Attachment

Attachment - an enduring, two-way emotional tie to a specific other person, normally between arent and child

• reciprocal, two way process which influences a child's physical neurological, cognitive and psychological development

Reciprocity - interactions result in mutual behaviour which both parties being able to produce responses from eachother, strengthening the attachment bond

e.g. parent responding to crying (positively or negatively) or mutual smiling

Interactional synchrony - behaviours of one or more individuals become synchronised. This starts from initial consolidation of biological rhythms during pregnancy, resulting in symbolic and often rhythmic exchanges

e.g. turn taking

• Feldman (2007) - from around 3 months interaction between mother and baby becomes more frequent and involves close attention to each others verbal signals and facial expressions

• Condon and Sanders (1974) - analysed video of infants movements and found they co-ordinated their actions in synch with adults' speech to form turn taking conversation

• Isabella et al (1989) infants with secure attachment bonds demonstarted more rec.and I.S during their first year of life so emotional intensity = more in synch

Difficult to study babies:

• no language
• same signal means different things to different babies
• Mother's reports may be subjective/ bias
• But researchers don't know them / objective

Pre-attachment phase

• birth - 3months. From 6 weeks they're attacted to other humans, preferring them to objects + smiling at them

Indiscriminate phase

• 3 months - 7/8 months. Begin to discriminate between familiar/un, smiling more at known but still allow strangers

Discriminate attachment phase

• from 7/8 months. begin specific attachments, staying close to them and becoming distressed when separated + avoid unfamiliar people and protest if strangers try to handle them

Multiple attachment phase

• 9 months onwards. Form strong emotional ties with other major caregivers e.g. grandparents, and non CG like other children. Fear of strangers weakens but attachment to mother figure still strongest

Hypothesis - human infant's bonding period takes longer than animals - 7/8 months

Study with 60 mothers and babies from working part of glasgow, interviewing mothers and observing behaviour, measuring separation anxiety and stranger distress by approaching them. Found four phases roughly tied to age of the child

Valuable research?

• No - interviewing mothers = bias/subjective
• No - not a large enough scale, all from same area/background = can't generalise
• Yes - longitudinal study = bigger picture

Are the stages of attachment valuable?

• Yes - makes sense that the longer you know someone, the more attached you are
• No - should do a longer period of time; seems to be older babies who watch strangers

John Bowlby 1950s - product of his time

• monotropy vital for the healthy psychological development of a child
• mother is vital
• other attachments could be made but they weren't that important

Rutter 1995

• proposed model of multiple attachments, all of equal importance to form a child's internal working model. Each figure is important for different things
• Mother (primary caregiver) - comfort, sensitivity and daily needs, go to when sad
• Father - playmate, go to when happy

Geiger 1966

• father's play interactions are more exciting and pleasurable, mother's are more nurturing and affectonate  = supports idea of playmate

Lamb 1987

• children interact more with fathers when in a positive emotional state and mothers when distressed or seeking comfort
• supports idea that fathers are preferred as caregivers in certain conditions

Schaffer also thought babies were capable of multiple attachments

changing social image

e.g. WW2, paternity leave, financial considerations, social change

Specific individual factors:

• Degree of sensitivity - more = stronger attachment
• Attachment with own parents - reflects in how he is as a parent
• Marital intimacy - amount of emotoional/physical intimacy         still revevant? single parents?
• Supportive co-parenting - working as a team

Lorenz studied imprinting in geese, finding that they imprint on the first thing that they see and following it as a survival technique (innate)

• experimental group of eggs saw him first - followed him
• control group saw mother goose as normal - followed mother goose
• Placed them all together then released - split to follow separate "mothers"
• = imprinting is a natural process + critical period of 32 hours, most imprint within 13-16 hours

Evaluate

• quacked at them = control external factorrs
• more ethical than testing on human babies, but cruel to the eggs taken away from geese
• he said it had a permanenet effect on mating behaviour, but Guiton et al found that chickens that imprinted on yellow gloves tried to mate with them as adults, but learnt with experience to change to ther chickens = impact of imprinting not as permanent as he said

Applied to humans?

• we're more advanced, longer life span (longer to attach) & have 1 baby

Reared baby monkeys in a cage with soft and wire/feeding "mothers". He found that they only went to the wire mothers for food, preferring the soft ones for comfort

Behavioural differences in surrogate mother monkey - more timid, didn't know how to react to other monkeys, easily bullied + wouldn't stand up for themselves, difficulty mating + females were inadequate mothers

= concluded for normal development they must have an object to cling to during critical period/first few months as it's a natural response to decrease stress. Like children, monkeys also need warmth and comfort

Evaluation

• Rhesus monkeys are closer to humans than geese, less ethical? more so than humans
• Stress experienced by trial monkey group + he mothers that they were taken away from

Results = changes in USA animal experiments + valuable in adoption scenarios for children and animals, so valuable conclusion

