Attachment (unfinished)

Social Development-Attachment

Attachment, separation and interaction.

• Attachment and Separation
• Schaffer (1996) defined attachment as 'a long-eduring, emotionally meaningful tie to a particular individual'.
• The desire for closeness and distress upon separation normally characterizes the attachment bond or tie. The object of attachment will offer comfort and act as a source of security.
• Care-giver infant interactions
• Research done in the 70s showed the importance of immediate skin-to-skin contact after birth. Klaus and Kennell (1976) said that mothers who cuddle their babies during the critical period after birth had better relationships overall than mothers who did not. Not all research has supported this, but it does seem that in the short term mother who've had immediate or early interactions are more tender and tentative to their babies. Long-term effects are unclear, although Bee (1989) thought it related to the adequacy of parenting.

Interactional Synchrony and Motherese

• Condon and Sander (1974) observed babies coordinating their actions in time with the rhythm of the parents speech . It was seen to be like taking turns, giving the ability to contribute in 'conversation'.
• Isabella et al. 1989 found that mother-infant pairs who were securely attached showed more instances of interactional synchrony in the first year of the infants life.
• Murray and Trevarthen (1985) asked mothers to within the interactions with their infant to present a 'frozen face'. Once presented it was observed that the infant became very distressed, often turning their heads away from their mother and crying. Also, infants seemed to be making attempts to draw back their mother's attention.
• Motherese
• Snow and Ferguson (1977) noticed that there are specific language patterns that adults use when conversing with infants. Some of the characteristic of this speech are it's slow speed, it's high-pitched and repetitive nature and the use of short, simple sentences. The most distinct feature is it's singsongy nature.

Imitation

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• Melzoff and Moore (1977) presented two and three week old infants with a set of three facial expressions and one hand movement. A pacifier is placed in the infants mouth before and during the presentation of the facial expressions, this was to ensure no movement from the infant. Once the presentation was complete the pacifier was removed and the infants immediate response was recorded and viewed by judges who were unaware of what facial expression was pulled and had to compare the facial expression of the infant to the three set expressions. The results showed that there was a significant likeness between the model's facial expression and the infants.

Functions of attachment

• Originally it was thought that attachments were made with the person who provides food. This 'cupboard love' theory has been criticized on many grounds.
• Evolutionary theories suggest that attachment is critical for it's survival value in infants, but it may not be in the way that cupboard love theory suggests.
• Precocial species need to stay close to their mothers in order to survive and avoid predators. Lorenz (1935) did a study with isolated goslings finding that they would follow and attach themselves to the first big moving objects they see. In normal circumstances this would be their mothers, biologically this will function as survival.
• Bowlby (1969) drew on animal research to propose that attachment is rooted in the need to keep within close proximity for the benefit of survival.
• Bower (1979) proposed his communication theory of attachment. According to this theory infants are selective in who they form their attachments with, choosing someone who is most abled to communicate with them.
• As well as the survival value attachment seems to provide a long term function as well. Bowlby suggested that attachment provides the child with an internal working model for relationships, this model provides the child with an internal representation of the relationship with the primary caregiver.

Study-Ainsworth et al (1978)

• Aim- to study the reactions of infants to brief separations from their mother in order to determine the nature of attachment behaviors and types of attachments. Ainsworth's procedure is known as the strange situation.
• Method-over twenty five minutes the infants were exposed to a series of three-minute episodes. The mother and infant were shown into the observation room by the researcher, the researcher then left. Shortly after, a stranger entered the room and conversed with the mother. The mother then quietly slipped out of the room leaving the infant with the stranger for a mixiim of three minutes at one time. If at this point the child becomes very distress the mother is allowed to return early than usual to comfort her child. This sequence of events is then repeated over the twenty five minutes. The infants were recorded throughout.
• Results- Ainsworth used behavioral measures including proximity seeking and maintenance of proximity to classify the infants as securely attached, anxious avoidant or anxious resistant. In the middle-class US samples about 65% of the infants were found to be in the secure category. 21% were in the anxious avoidant category and 14% in the anxious resistant.

Consequences of privation and deprivation.

