Attachment
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- Created on: 18-07-17 15:46
Caregiver-infant interactions
- Reciprocity: taking turns as in a conversation (Jaffe et al)
- Brazelton - mother anticipates infant signals - basis of attachment
- Interactional synchrony - coordinated behaviour
- Melzoff and Moore: 3 day old babies intimate mothers..
- Piaget - behaviour is pseudo-imitation (operant conditioning)
- Murray and Trevarthen: infant distress if no response from CG, supports innateness.
Evaluation:
- Testing behaviour is difficult as they are in constant motion
- Failure to replicate Meltzoff and Moore, (Marian et al. live vs taped interactions)
- Intentionally supported - no response to inanimate objects (Anravanel and DeYong)
- Individual differences - security of attachment associated with interactional synchrony (Isabella et al)
- 'Like me' hypothesis (Meltzoff) - interactional synchrony leads to Theory of Mind
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The development of attachment
Shaffer and Emerson, 60 infants and mothers from Glasgow
- Stage 1: indiscriminate attachments
- Stage 2: beginnings of attachment
- Stage 3: specific attachments
- The role of father: changing social practices - increase exposure might lead to primary attachments
- Biological factors - women have hormones which encourage caring behaviours.
- Neverless men are primary attachment figures or share this role (Frank et al)
- Secondary attachment - fathers are more playful (Geiger) ; problem-solvers (White and Woolett)
Evaluation:
- Unreliable data - mothers of less securely attched infants = less sensitive and so less acurate in their reports, systematic bias + social desirability bias
- Biased sample: working-class population from 1960's, results may not generalise.
- Multiple attachments - Rutter argued that all attachments are equivalent
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Animal Studies
Lorenz
- Procedure: goose eggs incubated so first living thing they saw was their bio. mother or Lorenz
- Findings: goslings imprinted on Lorenz and followed him
Critical period - imprinting doesn't happen later - Long lasting effects - irreversible and related to mate choice (sexual imprinting)
- Eval: Research support - Guiton et al
- Imprinting issues - may be reversible and more than just learning.
Harlow
- Procedure: wire 'mothers', one cloth covered. Feeding bottle was attached to one of the other
- FIndings: monkeys spent most time with cloth mother irregardless of whether or not bottle was attached
- Critical period: attachments must be formed before six months
- Long lasting effects - all motherless monkeys were socially and sexually abnormal
- Eval: confounding variable - mothers faces were different
- Generalising to humans may not be justified
- Ethics - benefits may outweigh costs, but does not challenge findings
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Learning theory
- All behaviours are learned rather than inherited.
- Classical conditioning - new conditioned response learned through association between a neutral stimulus (mother) and an unconditioned stimulus (food)
- Operant conditioning - the reduction of discomfort created by hunger is rewarding so becomes a primary reinforcer, associated with mother who becomes secondary reinforcer.
- Social learning - children model parents' attachment behaviours (Hay and Vespo)
Evaluation:
- Animal studies - lack external validity - simplified view of human attachment
- Attachment not based on food - Harlow showed it was contact comfort - supported by Schaffer and Emerson
- Learning theory can explain some aspects - attention and responsiveness are rewards.
- Drive reduction doesn't explain why we engage in discomfort (bungee jumping) - reducing disomfort does not explain secondary reinforcers
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Bowlby's Monotropic Theory
- (1969) : critical period (3-6 months) attachments become harder to form after this.
- Primary attachment figure - determined by careiver sensitivity. Social releasers elicit caregiving and ensure attachments form
- Monotropy: primary attachment figure has special emotional role, secondary provide safety net.
- Internal working model: acts as template for future relationships, creating continuity (continuity hypothesis)
Evaluation:
- Attachment is adaptive - attachment is vital after 6 months as that is when crawling occurs and so attachments develop then.
- A sensitive period rather than critical one (Rutter et al)y
- Continuity hypothesis (Sroufe et al)
- Temperament hypothesis: Kagan suggested that innate emotional personality determines attachments.
