Attachment

• Interested in looking at when attachments begin in infants and how intense they were
• Stages that they created were based on findings from their classical longitudinal study (2 years) which followed 60 infants from a mainly working-class area of Glasgow
• Infants were observed every four weeks until they were 1 year old, and then again at 18 months
• The mothers were also asked to keep a diary and record the behaviours of their child
• Attachment was measured in two ways:Found that most infants show separation anxiety when parted between 6-8 months, and stranger aniety 1 month later
  • Separation protest - infants behaviour when separated from primary caregiver e.g. left alone in a room with another person
  • Stranger anxiety - distress experienced by a child when approached by a stranger
• Strongly attached infants had mothers who responded to their needs quickly fed, bathed and changed and gave more opportunities for interaction
• Most infants develop multiple attachments: at 18 months, 87% had at least 2, and 31% had 5 or more
• 39% of infants' prime attachment was not the main carer, but in 65% of the children their first specific attachment was to the mother

• There is a pattern of attachment formation common to all infants, which suggests the process is biologically controlled
  • Nature vs Nurture
• Attachments are mroe easily formed with those who display sensitive responsiveness (responding to the infant's needs) rather than those who spend the most time with the child
• Multiple attachments are normal
• Nothing to suggest that mothering cannot be shared

• Data was collected either through direct observation or from the record kept by mothers...bias/inaccuracy/socially desirable
• Has external validity - natural conditions as opposed to a lab
• Asocial stage may be more social than assumed...
  • Carpenter (1957) 2 week old babies can recognise their mother's face and voice
  • Bushnell, Sai & Mullin (1989) 2 day old babies show preference for image of their mother over stranger

Pre-attachment phase (birth-3 months) also known as asocial

• Infant treats the human and non-human objects in the same way. 
• From 6 weeks of age, infants become attracted to other humans, preferring them to objects and events. This preference is demonstrated by their smiling at peoples’ faces. 

Indiscriminate attachment phase (3 to 7/8 months)

• Infants begin to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar people, smiling more at known people, thought they will still allow strangers to handle and look after them. 

Discriminate attachment phase (7/8 months onwards)

• Infants begin to develop specific attachments, staying close to particular people and becoming distressed when separated from them. They avoid unfamiliar people and protest if strangers try to handle them. 

Multiple attachments stage (9 months onwards)

• Infants form strong emotional ties with other major caregivers, like grandparents, and non-caregivers, like other children. The fear of strangers weakens, but attachment to the mother figure remains the strongest.

Bowlby believed that children have one primary attachment figure, usually the mother, although he conceded that this could, insome cases, be the father.

Many researchers see the father less as a caregiver, and more of a playmate as fathers’ play is often more physical, unpredictable and exciting than mothers. 

Mothers have traditionally been seen, due to their perceived nurturing nature, as more able to show sensitive responsiveness, but it also seems that males can quickly develop this ability when assuming the position of main care providers. 

There are four main factors which affect the father/infant relationship:

• Degree of sensitivity
• Type of attachment with own parents
• Marital intimacy
• Supportive co-parenting

Degree of sensitivity - More secure attachment to their chldren are found in fathers who show more sensitivity to children's needs.

Type of attachment with own parents - Single-parent fathers tend to form similar attachments with their children that they had with their own parents.

Marital intimacy - The degree of intimacy of a father within his relationship with his wife affecs the type of attachment he will have with his children.

Supportive co-parenting - The amount of support a father gives to his partner in helping to care for children affects the type of attachment he will have with his children.

• Children with better and more attachments with their father grow up to have better relationships with peers, less problematic behaviour, and can more easily control their emotions.
  • Therefore, fathers have a positive role in attachments and can positively influence developmental outcomes
• Children who grow up without fathers can grow up to be bigger risk takers and have much more aggression, and also do less well in school.
  • Therefore, fathers help to prevent negative developmental outcomes --> however this research is based on single mothers in bad economic situations, not absence of fathers, so their behaviour may be a result of the environment they were being brought up in
    
• When fathers spend more time with children, more secure attachments are formed. However, fathers with less sensitivity may need more interaction.
  • Shows that the amount of time spent with the child does also play an important factor.

