Attachment

Reciprocity

• baby and carers respond to each other
• responses
• signals that they want something/they are feeling particular emotions
• make noises to provoke a response in absense of a response
• Brazelton described reciprocity as like a couples dance; both have active roles
• Feldman and Eidelman claimed babies have alert phases, which are responded to 2/3 of the time

Interactional Synchrony

• babies and carers replicate each other's behaviour
• hand gestures and facial expressions
• Feldman explained interactional synchrony as ‘the temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour’

P - Tronick supported with the static face expression experiment
E - babies experienced distress at loss of reciprocity and acted up to provoke response
E - shows that reciprocity is an important part of a happy relationship
L - has external validity

P - observing reciprocity is looking at facial expressions and hand gestures
E - babies' actions at young ages are sometimes not conscious or are ambiguous
E - hard to observe, may not have a special meaning
L - not reliable that the observations have good internal validity

P - Meltzoff and Moore support interactional synchrony
E - carers given 1/3 gestures or facial expressions
E - found association between the action and baby's response
L - reliable that it is important to attachment

P - Isabella supports interactional synchrony
E - observed 30 mothers and babies and their levels of synchrony
E - high levels of synchrony showed better quality relationships
L - high external validity

Parent-Infant Interactions

• women have high levels of oestrogen making them naturally more nurturing
• women have the traditional role of being a stay at home mother
• primary attachment followed by multiple attachments

Role of the Father

• fathers are usually secondary caregivers

Fathers as Primary Caregivers

• fathers are not biologically pre-disposed to be the primary caregiver, unlike women

P - Schaffer and Emerson: that primary attachment forms first, not multiple staight away
E - 7 months 65% had primary attachment to mothers, 18 months 80% had multiple attachment
E - attachment was primary and to mothers first
L - biological explanation has external validity

P - Grossman did a longitudinal study that supported the role of the father
E - found that quality of play made better attachment
E - not quality of nurturing
L - women are more likely to be the nurtuting one (biological) and dads, play (behavioural)

P - MacCallum and Golombok contradicted that fathers have a needed role at all
E - studied female same-sex and single caregivers with their babies and babies' development
E - babies developed no different without father figure
L - fathers' role is not important

P - Field supported that fathers could be primary caregivers
E - studied mother PCGs and father PCGs
E - fathers took on the traditional woman's nurturing personality
L - attachment depends on responsiveness, not gender

Observation: Longitudinal Study - 60 Glasgow, Working-Class Babies

• (7m) 50% separation anxiety, 65% attachment to mother; (9m) 80% specific, 30% multiple; (18m) 80% multiple

Stage 1: Asocial Attachment

• recognition, bonds begin forming, happier in human presence

Stage 2: Indiscriminant Attachment

• preference for humans, little anxiety, indiscriminate towards people

Stage 3: Specific Attachment

• specific attachment to primary caregiver

Stage 4: Multiple Attachments

• 30% formed a secondary attachment after a month of the first

• attachment is important for survival
• develop a reciprocal relationship
• monotropy is attachment to a primary carer 
• law of continuity states that more constant and predictable care means better attachments
• law of accumulated separation means the effect of every separation adds up
• internal working model is the mental representation of a caregiver-infant relationship
• internal working model impacts on future relationships
• critical period is birth to 2 and a half years, when the attachment system is active
• social releasers are endearing behaviours of babies that they do to activate the adult attachment system, to make it more likely that the adult will become attached and care for their baby

P - lots of studies about internal working model
E - Hazen and Shaver: secure babies = happy now
E - Bailey: bad bonds with parents caused future bad bonds with their children
L - high external validity

P - animal studies also support
E - Lorenz showed that his goslings had an innate attachment behaviour
E - supports evolutionary parts of Bowlby's theory
L - reliable

P - ethical issues with monotrophy, it is a sensitive idea
E - Burman said that mothers blame themselves for 'mistakes' during raising and going to work
E - Suess said that mothers are more important than dads in influencing the IWM
L - not a very useful theory to use due to social protest

