Attachment

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  • Early Social Development
    • Explanations of attachment
      • Learning Theory
        • All behavior is learnt
          • Classical conditioning
            • Food producers pleasure - Mother is then associated with food so also produces pleasure
              • Example the Pavlov's dog case study
          • Operant Conditioning
            • Food is a primary reinforcer, 'feeder' becomes secondary reinforcer (2nd becomes associated with pleasure)
            • Negative and postitve re-inforcement
          • Critisisms
            • Although we do learn from conditioning food is not the only factor (Attention and response important)
            • Largely animal study so cannot be generalized completely
            • Harlow's monkeys showed that food is less important than contact comfort with his study
            • Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found infants not necessarily attached to adults who fed them
              • Monotropy (Primary Attachments)
                • At a young age it is bad for the child if the monotropy is changing continuously
      • Bowlby's Theory
        • Attachment is adaptive and innate (Imprinting)
          • Sensitive period for development of attachment
            • Monotropy (Primary Attachments)
              • At a young age it is bad for the child if the monotropy is changing continuously
          • Lorenz sensitive period (Imprinting) little goslings
        • Cultural variations may lead to dependence or in-dependence
    • Attachment Difficulties
      • Disruption of attachment
        • Spitz and Wolf - Depression in infants after being placed in an institution
          • Robertson and Robertson - Laura and John suffered when they experienced physical disruption with no emotional care
            • Therefore: Early emotional disruption can harm social and emotional  development
            • Butsubstitue care can compensate
            • But an individual may be vulnerable to emotional disorders
        • High Validity as they are naturalistic studies
          • But low as they are individual studies so cant be generalised
            • Hospitals today encourage parents to visit children
      • Failure to form attachment (Privation)
        • Institutional Care
          • Hodges and Tizard- all ex-institutional children had difficulties coping with peers, despite good substitute care in some cases
          • Rutter et al- Romanian orphans adopted early showed normal emotional development
            • But those adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited attachment and had peer difficulties
        • Case Studies on Genie And Czech Twins
        • Research questionable because can't be sure what attachments had formed, nor have sufficient long-term studies been conducted
    • Differences in Attachment
      • Types of Attachment
        • The Strange Situation
          • Assessed response to mild stress, separation and stranger anxiety
        • Van Ljzendoorn et al meta analysis (1999)
          • Secure Attachment (62%)
          • Insecure Avoidant (15%)
          • Insecure resistant (9%)
          • Disorganised (15%)
            • (Main And Solomon)
          • Criticisms
            • Fake environment
            • It identifies only the type of attachment to the mother
              • This means that it lacks validity, as it is not measuring a general attachment style, but instead an attachment style specific to the mother.
            • Children's attachments may change, perhaps because of changes in the child's circumstanceso a securely attached child may appear insecurely attached if the mother becomes ill or the family circumstance change
            • Because the child is put under stress (separation and stranger anxiety), the study has broken the ethical guideline protection of participants.
              • Also, according to Marrone (1998), although the Strange Situation has been criticized for being stressful, it is simulating everyday experiences, as mothers do leave their babies for brief periods of time in different settings and often with unfamiliar people such as baby sitters.
            • However, in its defense the separation episodes were curtailed prematurely if the child became too stressed.
            • Finally, the studies sample is biased - comprising 100 middle class American families. Therefore, it is difficult to generalize the findings outside of America and to working class families
      • Cultural  Variation
        • Ainsworth (Uganda) + Tronick et al. (The Efe)
          • Similarities
        • Grossman (German Interpersonal Distance)
          • The Differences Insecure Attachment
        • Kroonenberg Meta Analyisis
          • Global patterns of attachment suggest it is innate -Biological
        • Criticisms
          • Core attachment concepts may be universally cultured  (Posada and Jacobs)
          • Cross-Culture research is flawed due to use of imposed ethics + Research bias
    • Attachment In Everyday Life
      • Day Care
        • NICHD Study
          • Increased aggression linked with longer time at daycare
        • EPPE Study (basically same as NICHD but if the quality of day care is better, the aggression is reduced
        • Day Care and peer relations
          • Leads to social opportunities
          • good for latter peer relations
          • Can lead to insecure attachment
          • Day Care is not the sole infleunece on development
      • Impact Of Day Care
        • Influence of Research means a better quality of day care
          • Minimal staff turn over
          • Good staff to child ratio
          • Hgh quality care
          • Qualified
        • Importance of sensitivity backed by Bowlby and Ainsworth
        • Day Care may lack responsive careers - Only 23% provide highly sensitive care (NICHD)

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