Explanations of Attachment - Learning Theory
- Created by: SluggyK
- Created on: 23-11-16 12:03
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- Explanations of Attachment - Learning Theory
- Attachment as a Secondary Drive
- Hunger = primary drive, we are motivated to eat to reduce the hunger drive
- Learning theory includes drive reductions
- Sears suggested as caregivers provide food the hunger primary drive becomes generalised to them making attachment a secondary drive learned from associating caregiver/satisfaction of primary drive
- Operant Conditioning
- If behaviour produces pleasant conse-quences it is likely to be repeated as it has been reinforced, behaviour with unpleasant conse-quences is less likely to be repeated
- Babies cry as it produces a caregiver response such as feeding, which reinforces the behaviour
- 2-way process, caregiver has negative reinforcement as crying stops – mutual reinforcement strengthens attachment
- Learning (not) to repeat behaviour depending on conse-quences
- Dollard/Miller said caregiver-infant attachment can be explained by learning theory
- Classical Conditioning
- Learning to associate 2 stimuli together so we respond to them in the same way
- With attachment, food = uncondi-tioned stimulus and pleasure response = uncondi-tioned response
- Caregiver = neutral stimulus, if they provide all food baby expects food when seeing them = conditioned stimulus with conditioned response
- Attachment as a Secondary Drive
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