Attachment

Attachment: Close emotional bond between 2 people, characterised by affection and a desire to maintain proximity (Schaffer). 

Precocial: Eyes open, feed themselves, stay warm e.g. goose.
Altricial: Naked, blind, can't walk, rely on parent for food/warmth e.g. human. 

Bodily contact: Physical interactions help immediately after birth. Klaus and Kennell: mums with contact more attachment.

Mimicking: Imitate facial expressions, biological device to aid formation of attachments? Meltzoff and Moore: 2-3 weeks mimic.

Caregiverese: Vocal language modified, slow, song-like. Cross-cultural, USA, China, Germany (Papousek). But, all adults use it - not specific to aid attachment?

Interactional synchrony: Move bodies in time with rhythm of language, turn-taking. Condon and Sander, not all cultures?

Reciprocity: Mutual behaviour, both parties produce responses from each other.

Pre-attachment: Birth-3 months. Any human, no bias, prefer human like stimuli, behin to treat humans differently. 6 weeks - smile, gargle. No one in particular.

Indiscriminate: 3-7/8 months. More sociable, tell people apart, distiguishes between familiar and unfamiliar but happy to be comforted by anyone, no stranger fear.

Discriminate: 7/8 months onwards, separation anxiety, crying, stranger anxiety, object permenance.

Multiple: 9 months onwards, multiple e.g. friends, grandparents, child minders, original remains strongest.

Longitudinal study, 60 families with newborns, visited every 4 weeks first year and at 18 months. Watched protest/asked how often cried left alone. 7 months - 29% more than 1 attachment, 18 months - 87%, 50% to mum. Older, more likely to have multiple attachments.

Carpenter: Not as asocial? 2 week olds recognise mother's fase (presented with mum's face/voice, face but stranger's voice and stranger's face and voice. Looked longest at A and were distressed with B.

Father - stereotypicalls less natural. Females - prolactin, linked to affection/protection towards infant, more day to day needs, intimacy, oxytocin, both birth, necessary attachment hormone. Blaffer-Hrdy - mice, didn't answer infants' cried and return them to nest without it. Males lack surge of 'attachment hormone,' role of play partner. 

Parke and Tinsley - in early stage, physical and verbal attention similar, divide only emerges over time. If father actively involves himself in mundane activities, stronger attachment (Ross). 

Geiger - father's play more exciting, Lamb - only in good emtoion. 

Women more able to show sensitive responsiveness? Men can quickly develop. Hrdy: Fathers less able to detect distress, Lamb - quickly develop.

Lucassen: Strange SItuation, higher sensitivity more secure. 

Bernier and Miljkovitch: Single parent father attachments similar to with own. 

Belsky: High marital intimacy, secure. Brown: Co-parenting, secure. 

Sensitivity hypothesis: Repsonsive parenting --> secure attachments.

Van Ijzendoorn and De Wolff - weaker association between father sensitivity and attachment than with mother, 66 studies (8 father). 

• Sons more likely secure
• Compensation for absent mother? Varies with sons

Greater involvement in daily care - Caldera

Own life experiences - Berlin and Cassidy

Personality, extravert. Mariage. Work - Belsky. 

Secure with fathers:

• Better with peers
• Less problem behaviours
• Do better in school
• Less aggression (especially boys)
• Less sexual activity before 16 (girls)
• Greater sociability
• Less anxiety and antisocial behaviour

Pederson - Most studies focused on female single mothers from poor socio-economic backgrounds - social factors?

Provide mum with time away. 

Imprinting in Geese. Attach to first encountered large moving object. 

1. Natural

2. Lorenz

2nd group of geese followed him. 

Irreversible - ethics? 

Critical period

Practical application with birds bred in captivity.

Rhesus monkeys presented with cloth and wire 'mothers,' wire had food. Spent more time with cloth mothers.

Privation: Permenantly damaging. Died, shock etc. Less than 3 months didn't impact long term but long term isolation different degrees. 

Hospitals - practical application. 

Ethics? Generalisation? 

Classical conditioning:

• Learning by association
• Food (UCS) --> Pleasure, Food + Caregiver (NS) --> Pleasure, Caregiver --> Pleasure

Operant conditioning: 

• Associate with removal of negative feeling of hunger
• Negative reinforcement

Pollard and Miller: Support - in 1st year, babies fed 2,000 times.

Schaffer and Emerson: 39% mother not main attachment figure but main carer? 

Too complex behaviour - Schaffer - 'cupboard love' theories wrong way around - babies eat to live not live to eat. 

Bowlby: Only need food occassionally, constantly require emotional security, not main reason.

Internal working model: blueprint, schema.

Social releasers: behaviour preprogrammed to get caregiver's attention.

Monotropy: Innate tendency to attach to one adult who interacts morst sensitively (usually mother). 

12 months for most, 2 1/2-3 years (critical period).

