03

• CAREGIVER-INFANT INTERACTIONS
• Problems with testing infant behaviour. - hard to distinguish general beh. & imitated beh.
• Failure to replicate - can't replicate Meltzoff & Moore's findings
• Is the beh. intentional - specific social response to other humans
• Individual diff. - strongly attached = greater interactional synchrony
• THE DEV. OF ATTACHMENT
• Unreliable data - based on mother's reports - less sensitive
• Biased sample - working class pop. - 1960s
• Are multiple attachments equivalent? - if all are sig. or 1/2 have. a special sig.
• Cultural variations - individualist & collectivist

Attachment A03

• ANIMAL STUDIES
• LORENZ
• Research support for imprinting - chicks with the rubber gloves
• Criticisms for imprinting - say it's irreversible but it isn't
• HARLOW
• Confounding variable - the heads were diff.
• Generalising animal studies to human beh. - for humans behind. is governed consciously
• Ethics - monkeys had long-term consequences
• EXPLANATIONS OF ATTACHMENT: LEARNING THEORY
• Based on research with animals - same building blocks of stimulus & response - not all complex beh. can be explained
• ​​​​​​​Contact comfort is more important than food - Harlow shows it's comfort
• Has some explanatory power - infants learn through association but food isn't the main reinforcer
• Drive theory is ignored today - only explains a limited amount of beh. - many things people do that isn't to reduce comfort

Attachment A03

• EXPLANATIONS OF ATTACHMENT: BOWLBY'S THEORY
• Is attachment adaptive? - less critical for survival - would have had to happen immediately but it's after 3 months
• Sensitive period not 'critical' - less likely after 6 months but it's not impossible
• Multiple attachment vs monotropy - other attachments help social dev. but there needs to be a 'higher' person
• Continuity hypothesis - continuity between early attachment & later emotional/social beh.
• AINSWORTH'S STRANGE SITUATION: TYPES OF ATTACHMENT
• Other types - Insecure-disorganised - lack of consistency patterns
• Observations had high reliability - .94
• Real-world application - intervention strategies
• Maternal relative functioning - studies have found a low correlation between sensitivity & strength of attachment

Attachment A03

• CULTURAL VARIATIONS IN ATTACHMENT
• Similarities may not be innately determined - mass media
• Nation rather than culture - compared countries not cultures - subcultures with diff. practices
• Cross-cultural research - strange situation categories mean diff. things in diff. countries
• Culture bias - rooted deeply in American culture
• BOWLBY'S THEORY OF MATERNAL DEPRIVATION
• Physical & emotional separation - depressed mother - physically there but not emotionally there
• Support for long-term effects - experienced separation from their mothers - 25% depressed/anxiety
• Real-world application - changed hospitals
• Individual diff. - securely attached kids could perform better but insecurely attached become more distressed

Attachment A03

• ROMANIAN ORPHAN STUDIES: EFFECTS OF INSTITUTIONALISATION
• Individual diff. - some aren't as strongly affected as others - special attention
• Real-life application - give babies up for adoption straight away
• Value of longitudinal studies - without them we may mistakenly conclude that there a big effects but it's shown that they can disappear
• Deprivation Is just one factor - bad physical conditions which impacted their health - more likely for damage to occur
• THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY ATTACHMENT
• Research is correlational - can be caused by innate temperament - affects how a parent responds
• Retrospectivie classification - need to ask adults to remember their childhood - unreliable
• Determinist theory - some paps have happy rs even though they weren't securely attached as kids
• Low correlations - infants were assessed & reassessed - correlations from .50-.10 - doesn't suggest that attachment type is stable