Attachment

Reciprocity

• Where one person responds to another
• With regards to caregiver infant interactions, this involves the caregiver and the baby responding to each other's verbal signals and facial expressions
• Brazelton et al. found that children as young as 2 weeks old can attempt to copy their caregiver, who in turn responds to the child’s signals 2/3 of the time

Interactional synchrony 

• A special form of reciprocity, in which one individual mirrors the action of the other
• It can be defined as the coordination of micro level behaviour
• Meltzoff and Moore observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks
  • An adult displayed 1/3 facial expressions or gestures and the child’s response was filmed
  • A correlation was found between the expression/gesture and the action of the child
• Isabelle et al observed 20 mothers and infants together and assessed the degree of interactional synchrony and the quality of the attachment
  • The researchers found that high levels of interactional synchrony correlated with better quality mother-infant attachment

(+) Research uses well-controlled procedures - high validity

• The filming of the interactions allows very fine details of behavior to be recorded and analysed later
• Babies do not know they are being observed - no demand characteristics - as the babies have no knowledge of being studied, they will not adjust their behaviour

(+) Interactional synchrony research has real life applications

• Crotwell et al - found that a 10 minute Parent Child Interaction Therapy session improved interactional synchrony in 20 low income groups and their pre-school infants
• Could lead to valuable methods for improving mother-infant attachments, particularly in at risk groups

(-) Research is socially sensitive

• Suggests that children may be disadvantaged by poor child rearing practises - mothers may feel unable to return to work as this would restrict the opportunity for interactional synchrony
• Families may feel forced into a position which is not best for them economically

Grossmann

• Carried out a longitudinal study looking at parent’s behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens
• This research found that quality of attachment with the father was less important than in the attachment type of teens compared with the quality of attachment with the mother
• This suggests that fathers may be less important in terms of long term emotional development
• However, the quality of father’s play with infants was related to children’s attachments, suggesting that fathers do have a different role in attachment - one that is more to do with play and stimulation, and less to do with nurturing

Field

• Showed that primary caregiver fathers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers
• This suggests that the father can act as a more nurturing attachment figure in the absence of the mother - the key to the attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness not the gender of the parent

(+) Research has important economic implications

• Field's research puts less pressure on mothers who feel they have to stay home
• Modern families are better equipped with regards to their own finances and can better contribute to the economy of the country

(-) Research fails to provide a clear answer about the role of the father

• In particular, why is it that the mother is the primary attachment figure in the majority of cases
• Could be related to traditional gender roles, or it could be that women are biologically predisposed to be primary attachment figures
• Research is limited as it cannot tell us the reasoning behind fathers tending to form secondary attachment relationships with their children 

(-) Social biases prevent objective interpretation

• Stereotypes may cause unintentional observer bias whereby observers ‘see’ what they expect eg. in Grossman’s study (fathers expected to be more playful)
• Conclusions on the role of the father in attachment are hard to disentangle from social biases about their role

1. Asocial stage (first few weeks) - the babies behaviour towards inanimate objects and humans is quite similar, they show some preference for familiar adults and are happier in the presence of other humans

2. Indiscriminate attachment (2 - 7 months) - babies display more observable social behavior, with preference for people and in particular familiarly adults, they do not show separation or stranger anxiety, and attachment is the same towards all (hence ‘indiscriminate’)

4. Specific attachment formed with a primary attachment figure from around 7 months - the baby will show stranger and separation anxiety when separated from this figure, who is the person who offers the most interaction and responds to the babies ‘signals’ with the most skill (the mother in 65% of cases)

5. Within a month of forming a primary attachment, 29% of babies had formed a secondary attachment in Schaffer and Emerson’s study, and by the age of one year the majority of infants had formed multiple attachments

(+) Study which provided evidence for the stages was high in external validity

• Most of the observations made were made by parents during ordinary activities  - highly likely they behaved naturally while being observed
• No demand characteristics 