States that all behaviour is learnt from our upbringing and environment (including attachment)

Our behaviour is not innate, and doesn't depend on genetic factors

Learning takes place through associating 2 stimuli together, so we respond to them the same way

1. Food (unconditioned stimulus) = pleasure (unconditioned response)

2. Parent (neautral stimulus) = neautral response

3. Food (u.s) + parent (n.s) + time = pleasure (u.r)

4. Parent (conditioned stimulus) = pleasure (conditioned response)

So attachment is based on the association between parent and food to produce a happy response

Learning to/ not to repeat behaviour depending on consequences

• pleasant consequence = reinforced behaviour, likely to be repeated
• unpleasant consequence = less likely

Babies cry for comfort/food - receives food/comfort/reward - reinforces action, repetition likely

Caregiver goes to help crying baby - crying stops - negative reinforcement.

= Mutual reinforcement strenghthens attachment

• Harlow's monkeys - learning theory should mean they stayed on the wire mother, but they wanted the soft mother as mauch as they could so LT didn't happen

• Schaffer and Emmerson found 39% of first attchments formed by babies were made with people who didn't carry out physical care e.g. feeding. Many had child minders, but still bonded to their parents

• Ignores evidence that points to importance of evolutionary / instinctive aspects of attachment (as found by Bowlby)

Evolved mechanism to ensure survival

1. Monotropy - innate tendency to form a single primary attachment that's qualitatively different to any others

2. Adaptive - attachment is evolved to help with our survival, it's an ideal behaviour

3. Good quality caregiving - infants become attached best to those who respond to their social releasers

4. Internal model - mental model/template that forms the basis of all other relationships (romantic)

5. Critical period - 2.5 years for attachment or never, it will have an impact on psychological health (borrowed from ethologists who looked at rapid attachment in animals e.g. geese)

Schaffer and Emerson mixed evidence for monotropy

• Most babies attached to one person, but significant minority formed multiple attachments = it is possible!
• BUT Suess et al found motherly attachment was more important than the father in predicting later behaviour - mother or primary caregiver?

Bailey et al support for internal working model

• Mothers who reported poor attachment to their own parents in an interview were more likely to have children classified as poorly attached in their observation

Brazleton support for interactional synchrony / quality care

• Observed interactional synchrony and saw that when mothers ignored social releasers they showed distress then went motionless = signigicant effect from quality of caregiving

Tizard and Hodges against critical period

• adopted children formed attachment after 2.5 years

She did research with Bowlby in the 1950s into individual differences between bonds. Sample consisted of american middle class mothers and babies (12-18 months)

contolled observation measured infants' separation anxiety, willingness to explore, stranger anxiety and reunion behaviour.

• Observer shows  parent and infant into room then leaves (30 second)
• Parent watches baby play and explore (3 mins)
• Stranger enters, interacts with mother then plays with child, parent leaves (3 mins)
• stranger tries to play (3 mins)
• Reunion - mother returns and comforts the child then leaves again (3 mins)
• Infant alone (3 mins)
• Stranger enters and tries to comfort (3 mins)
• Parent comes back and comforts baby. stranger leaves. (3 mins)

found 3 different attachment types

• around 20% insecure avoidant - low distress
• around 70% secure - some distress
• around 10 % insecure resistant - high distress

three major explanations of differing attachment types

• parental sensitivity - sensitive others who respond to babies needs vs insensitive slow to react and distant ones
• infant temperament - innate differences in infants mental physical and emotional traits, e.g. infant that cries and doesn't sleep = exhausted, less responsive mother
• Family circumstance - social, cultural and environmental factors, such as differences in cultures

• covert observation = controlled/ easily replicated. Ecological validity low; would you be lefft with a stranger? or high; new situations

• Internal validity - could be measuring confidence around strangers e.g. if the child goes to nursery

• Replication - has been repeated with similar results

• Ethical? stress on infant

• Ethnocentric - evaluating other countries based on standard of our own / culurally bound

Ainsworth's research was ethnocentric as it focused on western ideals, other methods include

• Finland - don't go to school till 7yo
• Japan - co sleeping + respecting elders
• Korea - eating together all the time
• South Africa - share breastmilk

Van Lizendoorn et al (1998) carried out a meta-analysis of the strange situation comparing the results of 32 cross-cultural countries, studying 2000+ children to compare within an between cultures. Similarities suggested there may be uniersal characteristics underpinning infant-carer interactions, but differences suggest different child rearing practices has n impat on attachment.

