Learning theory of attachment
- Created by: CAugust100
- Created on: 13-05-16 12:14
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- Learning theory of attachment
- Explanation
- All behaviour is learnt rather than it being innate
- Classical conditioning
- Pavlov's dog
- Stimuli of food became associated with a bell and became a conditioned stimulus
- Saliva was a response to the food, so salivating due to the bell was a conditioned response
- Learning through assocation
- Pavlov's dog
- Operant conditioning
- learning occurs through positive and negative reinforcement
- Dollard & Miller (1950)
- Infants drive to reduce negative feeling of hunger
- Food creates pleasure
- Food becomes a primary reinforcer as it stops discomfort
- The Primary care giver becomes a secondary reinforcement because they supply the food
- Evaluation
- Strengths
- Provides an adequate explanation for how attachment forms
- Limitations
- food may not be important in attachment
- Harlow's monkeys (1959)
- Monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth mother despite the fact that the wire one provided food
- in a follow up study they also found that when frightened, the monkey would flee to the cloth mother; indicating they were more attached to that one
- Harlow's monkeys (1959)
- Human studies
- Schaffer & Emerson (1964)
- observed 60 babies for a year
- They were attached to who was the most responsive, not who fed them the most
- Schaffer & Emerson (1964)
- food may not be important in attachment
- Strengths
- Explanation
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