There are a range of reasons why a child may form an insecure attachment...

• Infants whose mother lacks sensitivity are more likely than others to be insecurely attached

• Temperament with which a child is born may determine whether he/she become insecurely attached

• Children that are maltreated are more likely to be insecurely attached (Baer and Martinez, 2006)

• Tested the learning theory by comparing attachment behaviour in baby monkeys given a wire surrogate mother producing milk with those given a soft towelling mother producing no milk

• Two types of surrogate mothers were constructed - a harsh 'wire mother' and a soft 'towelling mother'. Sixteen baby monkeys were used, four in each of the four conditions:
  • A cage containing a wire mother producing milk and a towelling mother producing no milk
  • A cage containing a wire mother producing no milk and a towelling mother proucing milk
  • A cage containing a wire mother producing milk
  • A cage containing a towelling mother producing milk

• The amount of time spent with each mother, as well as feeding time, was recorded
• The monkeys were frieghtened with a loud noise to test for mother preference during stress
• A larger cage was also used to test the monkeys' degree of exploration

• Monkeys preferred contact with the towelling mother when given a choice of surrogate mothers, regardless of whether she produced milk; they even stretched across to the wire mother to feed while still clinging to the towelling mother
• Monkeys with only a wire surrgate had diarrhoea, a sign of stress
• When frightened by a loud nise, monkeys clung to the towelling mother in conditions where she was avaliable
• In the larger cage conditions, monkeys with towelling mothers explored more and visited their surrogate mother more often

• Rhesus monkey have an innate, unlearned need for contact comfort, suggesting that attachment concerns emotional security more than food
• Contact comfort is associated with lower levels of stress and willingness to explore, indicating emotional security

• This study is very scientific:
  • Controlled environments meant you could control the variables and establish a clear cause and effect
  • Results can be repeated
• Showed us that attachments are not formed solely on the basis of food

• Animals were used, so this isn't a true representation of human behaviour, and therefore the extent to which the results can be generalised is questionnable
• There were lots of ethical issues - was it right to take the baby monkeys away from the mother and cause stress, just for the sake of an experiment?
  • Some monkeys even died because of the stress
• The setting was artificial - therefore artificial behaviour could be produced, reducing the reliability of the results
• Application the the real world is also questionnable (ecological validity) as in a real life situation, monkeys would not be forced to choose between comfort and food

Classical Conditioning Explanation:

Before: The unconditioned stimulus - milk = The unconditioned response - pleasure

During: UCS + Neutral stimulus - Caregiver (usually mother) = UCR

After: Conditioned stimulus - Caregiver (usually mother) = Conditioned response - pleasure

- Also known as the cupboard love theory

Operant Conditioning Explanation: 

Primary reinforcer - something that provides positive reinforcement because it serves to satisfy some basic drive; food and drink

Secondary reinforcer - has no natural properties of reinforcement but through association with the primary reinforcer becomes the reinforcer

• Aimed to investigate individual variation in infant attachments; in particular differences between secure and insecure attachments. 

• The Strange Situation test lasts for just over 20 minutes and was used on 100 American infants aged 12-18 months. It is a controlled observation that takes place in a lab.
• It consists of 8 stages:
  • 1. (30 seconds) - caregiver + infant  + researcher - researcher brings the others into the room and rapidly leaves
  • 2. (3 minutes) - caregiver + infant - caregiver sits; infant is free to explore
  • 3. (3 minutes) - stranger + caregiver + infant - stranger comes in and after a while talks to caregiver and then to the infant. Caregiver leaves the room
  • 4. (3 minutes) - stranger + infant - stranger keeps trying to talk and play with the infant
  • 5. (3 minutes) - caregiver + infant - stranger leaves as caregiver returns to the infant. At the end of this stage, the caregiver leaves
  • 6. (3 minutes) - infant - infant is alone in the room
  • 7. (3 minutes) - stranger + infant - stranger returns and tries to interact with the infant
  • 8. (3 minutes) - caregiver + infant - caregiver returns and interacts with the infant, and the stranger leaves