• Deprivation
• Deprivation results, in the short term, in distress similar to that of a child that has to be separated with the carer just for a short while possibly due to hospitalization or a holiday. There is a common sequence of behaviors that can be observed in this kind of separation. Firstly, the child will protest by crying and fighting to remain with the carer, when the child eventually calms it will become despair, the child may continue to cry quietly and appear unhappy. As the separation continues the child will become detached to those around it, showing little emotion.
• Should the caregiver return the child will often reject any contact and appears to almost resent the attachment figure.
• Children aged seven months to three years are most vulnerable to suffering from the distress of separation.
• Privation
• Should an infant or a young child be unable to form any kind of attachment relationship then privation occurs.
• Harlow (1959) did a study looking at the behavior of young monkeys when separated from their mothers from birth and kept in a cage with a 'cloth mother' that was covered with a soft blanket and a 'wire mother' who had a feeding bottle attached to it. The monkeys were kept like this for a period of time, and then released into a cage with a group of normally reared monkeys.
• Harlow found that the young monkey preferred to spend more time with the cloth mother despite the offer of food that the wire mother brings. Upon being returned to the cage with the other monkeys, Harlow's monkeys appeared to be delinquent and showed anti-social behavior. They were aggressive and unable to form normal relationships.

Genie

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• Genie's case (Curtiss 1977) suggests that severe privation has lifelong effects. At the age of 13 Genie was unable to speak, physically underdeveloped and showed inappropriate emotional responses.
• Despite fostering and intellectual stimulation Genie never recovered. She did make some advancements in speech, but got stuck and could never get as far as to formulate a sentence.
• It is unclear as to whether it was the extent of Genie's privation that causes her stunt in development or whether Genie was retarded from birth. Incidentally this is why Genie's father claims they looked Genie in the room in the first place, because he thought she was retarded.

Rutter et al (1998)

• Aim- to investigate the progress of Romanian orphans that'd been brought to the UK for adoption in the 1990s. The orphans had been raised in deprived institutions with very little chance to develop any close attachments.
• Method- a series of assessments were done initially when the children arrived in England. The assessments were to determine physical and intellectual ability, these assessments continued until the children were four years old.
• There was also a control group of British children who were also adopted.
• Results- approximately half of the Romanian children showed intellectual deficits in the initial assessments, and most were underweight. None of the British children showed any of these negative effects. Four years later neither of the two groups of children showed any significant differences in intellectual and physical development.
• However, the children who were older at the time of adoption didn't perform as well on both measures.

Bowlby's theory of attachment

• Bowlby stated: What is believed to be essential for mental health is that an infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother (or steady motherly figure) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment.
• The theoretical concept from the psychodynamic approach that innate, instinctual drives motivate our behaviors led to Bowlby's idea that children have an instinctual need to be close to their mother (known as proximity seeking).
• The main points to Bowlby's theory:
• The idea that a child has an innate need to attach to one main attachment figure. This need for a single, exclusive bond is known as the monotropy theory. Bowlby did not exclude the idea of more than one attachment figure, he did emphasis the importance of a primary, stable bond.
• This primary care giver should maintain continuous care for the child for at least the first two years of the child's life. Should the attachment be broken or disrupted during this two year period, then the child could suffer long-term consequences (maternal deprivation).
• Maternal deprivation can result in the following: delinquency, affection less psychopathy and intellectual retardation.

Study: Bowlby (1946)

• Aim: To investigate the causes of delinquency
• Method: Bowlby interviewed forty-four young thieves at a clinic, he asked them about themselves, their behavior and their childhood experiences. Bowlby also interviewed family members, asking them about the boys' behavior and aspects of family history (this including whether the boys had been separated from the family in early childhood).
• There was also a control group of young people who were not delinquent.
• Results: Within the group, fourteen identified as affectionless psychopaths, of these twelve were separated from their mother in the first two years of their lives for a long period of time. There were only five delinquents who HAD been separated from their mothers were NOT suffering from affectionless behavior.
• Only two of the control group had been separated for a prolonged period.
• Conclusion: Delinquency is linked to childhood maternal deprivation.

Study: Schaffer and Emerson (1964)

• Aim: to investigate the number of attachment relationships infants have, in the light of Bowlby's theory of monotropism.
• Method: for the first eighteen months of scottish infant's lives, as a longitudinal study, the infants were observed and their mothers were interviewed about the child's response to separation.
• Results: By eighteen months most of the children had formed more than one attachment figure and some had as many as five. Whilst the mother was commonly selected as the primary attachment figure, by eighteen months 75% of the infants also selected the father.
• Conclusion: Babies do not tend to demonstrate monotropy, it is perfect usual for a child to have several attachment figures.