Attachment

• Attachment: A close, two-way emotional bond between two individuals wherein each person sees the other as essential to their own emotional security.
  • Shown by: Proximity; separation distress; secure-base behaviour.

• Reciprocity: Responding to each other's signals and each illicits a response from the other.
  • Mothers respond to infant alertness 2/3 of the time (Feldman and Eidelman 2007); reciprocity increases in frequency from around 3 months of age; babies take an active role because they too initiate infant-caregiver interaction; described as a "dance" because they respond to each other's moves (Brazleton et al. 1975).

• Interactional synchrony: Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other in a synchronised way. 
  • Meltzoff and Moore (1977) found an association between the expression or gesture of the adult and the actions of the baby; Isabella et al. (1989) found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachment.

• Strengths: Many studies have shown the same patterns of interaction (Gratier 2003); research support has good validity as babies' behaviour does not change in response to observation; well controlled and detailed procedures used in research; semi-structured interviews are ethical and give the answers you want, plus extra detail.

• Limitations: We don't know the infant's perspective, so we can't be sure that interaction has special meaning; observation doesn't tell us the purpose of reciprocity and interactional synchrony; socially sensitive research r.e. working mothers (Isabella et al.'s 1989 research implies that mothers shouldn't go back to work so soon); research has low temporal validity due to changing social roles; can't be generalised; interviewees could lie.

• Parent-infant attachment: Most babies become attached to their mother around 7 months of age, and then formed secondary attachments. In 75% of cases, attachment to the father was formed by 18 months (Schaffer and Emerson 1964). Attachment to the father was measured by separation anxiety.

• The role of the father: Quality of infant attachment with mothers but not fathers was related to children's attachment in adolescence. The quality of a father's play with infants was related to to the quality of adolescent attachment. This suggests that a father's role is more to do with play and stimulation than with nurturing (Grossman 2002).

• Fathers as primary carers: The key to an attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent (Field 1978).

• Strengths: Hormones could make women more inclined to be primary caregivers; research into the role of the father has allowed psychologists to advise parents on their children's development.

• Limitations: Hard to answer what the role of the father is as some psychologists see them as primary attachments and others as secondary; children in single or same-sex parent families don't develop any differently from 2-parent heterosexual families, suggesting that fathers as secondary attachment figures aren't important; research lacks temporal validity due to changing gender roles.

• 60 working class Glaswegian babies visited at home every month for a year, and then again at 18 months. Mothers are asked about stranger and separation anxiety using 7 everyday scenarios.
• 50% showed separation anxiety (usually towards mother) between 25-32 weeks; attachment tended to be towards the most sensitive and attentive caregiver; by 40 weeks, 80% had sepcific attachment and 30% had multiple attachments.

Evaluation:

• Strengths: Good external validity due to natural setting and reporting back reduces the influence of the researcher on the babies; longitudinal design has better internal validity than a cross-sectional design due to the lack of participant variables; semi-structured interviews are ethical and give the answers you want, plus extra detail.

• Limitations: Research lacks temporal validity, limited generalisation due to limited sample characteristics; interviewees could lie.

1) Asocial stage (first few weeks): Behaviour towards humans and non-humans is similar, but babies prefer familiar adults and human company.

2) Indiscriminate attachment: From 2-7 months, babies show a preference for familiar people and will usually accept comfort from any adult. They don't usually show stranger or separation anxiety.

3) Specific attachment: From around 7 months, most babies show separation anxiety from one partiular adult. This is the mother in 65% of cases. This adult is the primary attachment figure. This is the person who offers the most interaction and responds to the baby with the most skill. 

4) Multiple attachments: Refers to attachment with two or more people with whom the baby regularly spends time. In Schaffer and Emerson's study, 29% had secondary attachments within a month of forming primary attachments.

• Strengths: Useful in social work for determining neglect or learning difficulties by providing a benchmark for comparison.

• Limitations: Problems studying the asocial stage as babies are immobile at this time so it is hard to make judgements based on observations; conflicting evidence for multiple attachments (collectivist cultures show multiple attachments from the outset (Van Ijzendoorn 1993); some research shows that primary attachment comes before secondary (Bowlby 1969); problems measuring multiple attachment as Bowlby (1969) pointed out that separation distress does not always equal attachment, eg. with playmates.