(-) Issues studying the asocial stage

• Iimportant interactions take place during this stage, but young babies have poor coordination and are fairly immobile - difficult to make judgements based on observations of their behaviour
• Babies may actually be quite social - questions Schaffer’s description of the asocial stage

(-) May be a problem with assessing multiple attachment

• Just because a baby gets distressed when an individual leaves the room does not necessarily mean that the individual is a ‘true’ attachment figure
• Children may be distressed when a playmate leaves the room, but this does not signify attachment to them (Bowlby)
• Stages do not distinguish between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and towards playmates - stages are not as clearly defined as they first appear 

• Studied 60 babies from Glasgow, mostly from working class families
• Babies and their mothers were visited at home every month for a year and at 18 months
• Separation anxiety was measured by asking mothers about their children’s behaviour during everyday separations (eg. adult leaving the room)
• Stranger anxiety was measured by asking mothers questions about their children’s anxiety response to unfamiliar adults
• 50% of babies shows separation anxiety towards a particular adult between 25 and 32 weeks - primary attachment had been formed
• They found that 29% of babies had formed a secondary attachment a month after the formation of a primary attachment, and that the majority of children had formed multiple attachments by the age of one year

(+) High external validity

• Most of the observations were made by parents during ordinary activities - highly likely the babies behaved naturally while being observed
• No demand characteristics, increasing the strength of Schaffer’s conclusions 

(+) Longitudinal study

• Cross sectional design would have been a quicker alternative - would have affected the ability to draw causal conclusions between the stage and current state of their attachments - could have been due to differing individual characteristics, such as temperament
• As the same children were studied, and they all seem to follow the same stages, this increases our confidence in the validity of the findings 

(-) Problem with assessing multiple attachments

• Schaffer and Emerson’s method of assessing the different attachment types does not distinguish between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and towards playmates - conclusions regarding primary and multiple attachments may in fact overlap, which potentially impacts the strength of the findings

• Lorenz demonstrated the concept of imprinting
• Lorenz showed that imprinting occurred in a clutch of goose eggs, where half attached to and followed Lorenz after seeing him as the first moving person after birth (hatched them in an incubator) while a control grouphatched in their natural environment followed the mother
• He found that imprinting/ the formation of an attachment must occur within the critical period of attachment development, which is usually the first 30 months of life, after which an attachment is not possible and the consequences of a failure to form an attachment are irreversible
• Sexual imprinting is also a similar idea, where animals will attach to and display sexual behaviours towards the first moving object or animal they see directly after birth
  • Lorenz reported of a case of a peacock who was born surrounded by turtles, and so only desired to mate with turtles in later life

(+) Further support for imprinting

• Guiton found that chicks imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try and mate with them as adults
• Suggests Lorenz's suggestion that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object in the critical window of development
• HOWEVER: Guiton also found that with experience, the chicks learnt to mate with their own kind - suggests that the effects of imprinting are not as long-lasting as Lorenz believed. 

(-) Generalisability

• The mammalian attachment system is different to that of birds, for example mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young

• Harlow reared 16 rhesus monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’
• In one condition, milk was dispensed by the plain wire ‘mother’
• In a second condition, it was dispensed by the cloth-covered ‘mothers’
• The monkey’s preferences were measured
• As a further measure of attachment-like behavior, the reactions of the monkey's to more frightening situations were observed
  • For example, Harlow placed the monkeys in novel situations with novel objects. He also added a noise making teddy bear to the environment
• The monkeys were also studied into adulthood
• Baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one, regardless of which dispensed milk - suggests that contact comfort was of more importance than food when it came to attachment behaviour
• This is further reinforced by the fact that the monkeys sought comfort from the cloth mother when frightened
• As adults, the monkeys that had been deprived of their real mothers suffered severe consequences: they were more aggressive, less sociable and less skilled in mating than other monkeys
  • They also neglected and sometimes killed their own offspring

(+) Important practical implications

• It has helped social workers understand risk factors in child abuse and so intervene to prevent it
• We now also understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild

(-) Generalisability

• Although monkeys are clearly more similar to humans than Lorenz’s geese, they are still not human
• For example, human babies develop speech-like communication (‘babbling’), which may influence the formation of attachments

• Emphasises the role of food in attachment formation
• Suggests that children learn to love whoever feeds them through classical conditioning
  • The child associates the pleasure of food with the caregiver, who turns from a neutral stimulus to a conditioned stimulus due to this association
  • Once conditioning has taken place the sight of the caregiver produces the conditioned response of pleasure
• Attachment is further developed through operant conditioning - crying is positively reinforced for the baby (pleasurable consequence - feeding), and negatively reinforced for the caregiver (feeding stops baby crying), and this interplay strengthens the attachment
• As well as conditioning, learning theory draws on the concept of drive reduction. Hunger can often be thought of as a primary drive
  • It is an innate biological motivator - we are motivated to eat in order to reduce the hunger drive
  • Sears et al suggested that as the caregiver provides food to relieve hunger this feeling becomes generalised to them
  • Attachment is therefore a secondary drive learned by association between the caregiver and the satisfaction of a primary drive (food)

(-) Animal studies provide contradictory evidence

• Lorenz’s imprinting geese maintained attachments regardless of who fed them, Harlow’s monkeys attached to a soft surrogate in preference to a wire one with milk
• In both these animal studies, attachment did not develop as a result of feeding
• The same must be true for humans - learning theorists believe that the processes that govern all behaviour are the same in humans and non-humans

(-) Human studies provide contradictory evidence

• Schaffer and Emerson showed that for many babies a primary attachment was not to the person who fed them

(-) Ignores other factors linked with attachment formation

• Research shows that quality of attachment is associated with developing reciprocity and good levels of interactional synchrony, and that the best quality attachments are with sensitive carers who pick up infant signals and respond appropriately
• It is very difficult to reconcile these feelings with the idea that attachment develops primarily through feeding

• Bowlby gave an evolutionary explanation: that attachment is an innate system that gives a survival advantage
• Imprinting and attachment evolved because they ensure young animals stay close to their caregivers and this protects them from hazards
• Bowlby’s theory is described as monotropic because of the emphasis on the child’s attachment to one caregiver, which is thought to be different and more important compared to other attachments
• Bowlby proposed that babies are born with social releasers - these are innate, ‘cute’ behaviours (eg. smiling, cooing) that encourage attention from adults
  • The purpose of these social releasers is to activate the adult attachment system; Bowlby realized that attachment is a reciprocal system
• Bowlby suggested that if a child has not formed an attachment by the age of two years (sensitive period), they will find it much harder to form attachments later on
• Bowlby also proposed the concept of an internal working model, which are the mental representations we all carry with us of our attachment to our primary caregiver
  • They are important in affecting our future relationships because they carry our perception of what relationships are like

(+) Support for the role of social releasers

• Brazelton et al instructed primary attachment figures to ignore their babies social releasers
• Babies (who were previously shown to be normally responsive) initially showed some distress, but eventually some curled up and lay motionless - supports Bowlby's ideas about the significance of infant social behaviour 

(+) Support for the concept of an internal working model 

• IWM predicts that patterns of attachment will be passed from one generation to the next
• Bailey et al studied 99 mothers; those with poor attachment to their own parents were more likely to have one year olds who were poorly attached

(-) Contradictory evidence for monotropy

• Schaffer and Emerson - a significant minority formed multiple attachments at the same time
• van Ijzendoorn and Kronenberg - found that monotropy is scarce in collectivist cultures where the whole family is involved in raising and looking after the child
• Bowlby's theory is not universal

• The Strange Situation was a controlled observation conducted through a two way mirror
• Five categories were used to judge attachment quality: proximity seeking exploration and secure-base behavior, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, response to reunion after separation to a short period of time
• The procedure has 7 ‘episodes’, each lasting 3 minutes, involving the child being encouraged to explore, the introduction of a stranger and the child being left alone and then with the stranger (without caregiver)