• There were considerably individual differences in behaviour and emotional response in the Strange Situation. Most infants displayed behaviour categorised as typical of secure attachment (70%), while 10% were resistant, and 20% avoidant
• Securely attached infants showed distress on separation, and sought contact and soothing on reunion
• Resistant attachment was characterised by ambivalence (conflicting emotions) and inconcsistency, as the infants were very distressed at searation but resisted the caregiver on reunion
• Avoidant attachment was characterised by detachment as the infants did not seek contact with the caregiver and showed little distress at separation

• Generally, the Strange Situation is regarded as a good measure of attachment in that it allows us to discrminate between attachment types. It was concluded that secure attachment is the preferred type of attachment. Implications include the linking of secure attachment to healthy emotional and social development and the type of attachment to maternal sensitivity and resposiveness

• The validity of the classification was questioned and a fourth attachment type was suggested by Main and Solomon (1986). They found that a small number of infants displayed disorganised attachment, in which the infants showed no consistent pattern of behaviour, and fitted none of the three main attachment types identified by Ainsworth et al. (1978)
• There is a culture bias - the sample is ethnocentric, therefore reflecting norms and values of American culture.  The Strange Situation test assumes that behaviour has the same meaning in all cultures, which is unlikely. Therefore, the results are lacking in population validity. *Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)
• The Strange Situation is artificial and therefore may produce artificial behaviour. For example, mothers may respond to demand characteristics, or behave differently to how they normally would due to social desirability
• Ainsworth and Bell put the infants into three categories. This is neat and tidy, but oversimplifies matters because infants within any given category different from each other in their attachment behaviour
• Lab setting = can control the variables
• No real ethical issues because you can control the variables

                                                                Secure                 Insecure-Avoidant                 Insecure-Resistant

Proximity-Seeking                                 ✔                        ✘                                     ✘

Exploation/Secure Base                       ✔                        ✘                                     ✘

Stranger Anxiety                                    ✔                        ✘                                     ✔

Distress on Separation                         ✔                        ✘                               ✔

Response on Reunion                          ✔                        ✘                                     ✘

•Infant distressed by caregiver’s absence but quickly content after his/her return. Clear difference in the infant’s reaction to stranger

•Child seeks to near the mother and is able to use her as a safe base for exploration

•70% of American infants show this time of attachment

•Insecure in presence of caregiver and becomes very distressed when he/she leaves

•Infant resists contact with the caregiver upon return and is wary of the stranger

•About 10% of American infants show this type of attachment

•Infant doesn’t seek contact with caregiver and shows little distress when separated

•Avoids contact with caregiver upon return

•Treats stranger in similar way to caregiver

•About 20% of American infants show this type of attachment

• Caregivers of securely attached infants were very sensitive to their needs and responded to their infants in an emotionally expressive way
• Caregivers of resistant infants often misunderstood their infants behaviour, varied in the way that they treated them
• Caregivers of avoidant infants were uninterested in their infants. They often rejected their infants and tended to be self-centred
• In some cases caregivers of avoidant infants acted in a suffocating way.
• Nuture side of the nature/nurture debate
• All people born with the same ability to form attchments
• Involves the mother's actions

• Infants relationship with primary caregivers (and those later in life) can be explained in terms of the infant’s innate temperament (character it inherits through its genes)
• Nature side of the debate
• Some infants temperaments are better suited to forming attachment than others
• Involves the mother's genes

• Harlow's study demonstrated that monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the cloth mother, therefore contact and comfort are more important than food. However, we cannot fully generalise this to humans, as we don't know that we would act in the same way
• Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that infants can develop an attachment to people not involved in feeding or basic caregiving; over 80% of infants at the age of 18 months have formed an attachment to more than one adult
• The behavioural approach is reductionist. It reduces complex behaviour such as attachment to stimulus, response and reinforcement
• It is observable in controlled conditions and therefore scientific
• Nurture side of the nature/nurture debate

• All humans possess various primary motives or drives, such as those of hunger, thirst, and sex. Stimuli that satisfy these are known as primary reinforcers

• A person will be "driven" to seek food to satisfy his/her hunger

• Eating food results in drive reduction and is positively reinforcing or rewarding

• According to the principles of operant conditioning, anything that is rewarded is likely to be repeated and so this behaviour is repeated (learned) - like when a baby cries when they need something

• The mother or other caregiver provides the food that reduces the drive and so becomes a secondary reinforcer - he/she becomes a reinforcer by association with primary reinforcement

• From then on, the infant seeks to be with the person who has become a secondary reinforcer, because he/she is now a source of reward in themselves.