• Half a clutch of geese were selected to be raised by Lorenz, and the other half by their mother.
• Lorenz found that the critical period for attachment needed to take place within a few hours from hatching. The experimental group followed Lorenz, even when mixed with the control group, showing that they had imprinted on him.
• Lorenz's 1952 peacock case study showed that animals would only display courtship behaviour towards their imprinted species.

Evaluation:

• Strengths: Useful in understanding animal attachment

• Limitations: Hard to generalise to humans as we are able to form attachments at any age and tend to be more emotionally attached to our young; Guiton et al. (1966) questioned the permanence of sexual imprinting  as chickens imprinted on yellow gloves soon preferred to mate with other chickens, casting doubt on validity.

• Monkeys preferred the cloth mother to the wire one, regardless of which one dispensed milk, showing the importance of contact comfort. 
• Shows a critical period of 90 days and the effects of maternal deprivation, as Harlow's monkeys grew up to be asocial, aggressive and negligent of their young.

Evaluation:

• Strengths: Theoretical value (shows the impact of contact comfort and the importance of early relationships in development); practical value in social work and the care of captive monkeys; ethics are justified through gain.

• Limitations: Ethical issues due to suffering caused; hard to generalise primates to humans as we tend to have more emotional attachment to our young and can form attachments at any time.

Dollard and Miller (1950) proposed that infant-caregiver attachment develops through "cupboard love", as children learn to love whoever feeds them.

• Attachment through classical conditioning: Food is the unconditioned stimulus → Pleasure from eating is the unconditioned response → The caregiver starts as a neutral stimulus → Caregiver becomes associated with food and becomes a conditioned stimulus → Caregiver produces the conditioned response of love.

• Attachment though operant conditioning: If crying is met with food, it is positively reinforced and will continue. Crying is then directed towards the caregiver who provides the correct "social suppressor" behaviour. Mutual reinforcement strengthens attachment as the baby is positively reinforced with food and the caregiver is negatively reinforced because crying stops.

• Attachment as a secondary drive: Sears et al. (1957) suggested that, as caregivers provide food, the primary drive of hunger becomes generalised to them. Thus, attachment is a secondary drive learned by an association between the caregiver and the satisfaction of a primary drive.

• Strengths: Credible as it shows cause and effect relationships; supported by a newer learning theory explanation (Hay and Vespo 1988 → Children taught to love through modelling and reinforcement of attachment behaviour). 

• Limitations: Counter-evidence from animal research (attachment didn't occur as a result of feeding in Lorenz and Harlow's research); counter-evidence from human research (Schaffer and Emerson found that 65% of babies attached to their mothers, even if other caregivers did most of the feeding); reductionist as cupboard love can't explain reciprocity and interactional synchrony (Isabella et al. 1989); reductionist as it only accounts for the physical drive of hunger.

• Monotropy: Children form a singular important attachment with a caregiver (AKA mother). The more time spent with this primary caregiver, the better.
  • The law of continuity states that the more constant and predictable a child's care, the better the quality of their attachment. 
  • The law of accumulated separation states that the effects of every separation from the primary attachment figure add up "and the safest dose is therefore a zero dose".

• Social releasers: Actions that encourage attention from adults, e.g. cooing or crying. These are innate.

• Critical period: This refers to the time where an attachment must form for one to form at all. Bowlby proposed that this occurs around 2 years of age, wherein the infant attachment system is active. This is viewed as more of a sensitive period, as children will find it harder to form attachments if they don't have one by this age.

• Internal working models: The mental representations we all carry with us of our attachment to our primary caregivers. These are important in affecting our future relationships because they carry our perception of what relationships are like.

• Strengths: Support for social releasers (Brazleton et al. 1975 → babies stopped releaser action when ignored); support for internal working models (Bailey et al. 2001 → Mothers who classified their parental attachment as poor were more likely to have poor attachment with their own baby); scientific because it is testable and suggests cause and effect relationships; useful in psychotherapy as this theory can help people understand their problems; useful in social work as this can explain anti-social behaviour.

