Attachment

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  • Attachment
    • Caregiver-Infant Interactions
      • Reciprocity - infant and PCG respond to eachother's signals (e.g. a mother feeding her baby when it cries)
      • Interactional Synchrony - infant and PCG reflect eachother's actions and emotions (e.g. baby laughing when mother laughs)
      • Schaffer & Emerson - working class infants in Glasgow, visited every month for first year, assessed separation and stranger anxiety.
        • Stage 1 - Asocial, same interest in objects and people,
          • Stage 2 - Indiscriminate, will hug any adult, prefer human company
            • Stage 3 - Discriminate, specific attachment to PCG (usually mother), separation anxiety
              • Stage 4 - Multiple attachments, secondary attachments form (definitely by the age of 1)
        • Biased sample - all from Glasgow and working class
          • Temporal validity - research from 1960s, lots of changes have occurred
            • Social Desirability - if parents are being observed then they will want to seem like good parents
              • Cultural Variations - individualistic and collectivist cultures have different values and expected behaviours
      • The Role of the Father
        • Primary Attachment - only 3% had father as primary attachment, 30%formed attachment with mother and father at same time
          • Secondary Attachment - 29% formed attachment with father a month after mother, 75% by 18 months of age
        • Paquette - fathers play an important role that is very different from mother's role, they encourage play, bravery, activity etc.
          • Field - when fathers take on PCG role, they also take on "mother-like" characteristics and behaviours
        • MacCallum & Golumbok - found that children raised by single mothers or lesbian couples do not develop differently
    • Animal studies
      • Harlow's Rhesus Monkeys - Contact Comfort
        • Improved our knowledge and approach to raising children and helping children with neglected childhoods
        • The heads on the two mother models were different, which could have influenced the monkeys' choices
        • The monkeys suffered emotionally, and never recovered from the experiments.
      • Lorenz's Goslings - Imprinting
        • Animals may imprint on inanimate objects (e.g.chickens imprint on yellow rubber gloves worn to feed them)
          • Imprinting may not be permanent - chickens began trying to mate with other chickens once they had been introduced
        • Bird and humans have very little in common in terms of DNA and lifestyle
    • Explanations of Attachment
      • Classical conditioning - association between pleasure from feeding and mother
        • Attachment is a survival instinct
          • Only one attachment formed
        • Harlow's research shows contact comfort is a major past of attachment as well
        • Schaffer & Emerson - found that multiple attachments were formed
      • Operant conditioning - Dollard & Miller - Feeding reduces drive state in infant and mother is the source of this reduction (secondary reinforcer)
        • Lack of research supporting this idea, statistics given by D&M do not show operant conditioning
      • Bowlby's Monotropic Theory
        • Attachment is innate (comes from our altricial nature and therefore our need for care as infants)
        • Social Releasers - behaviours performed by infants to induce care-giving behaviour from adults (e.g. cooing, smiling, etc.)
        • Critical Period - first 2.5 years are when attachments can be formed (based on care-giver sensitivity)
          • Czech twins - fund at 7 with no social skills, managed to  form meaningful and secure attachments by 14
        • Monotropy - infants have only one special emotional attachment, and mothers can only attach to one infant at a time
        • Continuity Hypothesis - and infants attachment with their PCG creates an internal working model (blueprint) for future relationships, including romantic relationships
          • Temperament Hypothesis - Kagan - we are born with certain differences in how we form attachments (early and late)
    • Ainsworth - The Strange Situation
      • Types of Attachment
        • Secure - comfortable with social interaction and intimacy.
        • Insecure Avoidant - avoid social interaction and intimacy
        • Insecure Resistant - seek and reject social interaction and intimacy
      • Aim - to systematically assess the attachment type of an infant
        • Procedure - 9x9 room split into 16, 8 episode recorded of different people leaving and entering the room, assessed stranger anxiety, separation anxiety and reunion behaviour
          • Other types of attachment - Main & Solomon found type D (insecure disorganised)
          • Reliable observations (0.94 agreement) so reliability is high.
          • Low Internal Validity - only measures quality of a particular relationship, as infants would perform differently when doing the test with their other parent
      • Van Ijzendoorn - Cultural Variations
        • Meta analysis of 2000 strange situations in 8 countries (mostly the US)
          • West=more avoidant, East=more resistant
            • Secure most common in all countries - supports Bowlby (innate behaviour)
        • "Secure" attachment is different for different cultures (especially between collectivist and individualist cultures)
        • Study did not distinguish between cultures, only countries
        • 1.5x more variation within cultures than between them
    • Bowlby's Maternal Deprivation Theory
      • Deprivation - long term disruption
        • Separation - short term disruption
      • If a child experiences repeated separations before the age of 2.5 years they are likely to become emotionally disturbed
      • Deprivation of maternal care can lead to intellectual disability and emotionless psychopathy
      • 44 Thieves - 44 thieves and 44 non-thieves from a child guidance clinic, most of 44 control kids did not experience early separations, 36% 44 thieves identified as "emotionless psychopaths" and 86% of these experienced early separations
        • Experiencing maternal deprivation does not always result in negative outcomes, but makes a child more vulnerable to those outcomes
        • Positively influenced post-war attitudes towards child rearing and hospitals
        • Securely attatched children can cope reasonably well with deprivation
    • Romanian Orphan Study
      • Rutter & Songa-Barke (ERA) - 165 romanian orphans adopted (111 before 2, the rest by 4), tested at 4, 6, 11 and 15 for physical and cognitive development, compared with 52 british adoptees
        • At start, Romanian orphans were behind in all aspects, classified as mentally disabled, many orphans adopted after 6 months show disinhibited attachment, most orphans caught up
          • Suggests that consequences of institutionalisation and maternal deprivation may not be as bad as severe if children have a later opportunity to form attachments
            • Value of longitudinal studies - followed the same children over their lives, so very valuable to understanding institutionalisation due to validity and reliability
            • Real word applications - points to the importance of early adoptions, and now that most infants are adopted within the first week, there is no difference in attachment between adopted and non-adopted families
  • Institutionalisation
    • Deprivation is only one factor for the consequences of institutionalisation, poor physical conditions and lack of nutrition stop not only the body but the brain to develop,which can also cause many of the consequences named
    • Effects are reversible (shown in ERA research)

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