• The infant has become attached

• Lorenz's experiment used graylag geese, and there were two different conditions:
  • 1: He was the first moving object seen by the goose chicks after they hatche
  • 2: The mother goose was the first moving object seen
• Condition 1: The chicks followed him as if he was their mother. When they were adult, they performed mating displays to him and ignored other geese
• Condition 2: The chicks who saw their mother first followed her when young, and performed mating rituals to geese in adult life
• If imprinting didn't occur in the critical period, it never would

• The fact that imprinting is irreversible, suggest the ability is under biological control, as learned behaviours can be modified by experience
• The fact that imprinting only occurs within a brief, set time period influenced Bowlby’s idea of a critical period in human babies
• Goslings imprinted onto human exhibit sexual advances to humans when adult birds shows the importance of the behaviour upon future relationships (continuity hypothesis)
• Can we extrapolate these findings to humans?
• Ethical issues with the geese in the first condition

• Put forward an important theory of attachment that challenges the learning theory, based on the work of ethologists. He saw humans as being just like other animals - we have an innate tendency to form attachments with a caregiver. This tendency gives us an adaptive advantage i.e. makes it more likely that we will survive

• He adopted the idea of a critical period from ethologists like Lorenz, and applied this to his explanation of how human ingants form their attachments. Attachments only form if caregivers respond to infants in a meaningful way

• He saw attachments as a control system that maintained proximity to the caregiver. When this state occurs, attachment behaviour is quiet (they have no need to cry or cling, so they get on with playing and exploring - aids metanl health and social development)

• Investigated the mechanisms of imprinting where the youngsters follow and form an attachment to the first large moving object that they meet
• Split a large clutch of greylag goose eggs into two batches, one of which was hatched naturally by the mother and the other hatched in an incubator, with Lorenz making sure he was the first moving object the newly hatche goslings encountered. Behaviour was recorded
• Lorenz then marked all of the goslings, so he could determine whether they were from the naturally hatched batch of eggs or the incubated ones, and placed them under an upturned box. The box was then removed and following behaviour again was recorded
• Immediately after birth, the naturally hatched baby goslings followed their mother about, while the incubator hatched goslings followed Lorenz
• When released from the box the naturally hatched goslings went straight to their mother, while the incubated goslings went to Lorenz, showing no bond with their natural mother. These bonds proved to be irreversible; the naturally hatched goslings would only follow their mother and the inubated ones only followed Lorenz
• It was also noted how imprinting would only occur within a brief, set time period of between 4 and 25 hours after hatching
• Lorenz subsequently reported on how goslings imprinted onto humans would, as matured adult birds, attempt to mate with humans

• Imprinting is a form of attachment, exhibited mainly by nidifugous birds (ones that leave the nest early), whereby close contact is kept with the first large moving object encountered
• Scientific - could be repeated if you wanted to
• Shows that you form attachments later in life similar to the ones you form early in love - condition 1 only showed the mating rituals to Lorenz
• Internal validity - supports what he set out to show
• The fact that imprinting is irreversiable suggests the ability is under biological control
• Critical period is applicable to humans
• Unethical - clear differences of the outcomes from condition 1 and condition 2, showing how they were affected later on in life
• Low external validity as it is difficult to generalie to humans

A = Adaptive. Attachments give our species an 'adaptive advantage' meaning that we're more likely to survive. This is because if an infant has an attachment to a caregiver, they are kept safe, given food etc.

S = Social releasers. Babies have social releasers which 'unlock' the innate tendency of adults to care for them. They are physical and behavioural, for example the typical baby face features and clinging/crying/cooing etc.