Ainsworth found distinct patterns in the way infants behaved, and from this she identified three main types of attachment:

• Secure attachment (60 - 75% of British toddlers) - shown by moderate stranger and separation anxiety, and ease of comfort at reunion
• Insecure-avoidant attachment (20 - 25% of British toddlers) - shown by low stranger and separation anxiety, and little response to reunion - an avoidance of the caregiver
• Insecure-resistant attachment (3% of British toddlers) - shown by high levels of stranger and separation anxiety and by resistance to be comforted at reunion

(+) Predictive validity

• Secure babies have greater success at school and more lasting romantic relationships, insecure-resistant attachment is associated with the worst outcomes, eg. bullying and adult mental health problems
• This is evidence for the validity of the concept because it can explain future outcomes

(+) Good inter-rater reliability

• Bick et al. found 94% agreement in one team - may be because the Strange Situation takes place under controlled conditions and the behavioural categories are easy to observe
• We can be confident that the attachment type of an infant on the Strange Situation does not just depend on who is observing them

(-) May be culture bound

• Cultural differences in children's experiences mean they respond differently
• Caregivers from different cultures behave differently - Japanese mothers are rarely separated from infants thus the infants show high level of separation anxiety (Takahashi)
• Suggests that the findings are culture bound lack ecological validity

• van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg study looked at the proportions of secure, insecure avoidant and insecure-resistant attachments across a range of countries
• They also looked at the differences within the same countries to get an idea of variations within a culture
• They found 32 studies of attachment where the Strange Situation had been used
  • These were conducted in 8 countries, 15 of the studies being from the USA
  • Overall these studies yielded results for 1 990 children
• The data was meta analysed, results being combined and weighted for sample size
• It was found that secure attachment was the most common classification in all countries, but varied from 50% in China to 75% in Britain
• In individualist cultures, rates of insecure resistant attachment were similar to that of Ainsworth’s original study, but in collectivist cultures rates were significantly higher
• This suggests there were cultural differences in the distribution of insecure attachment
• It was also found that variations between results of studies within the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries

(+) Very large sample size

• Nearly 2 000 babes and their primary attachment figures - increases the internal validity by reducing the impact of biased methodology or very unusual participants

(-) Samples may not be representative of cultures

• Made comparisons between countries, not cultures
• Within any country there are different cultures with different child-rearing practices - van Ijzendoorn and Sagifound attachment types in suburban Tokyo in similar proportions to Western studies, whereas a more rural sample overrepresented insecure-resistant individuals
• Therefore, comparisons between countries may have little meaning - the particular cultural characteristics (and thus caregiving styles of the sample) need to be specified

(-) Strange Situation may be biased towards Western culture

• May not be applicable to other cultures-  imposed etic
• In Germany lack of pressure on reunion might be seen more as interdependence than avoidance and not a sign of insecurity, so using data from Strange Situation studies may not be appropriate in investigating cultural variations in attachment

• Bowlby’s theory focuses on the idea that the continual presence of nurture from a mother/mother figure (substitute) is essential for normal psychological development of babies
• Extended separation (child not being physically in the presence of the primary attachment figure) during the critical period can lead to deprivation (losing emotional care as a result of the separation)
  • Deprivation can be avoided if emotional care is offered - separation doesn’t always cause deprivation
• Deprivation can result in negative consequences eg. an inability to form attachments in the future (lWM), affectionless psychopathy (being unable to feel remorse) and low IQ (Godfarb)

44 thieves study

• Bowlby’s 44 thieves study supports the idea that maternal deprivation can lead to affectionless psychopathy
• 14 of 44 ‘thieves’ (delinquent teenagers accused of stealing) could be described as affectionless psychopaths, and of these, 12 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives
• In contract only 5 of the remaining 30 ‘thieves’ had experienced separations - suggests that prolonged deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy

(+) Support from animal studies for the effects of maternal deprivation

• Levy et al showed that separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on social development
• Harlow found that rhesus monkeys separated from their mother suffered severe consequences