• Limitations: Mixed evidence for monotropy (Schaffer and Emerson found a minority of babies formed multiple attachments straight away; Van Ijzendoorn 1993 found that babies in collectivist cultures could form multiple attachments from the off); culture bound (Van Ijzendoorn 1993); monotropy is a socially sensitive idea as the law of accumulated separation places blame on mothers for choosing to go back to work; reductionist as temperament is ignored which is an important factor in the likelihood of stranger or separation anxiety.

• A controlled observation designed to test attachment security. Infants are assessed on their response to playing in an unfamiliar room, being left alone, left with a stranger and reunited with a caregiver. This takes place in a lab with a two-way mirror. This takes place over seven episodes in three minute intervals.
• Behaviours used to judge attachment included: proximity seeking; exploration and secure-base behaviour; stranger anxiety; separation anxiety and response to reunion.

Attachment types found:

• Type B) Secure attachment: Shown by moderate stranger and separation anxiety and ease of comfort upon reunion. This type is associated with the most psychologically healthy outcomes, and about 60-75% of British toddlers are classified as secure.
• Type A) Insecure-avoidant attachment: Shown by low stranger and separation anxiety and little response to reunion- i.e. weak attachment as the caregiver is avoided. About 20-25% of British toddlers are classed as insecure-avoidant.
• Type C) Insecure resistant attachment: Strong attachment and high anxiety, but resistant to comfort upon reunion. About 3% of British toddlers are insecure-resistant.

• Strengths: Support for validity (attachment is strongly predictive of later development); good inter-observer reliability due to behavioural categories and controlled conditions (Bick et al. 2012 found a 94% agreement rate between observers); easy to replicate due to standardised procedure; high mundane realism due to real-life procedure; useful in social work for predicting later development. 

• Limitations:Test may be culture bound (Takashi 1990 found that the test wouldn't work in Japan as mothers were rarely separated from their babies); temperament could be a confounding variable; doesn't account for disorganised attachment; new environment and short time span lowers mundane realism.

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg 1988:

• 32 Strange Situations across 8 countries, comprised of 1990 children, were meta-analysed.
• Secure attachment was the most common (75% British, 50% Chinese); insecure-resistant was the least common (3% British, 30% Israel); insecure-avoidant most common in Germany and least common in Japan; 15 US studies showed the most variation.

Italian Study: Simonella et al. 2014

• 76 12-month olds assessed using the Strange Situation. 
• 50% secure; 36% insecure-avoidant. Reduction in secure attachment may be due to long hours and professional childcare.

Korean Study: Jin et al. 2012 

• Meta-analysis of Korean Strange Situations with other countries. 
• Most were secure, and distribution was similiar to Japan due to similar child rearing styles. 

Conclusion: Secure attachment is the most common type of attachment, supporting Bowlby's idea that it is innate. Culture influences attachment.

• Strengths: Research uses large sample (reduces impact of anomalies); alternative explanation for cultural similarity (Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonberg proposed that media influences cultural differences).

• Limitations: Samples tend to be unrepresentative of culture as research is conducted by country (Van Ijzendoorn and Sagi 2001 found difference between Tokyo and rural Japan); method of assessment is biased (Can an Anglo-American method be applied elsewhere as insecure-avoidance could be percieved as independence in Germany); Strange Situation is reductionist because it ignores temperament.

• Maternal deprivation refers to prolonged separation from the mother, wherein the child lacks an element of her care. Bowlby proposed that continuous maternal care is essential for normal psychological development and that prolonged separation causes emotional and intellectual damage, such as affectionless psychopathy and mental retardation.
  • Damage to intellectual development is supported by Goldfarb's 1947 research, as children who remained in institutions had lower IQs than ones who were fostered because they had a lower standard of emotional care.

• The Critical Period: Bowlby proposed that maternal deprivation in the first 30 months of life made psychological damage inevitable.

• 44 teens accused of stealing were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy, and their families were also interviewed to see if the teen had been subject to prolonged maternal separation during the critical period, compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal but emotionally disturbed teens.
• 14/44 affectionless psychopaths; 12/14 had prolonged maternal separation; 2/44 of the control group had experienced early maternal separation. Bowlby concluded that maternal deprivation causes emotionless psychopathy.