C = Critical period. Babies have to form an attachment with their caregiver during a critical period - between birth and 2 1/2 years. If this doesn't happen, the child would be damaged in life - socially, emotionally, intellectually, and physically

M = Monotropy. Infants form one very special attachment with their mother. This special, intense attachment is called monotropy. If the mother isn't avaliable, the infant could bond with another ever-present, adult, mother substitute.

I = Internal working model. Through the monotropic attachment, the infant would form an internal working model. This is a special mental schema for relationships. All the child's future adult relationships will be based on this

• Investigated the cross-cultural variation in attachment types. Used a meta-analysis (data from several studies aren combined to obtain an overall estimate of research findings)

• Only used findings from studies that had used the Strange Situation. Draws inferences about the external validity of this as a measure of attachment.
• Used 32 studies from 8 different countries: 1230 infants took part
  • West Germany
  • UK
  • Holland
  • Sweden
  • Israel
  • Japan
  • China
  • USA

• Avoidant is higher in Western coutnries as children are independent
• China - different insecure attachments, which could be due to the fact the coutnry is vast with many different living conditions (50 for secure attachment, but 25 for avoidant and 25 for resistant)
• In all of the coutnries, a secure attachment type is the most common
• The collectivist copuntries have the highest number of insecure-resistant attachments
• Excluding China, the collectivist cultures have the lowest number of avoidant attachments
• China has the lowest secure attachment
• Overall averages: secure = 65/100, avoidant = 21/100. resistant = 14/100

• There are universal characteristics that underpin infant and caregiver interactions - culture has less of an impact, more nature. Not all coutnries have been considered.
• Significant variations show there are different types of attachment in our society
• Differing child-rearing practices have been implicated in the observed variations of attachment
• KEY FINDING: there was one and a half times greater variation within cultures than between them

• Consistent in that they only used studies that were replicating the Strange Situation...variables would have been operationalised in the same way, and it was a controlled observation
• High internal validity - proves what they wanted to
• First researchers to use meta-analysis to look at cross-cultural variation
• Because they used a meta-analysis, they were able to collect a large sample of data, which therefore increases the population validity

• Doesn't look at all coutnries - mostly Western
• Different amounts of studies for different countries
• Cultural 'norms' are different - what is seen as 'secure' will differ in different countries
• The reserarch could potentially lack temporal validity as countries change over time, so the way the children are brought up may also change
• The study is limited in that it doesn't explain why there are differences
• Strange Situation was created in the USA, which means that it was ethnocentric (culturally biased) and an example of imposed etic

• Looked at infant-mother relationships in Mali, as a result of Van Izjendoorn and Kroonenberg's study
• Found that 67/100 displayed a secure attachment type, 0/100 showed avoidant, and 8/100 showed a resistant type.
• There was another category created called 'disoranganised attachments', of which there were 25/100
• There are no insecure-avoidant children because of the incompatibility of Dogon child-rearing practices within Western chuld-rearing practices that are typically associated with this attachmkent type. There is no maternal rejection of attachment bids, intrusion, or lack of physical contact.
• Explains why there might be different attachment types
• Looks at another continent (africa), giving us an idea of the bigger picture
• Backed up by two other pieces of research - Tomlinson et al (2005) and Zevanlkink et al (1999) -> both showed high secure attachments and low insecure avoidant
• Infants could have been wrongly classified as Dogon infants are not used to elements of the **, such as being left alone with strangers
• 45% infant mortality rates under the age of 5 - would perhaps expect avoidant attachments

• Studied young children separated from their mothers for some time (hospital)
• Observed 3 stages in the child's response to separation, which led to the PDD model:
  • Protest: Often very intense. The child cries most of the time and sometimes seems panic stricken. Anger and fear are present
  • Despair: Involving a total loss of hope. Child is also apathetic, and shows little intereste in its surroundings. The child often engages in self-comforting behaviours such as thumb sucking or rocking
  • Detachment: During which the child seems to behave in a less distressed way. If the mother or caregiver re-appears during this stage, she is not responded to with any great interest
• Fortunately, most children re-establish an attachment to their mother over a period of time

LITTLE JOHN...Experiences the stages of the PDD model when he went to a daycare whilst his mother had a baby Highlights the importance of minimising the adverse effects of separation on young children Individual differences?