(-) Sources of human evidence are flawed

• Goldfarb studied war orphans who were traumatised and had poor after care - may have caused developmental difficulties farther than separation
• Children growing up in poor quality institutions were deprived of many aspects of care
• Bowlby carried out the assessments for affectionless psychopathy and the family interviews himself - researcher bias

(-) Replications do not support Bowlby's findings

• Lewis partially replicated the 44 thieves study, looking at 500 young people
• Early prolonged maternal separation did not predict criminality or difficulty forming close relationships - other factors may influence the effects of maternal separation

• Rutter et al studied a group of about 165 Romanian orphans and assessed them at four, six and eleven years old, in terms of psychological, emotional and physical development
• These results were compared to 50 children adopted in Britain at roughly the same time, which acted as a control group
• The mean IQ was dependent upon the age of which the orphans were adopted
  • For example, those adopted before 6 months of age had an IQ 25 points higher than those adopted after 2 years of age
• Those adopted after 6 months displayed signs of disinhibited attachment (a type of disorganised attachment), whereas those adopted before 6 months rarely showed such signs
  • This is characterised by attention-seeking and affectionate behaviour being shown towards any or all adults, and is thought to be the result of having too many caregivers within the critical period of attachment formation, so a secure attachment cannot be developed
• A full recovery could be made if adoption occurred before the age of 6 months. This includes both emotional and intellectual developmental recoveries. 

(+) Rutter's research has fewer CVs than other research

• Orphans were abandoned at birth so he was able to study the effects of institutionalisation in isolation - there were no CVs such as PTSD and trauma often associated with war orphans

(+) Research has important practical implications

• Children’s homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child - hey have one or two ‘key workers’ who play a central role
• Gives the child a chance to develop normal attachments and avoid disinhibited attachments 

(-) Children were not randomly assigned to conditions

• Rutter et al did not interfere with the adoption process, so those children adopted early may have been more sociable ones, a confounding variable
• HOWEVER: the Bucharest Early Intervention Project randomly assigned the orphans to institutional care or foster thing, and this study produced similar results to that of Rutter et al - 65% of their sample of 95 orphans displayed signs of disorganised attachments, compared to only 20% of the healthy, non-deprived control group

• Bowlby suggested that there will be continuity between your experiences as a baby/your attachment type or quality, and your relationships later in life (in childhood and adulthood)
• He said that when we form our first main attachments, we form an internal working model, which is a mental template for what a relationship is and how to behave
• Kerns found that securely attached infants go on to form the best quality childhood friends
• Securely attached infants are less likely to be involved in bullying, whereas insecure-avoidant children are most likely to be the victims and insecure-resistant are more likely to be bullies, as shown by Myron-Wilson and Smith
• Hazan and Shaveranalysed 620 replies to a ‘love quiz’ printed in an American local newspaper
  • The quiz assessed three different aspects of relationships: respondent’s current and most important relationship, general love experiences and attachment type
  • 56% of respondents were identified as securely attached, with 25% insecure-avoidant and 19% insecure-resistant
  • Their attachment type was reflected in their romantic relationship - secure respondents were the most likely to have good and longer lasting romantic relationships, whereas avoidant respondent tended to be jealous and fear intimacy

(+) Support for the passing on of an IWM

• Bailey found that the majority of women (out of the 99 studied) had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mothers - supports the idea of continuity
• HOWEVER: Zimmerman assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attachments to parents and found very little relationship between the quality of infant and adolescent attachment. 

(-) Kerns and Myron-Wilson and Smith's research indicates associations not causation

• The child’s temperament may influence both infant attachment and the quality of later relationships - research cannot demonstrate a causal relationship 

(-) The influence of infant attachment on future relationships is exaggerated

• Suggesting that the influence of early attachments is deterministic, so a poor-quality attachment inevitably means that the individual will become bad parents themselves and be unable to form ‘normal’ romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood
• There are many cases of insecurely attached children growing to have strong happy relationships - we may risk becoming too pessimistic about people’s futures