Developed in stone age need to survive. Complementary infant/carer system.

Attachment behaviours seen when children upset, ill, scared.

Monotropic - first strongest. Hierarchy - secondary minor, based on first. 

'Scientific proof' for sexism, Harlow Lorenz. Temperament hypothesis, Kagan - alternative explanation. Hazan and Shaver love quiz. Howes et al. parent-child not same as child-peer. Looks backwards. Schaffer and Emerson - multiple but one primary. Right wing. Fathers minor - research suggests otherwise.

8 steps measuring separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, reunion behaviour and exploration. 

• A: Insecure avoidant, 15%. Lack of care, indifferent to stranger and mother.
• B: Securely attached, 70%. Distress separation, avoid stranger, happy at return, safe base.
• C: Insecure resistant, 15%. Distress, fear (inconsistent care), approach mum but push away, less exploration.

Evaluation

• Empirical evidence for Bowlby
• Reliable - consistent (Germany - 78% children classified same way aged 1 and 6)
• Only looks at mother - not main attachment figure?
• Ethics
• Bias - 100 middle class Americans
• Low ecological validity - lab, 'script'
• Differences within cultures, imposed etic, assumes separation --> anxiety

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg 2,000 Strange Situations from 32 studies in 8 countries. Secure common everywhere. Western avoidant dominant, non-Western resistant dominant). 

• West Germany: 57% secure, 35% avoidant
• Japan: 68% secure, 5% avoidant
• US: 65% secure, 21% avoidant 
• Israel - 64% secure, 7% avoidant

Israel: Kubbitz, share, 2 hours with real parents a day. 

Japan: Collectivist, close, never with stranger.

Germany: Independence, self-reliance.

Simonella (Italy) 50% secure, 36% avoidant. Lower - mother's working?

Broken bonds. Continual disruption of  attachment between infant and primary caregiver (i.e. mother) could result in long term cognitive, social,  emotional difficulties for  infant. Originally believed effects to be permanent and irreversible. Critical period first 2.5 years crucial.

If separated for extended period without subsitute care, damage inevitable. Acronym ADDIDDAS for effects of maternal deprivation. Aggression, delinquency, dwarfism, intellectual retardation, depresion, dependency, affectionless psychopathy, social maladjustment.

Affectionless psychopathy: Inability to show affection/concern others, lack of shame or sense of responsibility, impulse, little regard for consequences.

44 Thieves: Opportunity sample, 88 children. 1: Thief group, stealing. 2. Emotional problems. Matched for age and IQ. Children and parents interviewed, tested on early life experiences. 14 children from theft group affectionless psychopaths, 21 had experienced prolognged separation (more than 6 months) from mothers in first two years of life. Only 5 of 30 not classified as affectionless psychopaths had experiences separations. Out of 44 in control group, only 2 had experienced prolonged separations, none affectionless psychopaths.

PDD (Protest, despair, detachment) 

• Freud and Dann: Very few long term effects, lessened effect if short term of visit first, familiar daily routine and talk about mother.
• Robertson and Robertson said Bowlby overgeneralised. Not only reason for behaviour. Rutter - High stress. 
• Academic respectability for sexism.
• Poor home better than good institution - Skeels and Dye, feebbleminded women --> IQ incr.
• Bifulco et al - support, 250 women lost mother before 17, doubled depression/anxiety risk.
• Schaffer and Emerson - Specific attachments start 8 months, attach to others shortly after.
• Rutter - Bowlby doesn't distinguish between deprivation and privation. Quality of attachment bond most imporysny. 
• Oversimplified concept of maternal deprivation - separation and failure - formation. Many of 44 thieves moved around in childhood, probably never formed attachment, privation more detrimental. 
• Harlow
• Lorenz

John - Robertson and Robertson. 9 days in residential nursery. Naturalistic obseervation, case study, verbal commentary and notes.

• Nurses assigned to duties not children
• John little contact with other children prior
• Day 1 - friendly, protest when nurse left
• Day 2 - struggled to go with father, tearful
• Days 3-5 - increasingly distressed, unresponsive
• Day 6 - pinched and smacked father, angry
• Days 7-8 - crying, ran away, 'long hard look' 
• 3 months on - outbursts
• Bond disruption
• Supports and challenges MDH - illustrates PDD but Robertsons argued against crucial loss of mother and for lack of replacement figure
• 4 children - Robertsons acted as substitute parents, kept methods, less disturbance
• Still always dangerous
• Changed hospital policies

• Told developmentally delayed
• Father locked in room, beat, couldn't see mother/brother
• Couldn't stant erect, 4 stone, looked 6/7 at 13 years old, 2 sets of teeth, scored same as a 1 year old on social maturity scale, 
• Grammar, combining words failed
• Minimal activity in left hemisphere language centre disappeared (lack of use? outset?)
• Indicates critical period
• Mother claimed relationship
• Learned words, enjoyed new environment, learnt toilet and to dress herself rapidly
• Remained poor in language
• Unwethical, non-generalisable, Genie's interests 'going to come second' 'if you want to do rigorous science' - Harlow Lee

Rutter et al looked at long term effects. Group of Romanian orphans adopted in UK before age of 2. Severely developmentally impaired. 1/2 below 3rd percentile for weight and head circumference. 1/2 assessed as mildly retardd using developmental quotient test. Deprivation dwarfism.