• Strengths: Animal studies show the effects of maternal deprivation (Harlow's monkies); useful in psychotherapy and social work (e.g. implementing key workers and understanding the root cause of issues).

• Limitations: Evidence may be poor (interview bias in 44 thieves; trauma of war orphans not accounted for; deprived of much care in institutions); counter-evidence (Lewis 1954 reproduced the 44 Thieves Study with 500 particpants and found that deprivation did not predict later development and implies that other factors may play a part); critical period more of a sensitive period (emotional damage not inevitable; twin boys locked in a cupboard from 18 months to 7 years made a full recovery in the care of two loving adults); failure to distinguish between deprivation and privation (Rutter proposed that long term damage was more likely to be because no attachments formed at all).

Rutter's English and Romanian Adoptee Study (2011):

• 165 Romanians adopted in Britain were assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 to see the extent to which good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions. 52 British adoptees served as a control group.
• Upon arrival to the UK, half the adoptees showed signs of mental retardation. Those adopted before 6 months of age had a higher mean IQ than those adopted afterwards, with those adopted after tge age of 2 having the lowest mean IQ. Children adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment.

The Bucharest Early Intervention Project- Zeanah et al. (2005):

• Measured the attachment types of 95 institutionalised children aged 12-31 months using the Strange Situation. The average child had spent 90% of their life in care. They were compared to a control group of 50 children who had never been in care.
• 74% of the control group were securely attached compared to 19% of the institutionalised group, 65% of whom were deemed to have disorganised attachment. 

• Strengths: Real-life application (shows effects of institutionalisation, so key workers should be implemented); fewer extraneous variables than other orphan studies due to reduced prior trauma; methodology of random allocation removes the confounding variable of parents choosing adoptees as these children may be dispositionally inclined to form better attachments; temporal validity as findings are still used today; reliable as IQ tests are an accepted form of measurement; test-retest reliability as Zeanah and Rutter found the same thing; unique sample due to Romania's five child policy; scientific method due to cause and effect relationships.

• Limitations: Lacks generalisability due to unusually poor care and mental stimulation in Romanian orphanages; ethical issues in random allocation as orphans were randomly picked for fostering or institutional care; long-term effects of institutionalisation not clear; correlation does not imply causation; limited population validity due to 260 participants; consent of orphans not given due to age and mental retardation; socially sensitive research as it implies that putting your child in to care would cause them to have disinhibited attachment.

• Internal working models carry our perception of later relationships.

• Relationships in later childhood: Kerns (1994) found that securely attached children go on to have the best quality friendships; Myron-Wilson and Smith assessed 196 7-11 year olds and found that secure children were unlikely to be involved in bullying, while insecure-avoidant children were more likely to be victims and insecure-resistant children were more likely to be bullies.

• Relationships in adulthood with romantic partners: McCarthy (1999) found that childhood attachment later relationships, as secure women had the best relationships; Hazan and Shaver (1987) found that secure attachments had better and longer relationships in their love quiz.

• Relationships in adulthood as a parent: Attachment type tends to be passed through generations as parenting is usually based on your internal working model; Bailey et al. (2007) found that the majority of mothers- of the 99 assessed- had the same attachment classification with both their baby and their own mother.

• Strengths: Research support from McCarthy 1999 (supports internal working models as secure women had the best relationships); Bailey et al. 2007 (mothers mostly had the same attachment with their babies as with their own mothers) and Hazan and Shaver 1987 (securely attached had the best relationships, as shown by their love quiz); shows cause and effect relationships; useful in psychotherapy for explaining later development.

• Limitations: Counter-evidence for the importance of internal working models (Zimmerman 2000 found little relationship between between infant and adolescent attachment); most studies have validity issues (retrospect, accuracy of recall and honesty); correllation does not imply causation; reductionist as temperament and parenting styles is ignores; internal working models are probabalistic (insecure attachment doesn't doom you to bad relationships); internal working models are untestable because it is unconscious process; low internal validity in Hazan and Shaver's research due to the use of questionnaires.