• Found that short-term separation does not have to produce negative effects, if the following were implemented:
  • Child introduced to their new surroundings beforehand
  • Provide children with a similar routine
  • Discussed their mother with them=much less distress

• Research also suggests that children should receive good physical and emotional care (i.e. a mothering substitute) when separated from their PCG

• Maternal deprivation hypothesis

• Breaking the maternal attachment with the child during the early years of its life is likely to have serious effects on social, intellectual and emotional development

• Claimed that these negative effects were permanent and irreversible

• Endorsed monotropy

• It was revolutionary, as at the time most professionals assumed meeting physical needs was most important for development - it has had a huge influence on society

• Wanted to test the maternal deprivation hypothesis, and see whether it links in with behavioural disorders such as "affectionaless psychopathy"
• Participants were 88 children in age range from 5-16 who had been referred to the child guidance clinic where Bowlby worked
• 44 of the children had been referred to the clinic because of stealing (the "thieves")
• 16 of these were identified as affectionless psychopaths
• The remaining 44 children in the study had not committed any crimes; they were emotionally maladjusted, but did not display antisocial behaviour. None of this control group were diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths
• Bowlby interviewed the children and their families and was able to build up a record of their early life experiences
• Found that 86% of those thieves diagnosed as affectionless psychopaths had experienced "early and prolonged separations from their mothers"
• Only 17% of the other theives had experienced such separations
• Even fewer (4%) of the control group had experienced early separation

• These findings suggest a link between early separations and later social and emotional maladjustment
• In its most severe form, maternal deprivation appears to lead to affectionless psychopathy.
• In its less severe form it leads to antisocial behaviour (theft)
• These findings support the MDH
• Bowbly didn't clearly distinguish between privation and deprivation, so this study lacks eternal validity
• Many of the juvenlies that he studied had experienced several changes of home/PCG in early childhood...to what extent can this be generalised?
• Rutter (1981) this was evidence of privation rather than deprivation
• Emotional problems shown by children in orphanages and other insitituations may have been due to the poor quality of those institutions rather than MD
• Hard to establish cause and effect...more of a correlational study
• The data on separation were collected retrospectively and may not be reliable. Parents may not have accurately recalled separations during infancy. They may have over or under-estimated the frequency. In addition, how do we know whether these children experienced deprivation or whether they had good substitute emotional care during their separations?

• Investigated the effect of institutional upbringing on later attachments, the effects of privation on later social and emotional development, and if the effects of privation can be reversed
• Followed the development of 65 children who had been in residential nurseries from only a few months old. 
• Longitudinal, field experiment, with a naturally occuring independent variable (what happened to the children at age 4)
• By age 4, 24 children were adopted, 15 returned to their natural home (restored), and the rest stayed in institutions
• They were also compared with a control group, who had spent all their lives in their own families. The control group was closely matched to the children in the experimental group e.g. in terms of sibling number, home location (London), parental occupation, position in family, age, sex etc
• The children were assessed for social and emotional competence at four, eight, and sixteen years old. The assessment comprised interviewing the children and their parents and teachers and a set of questionnaires. 

• At four years of age none of the institutionalised children had formed attachments, but by eight years of age those who were adopted had formed good attachments. 
• Their social and intellectual development was better than that of children returned to their own families
• Those who returned to their natural families showed more behavioural problems and the attachments were weaker
• Nevertheless all those children who had spent their early years in institutions were more attention-seeking from adults and showed some difficulties in their social relationships, particularly with their peers
• Found that the adopted children still had good attachments which compared favourably with the control children. Fewer restored children were repoted as having good attachments but the children who had been brought up in institutional care had experienced most instability and showed some difficulties in their later attachments
• Can be concluded that Bowlby was correct to emphasise the importance of the early years, but the effects of delay in the formation of attachments do not necessarily persist into adulthood and lead to affectionless psychopathy, as Bowlby predicted
• Loving relationships and high quality care are necessary to reverse the privation effects