P - theory does not cover social behaviour
E - Kagan: temprement is more important than attachment
E - other approaches to explain it - not comprehensive
L - not very reliable

Childhood Relationships

• Kerns: secure children have the best childhood relationships
• Smith: questionnaires revealed resistants became bullies and avoidants became victims

Adult Relationships

• McCarthy: avoidant lead to bad romance, and resistant lead to bad friendship
• Hazan and Shaver: avoidants (25%) were jealous, and secure (56%) had good relationships

Parenting

• Bailey: used mothers and babies in the Strange Situation majority of women had the same attachment as their own mothers and babies

P - not supported by external research
E - Zimmerman assessed infant/adolescent attachment and found little link
E - does not fit with internal working model
L - low external validity

P - the studies were done with self-report techniques
E - reterospective reports are conscious, whereas the internal working model is unconcious 
E - lots of memories can not be retrieved from such a young age
L - indirect and unreliable evidence

P - attachment is not certain
E - Clarke and Clarke said that attachment was probablistic, not certain
E - there may be a 3rd factor affecting attachment
L - lot very useful in predicting/not very reliable

Lorenz

• divided egg clutch
• first moving object within a 12-17 hour critical period
• understanding of critical periods
• understanding of cross-species attachments
• can not generalise to mammalian attachments - more emotional
• a peacock also imprinted on tortoises
• Guiton said that chicks who imprinted on gloves learned not to mate with them

Harlow

• 16 baby monkies had preference over cloth covered mother because of comfort contact
• maternal deprivation caused a permanent effect of dysfunctional behaviour
• critical period of mother introduction for normal development is within 90 days
• Howe said that there was great practical value for zoos and social workers
• understanding of mother-infant attachments and quality of attachment in early life

• proposed by Dollard and Miller
• part of the behaviourist approach

Classical Conditioning

• food is an unconditioned stimulus
• carer becomes a conditioned stimulus
• baby expects food to create pleasure, and so seeing the carer creates pleasure

Operant Conditioning

• repeated behaviour based on reinforced reward 
• in parents, it is negative reinforcement to avoid crying

Drives

• attachment is a secondary drive
• food is a primary drive

P - does not extend to animals
E - Lorenz and Harlow proved than animals see attachment as a primary drive
E - behaviourist approach claims that animals and humans learn the same
L - not supported externally

P - Schaffer and Emerson do not support the learning theory
E - found that primary attachments were to mothers 65% of the time, regardless of food
E - attachments appear to be pre-disposed to an extent, regardless of environment
L - not very reliable

P - there are alternative explanations for attachment
E - Hay and Vespo claimed that SLT was more comprehensive
E -  parents model and praise love; they are role models; children are operantly conditioned
L - not as useful an explanation as other approaches

• some parents do not provide food on demand (no operant conditioning) at an age where operant conditioning is active. At this age, they may try 'controlled crying' - not applicable to all parents/carers

• Ainsworth
• aim to observe key attachment behaviours to caregiver
• controlled observations with a 2-way mirror
• 100 middle-class American babies
• observing 5 behaviours
  • proximity seeking
  • exploration and secure-base seeking
  • stranger anxiety
  • separation anxiety
  • reunion response
• insecure-avoidants are type A - 20-25% of British babies
• secures are type B - 60-75% of British babies
• insecure-resistants are type C - 3%

P - several real-life applications
E - Kokkinos: resistants become associated with bad behaviour
E - Ward: resistants become associated with mental health problems
L - high external validity

P - tested for reliability
E - Ainsworth rested her own inter-rater reliability and found it to be very high
E - Bick tested the inter-rater reliability and found that it was at 94%
L - no question over internal reliability, supports repeatability

P - has been repeated elsewhere
E - Takahashi: mothers and babies are highly anxious in Japan and behave differently
E - it is a Western-culture-bound test
L - not externally valid

P - variations in attachment
E - Main and Soloman claimed that some humans have disorganised attachments
E - Kagan: genetically inherited temprements are more important than attachment for behaviour
L - not reliable