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Strange Situation
- Ainsworth et al - a systematic test of attachment to one caregiver, a situation of mild stress
- Procedure - observations every 15 seconds of behaviours: contact seeking or contact avoidance
Behaviours assesed - seperation anxiety, reunion behaviour, stranger anxiety, secure base. - Findings; types of attachment: secure (65%), insecure-avoidant (22%), insecure-resistant (12%)
Evaluation:
- Other types of attachment - disorganised
- High reliability - inter-observer reliability >.94
- Real-world application: Circle of Security Project
- Low internal validity
- Maternal reflexive functioning: Raval et al - low correlation betweem naternal sensitivity and strength of attachment
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Cultural variations
- Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg - meta-analysis of 32 studies using the **, from 8 countries
- Findings: secure attachment was the norm, greater variation within countries than between.
- Cultural similarities - Efe infants (Tronick et al)
- Cultural differences -more insecure attachments in German sample (Grossman and Grossman)
- Cultural differences - no avoidant attachment in Japan sample (Takahashi)
Evaluation
- Similarities may be due to global culture
- Within countries there are cultural differences - rural vs urban Japan (Ijzendoorn and Sagi)
- Cross-cultural research: uses tools developed in Western society in a different society where it has a different meaning (imposed etic)
- Cultural bias: Rothbaum argues that attachment theory = western bias
- Indigenous theories: may be the solution, Posada and Jacobs suggest there are universal attachment behaviours
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Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis
- Value of maternal care - children need a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with mother or appropriate substitute
- Critical period - frequent and/or prolonged seperations from a mother will have negative effects if they occur before 2½ (critical period) or up to 5 (sensitive period) if there is no substitute
- Long-term consequences - emotional maladjustment or mental illness e.g. depression.
- 44 juvenile thieves - findings: 86% of affectionless thieves had frequent seperations before 2 compared with 17% of other thieves and 2% of the control group.
Evaluation:
- Emotional rather than physical seperation is harmful (Radke-Yarrow et al)
- Support for long-term effects (Bifulco et al)
- Real world application - Laura's films brought about social change in hospitals (Bowlby and Robertson).
- Individual differences - some children are more resillient, e.g. securely attached children in TB hospital (Bowlby et al)
- Deprivation vs privation - loss of care (deprivation) may not have as serious consequences as total lack of attachment (privation) (Rutter)
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Romanian Orphans
- Rutter et al: 165 orphans w/ physical, cognitive + social development tested @ regular intervals
- Findings: @ 11, orphans adopted before 6 months = good recovery, older adoptees = disinhibited attachments
- Le Mare and Audet: orphans physically smaller @ adoption by recovered by 10 and a half
- Zeanah et al: institutionalised orphans likelier to display disinhibited attachments compared to control group
- Effects of institutionalisation: physical underdevelopment (deprivation dwarfism, Gardner), intellectual underfunctioning (Skodak and Skeels), disinhibited attachment, poor parenting (Quinton et al)
Evaluation
- Individual differences: some children recover despite no attachments
- Real-world: adoptions should be as early as possible so secure attachments can be formed (Singer et al)
- Deprivation is only one factor, maternal deprivation should not be overexaggerated
- Institutionalisation may just slow development rather than stop development: the children do recover suggesting that effects simply slow down development
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Influence of early attachment
- Internal working model - model of the world which enables individuals to predict and control their environment. Relates to a person's expectations about relationships.
- Hazan and Shaver placed a 'Love Quiz' in a newspaper and analysed 620 responses.
- Findings: positive relationships between attachment type (childhood and current type) and love experiences/attitudes (IWM)
- Behaviours influenced by IWM - childhood friendships (Minnesota Child-Parent study), poor parenting (Quinton et al), romantic reoationships (Hazan and Shaver) and mental heath (attachment disorder).
Evaluation:
- Correlational research: IWM may not cause later relationship experiences
- Retrospective classification: attachment type may be based on innacurate memories
- Support from longitudinal study (Simpson et al)
- Overly deterministic: past attachment experiences do not always determine future relationships
- Low correlations: meta-analysis suggest correlations between early attachment and later relationships may be as low as .10.
- Alternative explaination: adult relationships guided by self-verification
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