• Used interviews and questionnaires, both of which can produce answeres that are affected by social desirability, which would lead to inaccurate responses which reduces the reliability
• Longitudinal study = get a good idea about what is going on within the families, however six of the original 51 families did refuse to take part later on in the research, which could be that the families who were experiencing more difficulties then don't want to take part...biased sample
• Quite a large sample
• Uses a naturally occuring event which is good as it would be unethical to look at deprivation and privation otherwise
• Institutionalised children don't just suffer emotional privation but also poor physical care - such as a bad diet and lack of stimulation. As a result it is difficult to separate out the effects of privation, and the effects of poor physical care

• Studied children who became orphans at just a few months old due to the war, and looked at the ability to form new attachments, intelligence, and growth
• The children had been through a traumatic experience...who gave consent for them to be used?
• This was an example of privation as the children did not have a chance to form an attachment with a primary caregiver
• Offers challenge for Bowlby's MDH as the children were able to form attachments to one another and were very close, so their internal working model was not affected
• They went on to become attached to adult carers and developed well
• However it could be argued that this isn't a valid study for looking at privation because the children did form attachments to each other from a young age, and therefore the effects of privation can't necessarily be studied

• Twins lost their mother shortly after birth, and were cared for by a social agency for a year, then fostered by a maternal aunt for a further six months. Their development was normal
• Their father remarried, but his new wife proved banished them to the cellar for the next 5 1/2 years, beating them from time to time. The father was for most of the time absent from home
• On discovery at the age of 7, the Koluchová twins were dwarfed in stature, lacking speech, suffering from rickets and did not understand the meaning of pictures. The doctors who examined them confidently predicted permanent physical and mental handicap
• Removed from their parents, the Koluchová twins first underwent a programme of physical remediation, and entered a school for children with severe learning disabilities. 
• After basic education they went on to technical school, training as typewriter mechanics, but later undertook further education, specializing in electronics. Both were drafted for national service, and later married and had children. They are said to be entirely stable, lacking abnormalities and enjoying warm relationships. One is a computer technician and the other a technical training instructor.
• Challenges MDH because the effects of MD could be reversed
• HOWEVER the boys had each other so could have formed an attachment to one another

• When Genie was between 14 and 20 months of age and was just beginning to learn speech, a doctor told her family that she seemed to be developmentally delayed and possibly mildly retarded. Her father took the opinion more seriously than it was expressed by the doctor, apparently deciding that she was profoundly retarded, and subjected her to severe confinement and ritual ill-treatment in an attempt to "protect" her.
• Genie spent the next 12 years of her life locked in her bedroom. During the day, she was tied to a child's potty chair in diapers; at night, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib with a cover made of metal screening. Indications are that Genie's father beat her if she vocalized, and he barked and growled at her like a dog in order to keep her quiet. He also rarely allowed his wife and son to leave the house or even to speak, and he expressly forbade them to speak to Genie.
• Genie was discovered at the age of 13 when her mother left her husband and took Genie with her. Could not stand erect and had a vocabulary of about 20 words. She scored as low as a normal one year old on a social maturity scale. She could only understand her own name. Didn’t socialize, didn’t know how to chew, salivated constantly, and was not toilet trained. Within a few months of therapy, she had advanced to one-word answers and had learned to dress herself. But Genie didn’t progress the way normal children would do as in she never asked questions, did not understand grammar, and had no advancements in vocabulary.

• After considerable therapy from doctors, Genie later learned to vocalize and express herself through sign language. Her demeanor changed considerably, and she became social with adults she was familiar with. Genie had a strange "bunny walk", in which she held her hands up in front, like paws. However, she never reached any sort of normal cognitive or emotional development. Genie now lives in a sheltered accommodation in an undisclosed location in Southern California; it is at least her sixth adult foster home. Her mother died in 2003.
• In 1975, Genie was returned to the custody of her mother, who wished to care for her daughter. After a few months, the mother found that taking care of Genie was too difficult, and Genie was transferred to a succession of six more foster homes. In some of the homes she was physically abused and harassed, and her development regressed severely.
• Ethical issues - is it right to carry out research on someone who has been through so much, and it was said that she was often overworked...who gave consent for her to take part in this research? When the funding for Genie stopped, so did the help, and putting her in foster care could have been damaging for her
• Supports MDH because she was so severly effected for the rest of her life. She had no schema for forming relationships -> internal working model 

• Unless survival enhanced the reproductive fitness of the human infant, there would not have been enough pressure for attachment behaviour to EVOLVE.