Worldwide - Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg

• looked at 32 studies worldwide, 15 of which were in the US, over 8 countries
• 1900 children
• Japan, Israel and China had the highest level of insecure-resistant
• Secure is the most popular type of attachment, with Great Britain having the highest

Italy -  Simonella

• looked at 76 one-year-olds
• 50% were secure and 36% were avoidant which is unusual for Europe
• could be due to high professional childcare and working mothers in Italy

Asia - Jin

• 87 chldren in Korea and Japan
• very similar levels of attachment in the two
• similar child rearing styles lead to the same attachment types

P - unrepresentative of sub-cultures
E - Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg found that there was 150% more variation within countries
E - Sagi: rural Japan is more insecure, while Tokyo is more secure and Western-like
L - samples are unrepresentative of culture, not externally valid to all cultures

P - Grossman did not support the reliability of the studies
E - said that some cultures see anxiety as dependence
E - results may not have been recorded properly
L - possibly lack in internal validity

P - Kagan did not support the reliability of the studies
E - temprement is more important than caregiver relationship in influencing attachment type
E - strange situation measures anxiety, does not cover genetically inherited temprement
L - not comprehensive

P - methods are Western, due to it being an American study
E - imposed etic - Anglo-American theories
E - considering it is cross-country research, it doesn't take countries' differences into account
L - not useful

• deprivation is prolonged separation without emotional care of caregiver
• critical period of birth to 2 and a half years
• emotional deprivation leads to psychological harm
• Intellectual Disabilities: mental retardation below average IQ
• Emotional: affectionless psychpathy leading to criminality and abnormal relationships

44 Thieves Self Report - Bowlby

• interviewed 44 thieves and 44 emotionally disturbed non-thieves, and their families
• looking for signs of affectionless psychopathy and kowledge of deprivation
• asked them and family members about prolonged separations before the age of 5

• 14/44 thieves were affectionless psychopaths
• 12/14 affectionless psychopaths had prolonged separations
• 5/30 non-psychopathic thieves had separations but no psychopathy

• 2/44 non-thieves had prolonged separations but no psychopathy

P - tested with animals
E - Levy observed that rats separated from their mothers were permanently affected
E - social development was disrupted
L - if animals as simple as rats are effected, there will be a great effect on humans

P - Goldfarb looked into institutionalised children
E - found that children who were fostered received more emotional care from their familes
E - those not fostered had a lower IQ - supports intellectual retardation
L - external validity

P - not supported external case studies
E - Lewis: 500 young people with a history of separation correlated to no criminality
E - Koluchova: twins locked up in a cupboard made a full recovery after adoption
L - not great external validity

P - Rutter did not support
E - claimed that in institutions, bonds are never formed, which is privation
E - some of the affectionless psychopaths may have experienced privation
L - study lacks internal validity

Rutter and Songua

• longitudinal study
• 165 romanian orphans assessed at age intervals, against 52 British orphans
• 50% of the Romanians had delayed intellectual development
• Romanians adopted by 6 months caught up intellectually by 4 years
• Romanians adopted (or not) after 6 months had disinhibited attachments due to never having a constant carer

Zeanah - The Strange Situation

• assessed children 1 - 2 and a half years old 
• 95 orphans compared to 50 non-institutionalised children
• Romanian orphans come over to the US
• found that 19% of the orphans had secure attachements
• found that 65% of orphans had disorganised attachments
• found that 74% of non-institutionalised children were secure

P - in other studies, orphans were previously traumatised
E - therefore, there are fewer confounding participant variables
E - just assessing institutionalisation on attachment
L - high internal validity

P - Langton supported the studies
E - lead to improvements in childcare
E - Keyworkers in carehomes allow normal attachments to develop
L - supports the ideas behind the studies and shows that research is useful

P - Romanian orphanages are not typical
E - Romanian orphanages during that period = worse that most orphanages, in modern day
E - not representative of all cultures
L - not easy to generalise

P - ethical issues
E - used children with mentalhealth problems
E - no right to withdraw, issues with privacy
L - inethical means lack of repeatability