Control group of English adoptees showed none of these delays. Re-examined at age of 3 and so on. Had caught up spectacularly with peers, only 2% still below 3rd percentile for weight. Cognitive development on par with English controls. 

Later children adopted, slower progress. Early experience does have lasting efects. Children who did not experience any institutional rearing completely recovered by age of 4 (less to recover from).

Possible Romanian families only put certain children up for adoption (already handicap?). Bigger disadvantage in first place? Adopted later because of 'less appealing' inherent problems?

Disinhibited attachment: Clingy, attention seeking behaviour and indiscriminate social interaction with adults - social behaviour directed towards all adults as opposed to a small number of attachment figures.

Research indicates continuity between early attachment styles and quality of childhood relationships. Also indicates attached children early life will not form adult sexual relationships.

Youngblade and Belsky - 3-5 year old securely attached children more curious, competent empathetic, resilient and self-confident. Got along better with other children, more likely to form close relationships.

Mullis et al: Late childhood attachments to peers reflect those made to parents in infancy.

Westermarch: Chldren who form close relationships to each other during first 6 years of life do not generally go on to form adult sexual relationships. (Suggests early attachments do affect childhood and adult relationships).

Stepher: Examined 3000 Israeli marriage records and found no children reared together on a Kibbutz got married.

Attachments infant-carer have large influence on determining quality of subsequent relationships. Early attachment types influence cognitive ability, emotional responses and social skills which in turn influence quality of later childhood relationships.

But, to claim the quality of later relationships is caused solely by the quality of early attachment is deterministic and does not take account of the other factors that are influential such as financial pressures or age differences between partners. 

The fact that children who form attachments to each other in early life do not form adult sexual relationships suggests an evolutionary anti-incest device to stop related individuals breeding (early childhood attachments are most likely between siblings but very young children do not distinguish between siblings and friends).

Much research indicates intergrational continuity between adults' attachment types and their children's attachment types (inc. children as grown ups adopting own parents' parenting style).

Also appears to be continuity between early attachment styles and quality of later adult relationships.

Love quiz in local newspaper, nearly 100 questions about inner feelings about romantic relationships relating to secure, insecure avoidant and insecure resistant attachments. Also completed checklist describing childhood relationships with parents relating to the attachment types.

620 replies:

• 56% secure - relationships positive, trust, believe in enduring love, positive image of mother as dependable and caring.
• 19% resistant - preoccupied by love, fall in love easily, trouble finding true love, conflicting memories of positive and neglecting, inconsistent.
• 23% avoidant - fearful of closeness, love not durable, not necessary for happiness, remember mothers as cold and rejecting, selfish.

Infant attachment style predicted attitudes towards love (internal working model) and experience of love (continuity hypothesis). 

Conclusions: Percentage of adults in different attachment types matched children in Strange Situation. Correlation between adults' attchment style and memories of parenting style received similar to Ainsworth's findings, where children's attachment styles were correlated with mother's degree of sensitivity. Adults' mental models differ according to attachment styles. Securel attached more positive and optimistic about themselves and (potential) love partners, compared wth either insecurely attached type. People with insecure attachment vulnerable to loneliness.

Evaluations:

• Stimulated other research. Volunteer sample?
• Showed continuity of childhood attachment to not always occur (insecurely attached child not necessarly insecurely attached adult). Continuity decreases as individuals progress further into adulthood. Average person participates in several important friendships and love relationships that provide opportunities for revising mental models of self and others.
• But, attachment types identified by Strange Situation only relate to quality of relationship with one person, therefore on adults' choice of a paragraph (quiz) describing attachment style, might only relate to the current relationship and they may have attached differently in the past.

142 people (73 coupled, 69 singles), advert in local newspaper. Questionnaire determined attachment style, attachment figures, recalled quality of relationship with parents and general life quality. Interviewed about how dealth with attachment and sexual and support needs and quality of lives. 

No significant difference in prevalence of insecure attachment between singles and coupled PPs. Although, singles reported worse childhood relationships with parents. Greater reliance on siblings but no overall difference in use of attachment figures. 

Recruitment - newspaper ads, not representative. May be more acceptable in collectivist countries (Eastern) which emphasise family over finding a long term partner.

Most based on self report - response bias e.g. social desirability. May not have been entirely honest although revealed personal and painful information.