• Human attachment EVOLVED because the protection and survival it promoted increases the chances of successful reproduction of those who maintained proximity/sought contact from PCG.

• Attachments at childhood continue into your adulthood due to your internal working model
• Your childhood attachment is refleceted later in life

• Deterministic: Assumes your childhood is repsonsible for your adulthood, like you have no free-will
• What about the temperment hypothesis - everyone is born as different
• Reductionist - pinpoints your behaviour as solely down to your childhood
• ALSO could potentially blame parents for their children not being able to form good attachments later in life, when this isn't always the case

• Explored the possibility that attachment theory offers a perspective on adult romantic love and created a framework for undertanding love, loneliness and grief at different points in the life cycle
• It was predicted that:
  • There would be a correlation between adults' attachment styles and the type of parenting they received
  • Adults with different attachment styles will display different characteristic mental models of themselves and their major social-interaction partner
• Respondents to a 'love quiz' in a local newspaper were asked which of three descriptions best applied to their inner feelings about romantic relationships
• Participants also completed a checklist describing childhood relationships with parents, relating to the same attachment types. Two separate samples were tested
• Sample 1 comprised 205 men and 415 women between 14-82 years, 91% describing themsleves as hetrosexual, 42% married, 28% divorced or widowed, 9% were co-habiting and 31% were dating (some fitted more than one category
• Sample 2 comprised 108 students, 38 men and 70 women, who answered additional items focusing more on the 'self' side, as well as items measuring loneliness

• In both samples, those described as securely attached described the most important love relationship they ever had as 'happy, friendly, and trusting'. These participants had longer lasting relationships and if they married tended not to divorce
• Securely attached participants expressed belief in lasting love. They found others trustworthy and had confidence their self as likeable
• Insecure-avoidant participants were more doubtful about the existence or durability of romantic love. They also maintained they didn't need love partners to be happy
• Insecure-avoidant participants expressed more self-doubts, compared with both types, but compared with the insecure-resistant participants didn't repress feelings of security
• Both insecure types were vulnerable to loneliness; the insecure resistant (sample two) being most vulnerable
• The percentages of adults in the different attachments types match those of children in Ainsworth's Strange Situation studies
• The correlation between adults' attachment style and their memories of parenting style they received is similar to Ainsworth's findings, where children's attachment styles were correlated with the degree of sensitivity shown by mothers
• Adults' mental models differ according to attachment styles - securely attached are more positive and optimistic, and insecurely attached are vulnerable to loneliness

Classification                 % of respondents         Response

Securely attached            56 (both samples)           I find it easy getting close to others and am                                                                               comfortable depending on them and having                                                                               them depend on me. I don't worry about being                                                                           abandoned or about someone getting close to                                                                           me       

Avoidant                          23 (sample one)            I am uncomfortable being close to others; I                                           23 (sample two)            find it difficult to trust them, difficult to depend                                                                          on them. I am nervous when anyone gets                                                                                  close, and love partners want me to be more                                                                            intimate than I feel comfortable being

Resistant                         19 (sample one)            I find others are reluctant to get as close as                                            20 (sample two)           I'd like. I worry my partner doesn't really love                                                                              me or won't stay with me. I want to merge                                                                                completely with another person, and this desire                                                                          scares people away

• Good sample size
  • However the female gender is more dominant
• Supports the continuity hypothesis - mental models differ according to attachment types
• Carried out in the USA - the Strange Situation was developed for Western cultures, so the attachment types were suitable

• Fourth attachment type not included
• It was only carried out in the  USA so the population validity is questionnable
• There was a correlation between attachment style, therefore cause and effect cannot be established - so does it have internal validity?
• Filling in a quiz could mean results are unreliable as people could lie
• Don't know for certain what their attachment type was like when they were younger
• The age range could mean inaccuracies - 82 year olds may not be able to remember that far back, 14 year olds may not have had romantic relationships
• Maine et al suggests that your internal working model can change in your adulthood, so an insecurely attached child may not be an insecure adult