• Germany = highest avoidant. Grossman et al suggests it's because they encourage independence and large interpersonal distance, weaning children off close physical contact early
• Israel = highest resistant. Segi et al suggest it's because some are reared comunally in Kibbutz, so are less reliant on one attachment figure
• Japan = high resistant. They're never left alone, co-sleeping till age 10, so exp. was v. stressful

• large sample (over 2000 children) = more reliable/ can generalise / increase internal validity

• comparison between countries not cultures, as can't allocate cul to coun. Still focused mostly on MEDC western countries

• S.S designed by US researcher on British theory = imposed etic - culture specific theory wrongly imposed on another culture, disregards cultural emic/uniqueness. E.g. Grossman shows independence may be seen as positive, not negative avoidance

Caused by absense of motherly love due to failure to form or loss of attachment. Predicts if they're deprived of primary caregiver during critical period there will be serious permanenet conseq.

• Emotionally disturbed behaviour - separation anxiety, clinging or detached behaviour, repeated in later life through internal working model
• Growth retardation - dwarfism/physicallyunderdeveloped despite normal food
• Depression - particularly anaclitic (reaction to loss of loved object) with sadness, insomnia, loss of weight
• Intellectual Retardation - lower adult IQ
• Affectionless Psychopath - act impulsively, little regard for consequence, no remorse/shame or concern for others. Can't form close or long lasting bonds
• Juvenile Delinquency - M.D large cause

He collected evidence while working at the London Child Guidance Clinic in the 1930s. He took a sample of 44 juvenile thieves, who were interviewed for affectionless psychopathy and their families for maternal deprivation. They were compared with another 44 who were also at the clinic who had no criminal record, but were emotionally disturbed and looked for maternal deprivation.

• 14/44 thieves were affectionless psychopaths, 12 of them had M.D in first 2 years
• 2/44 control group had MD
• = prolonged early separation causes affectionless psychopathy

Issues with research

• biased sample - bowlby chose it himself, majority of thieves not referred to children's clinics
• retrospective - relies on recall of past events
• Bowlby diagnosed affectionless psychopathy himself = more bias
• Correlation = doesn't show cause, other factors like culture, home environment, social class

• Goldfarb (1943) - compared institutionalised children living there for first 3 years to control group who were fostered/ adopted earlier. Institution had lower IQs, supporting intellectual retardation aspect

• Spitz and Wolf (1946) - studied 100 infants in south american orphanages and found severe depression, but would make a full recovery if they stayed less than 3 months. supports depression

• Harlow (1962) - his attachment deprived monkeys didn't interact normally with others, failing to form attachments to their own offspring. supports emotionally disturbed

• Followed a group of 100 romanian orphans over 15 years, assessing at 4, 6 and 11 years
• Compared R.O adopted by uk families before 6 months old, R.O adopted between 6 and 24 months, and UK adoptees who were initially in UK institutions

First adopted - most RO severely physically under developed + many mentally retarded. UK no serious physical or mental problems

Age 6 - UK and RO pre 6 months - majority no attachment disorder, few had mild characteristics.RO 6-24, a 1/4 showed characteristics of disinhibited attachment disorder (unusual social behaviour: attention seeking and indiscriminate friendliness despite environment change)

Age 11 - the RO who had showed disinhibited attachment signs still had this, and many of them were receiving help from special education or health services. UK = normal develpment

Majority of RO also showed signs of mental retardation, but pre 6month group caught up to control group by age 4 =  damage to intellectual development can be recovered if adoption takes places before 6 months/time attachment forms

Morison and Elwood (2005)

• found similar results with a group of RO adopted by Canadians = more reliable as results were repeatable / consistent

Methodology

• longitudinal = controlled, bigger picture, monitor change
• 3 groups including control group to compare 'normal' adoption
• abandoned at birth = study from beginning, reduce confounding variables

Real life application

• valuable in changing how institutions are run
• key worker in orphanages and care homes = develop normal attachment

Bowlby says IWM is unconscious, providing a template for all relationships. Loving mother = expect a loving partner. Cold mother = consider themselves unlovable + low self esteem

Also influences:

• Childhood friendships - securely attached children are more socially competent, so make friends more easily, are more popular and are less likely to feel isolated or be bullied
• Poor parenting skills - Harlow's research showed monkeys without attachment figures didn't make good parents. Quinton et al found similar patterns in humans
• Mental Health - attachment disorder is classified as a distinct disorder in DSMV. Depression and generalised anxiety disorders are associated with insecure attachment.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) extended Bowlby's idea or IWM with a 'love quiz' of nearly 100 questions in rocky mountain news newspaper. 620 replies that attachment type were linked to love experience and attitude.

Correlational - association is not causality, as other explanations for continuity are parenting style and child temperament

Determinism (behaviour controlled by internal and external forces, not our will) - Bowlby may have exaggerated, as Ann Clarke and Alan Clarke said influence in later life is probabilistic, there are increased chances, you're not doomed

Methodology

• sample from one area = can't generalise
• questionnaire -   easy for large sample, more honest
  • different definitions of 'strong relationships' + retrospective

Self report is conscious, IWM is not - indirect evidence