Attachment
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- Created on: 20-04-19 19:43
Introduction to Attachment
Caregiver-Infant Interaction
- Interactions - babies have frequent and important interactions with their caregiver
- Reciprocity - mothers respond to infant alertness; from 3 months close attention between mother and infant
- Interactional synchrony - interactions become co-ordinated; Isabella et al: quality of attachment related to synchrony
Evaluation
- Hard to know what is happening - can assume simple gestures/expressions are infant interactions
- Controlled observations - capture fine detail of interactions
- Purpose of synchrony and reciprocity - Feldman: just observations, purpose not entirely understood
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Introduction to Attachment
Attachment Figures
- Parent-infant - traditionally mother-infant, other attachment figures like the father may also be important
- Role of the father - Grossman et al: attachment to fathers less important but fathers may have a different role (play and stimulation)
- Fathers as primary carers - Field: fathers as primary carers adopt attachment behaviours more typical of mothers
Evaluation
- Inconsistent findings - different research questions, overall picture unclear
- Children without fathers aren't different - suggests the father role isn't important
- Fathers not primary attachments - may be due to traditional gender roles or biological differences
- Socially sensitive research - working mothers
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Schaffer's Stages of Attachment
Schaffer and Emerson
- To investigate the age of attachment formation and attachments are formed with
- Mothers of 60 Glaswegian babies reported monthly on separation anxiety
- 25-32 weeks - 50% of babies showed separation anxiety towards particualr adult
- In 65% of children, first specific attachment was to the mother
- In further 30% the mother was the first joint object of attachment
- 3% of fathers were first specific attachment
- 27% of fathers were first joint object of attachment
- 40 weeks - 80% of babies had a specific attachment, almost 30% displayed multiple attachments
- 75% had formed an attachment with the father by 18-months
Evaluation
- Good external validity - observations in participants' natural environment
- Longitudinal design - same participants at each age, eliminating individual differences
- Limited sample characteristics - all families from the same area + over 50-years ago so may lack generalisability
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Schaffer's Stages of Attachment
Stages of Attachment
- Asocial stage - little observable social behaviour
- Indiscriminate attachment - more observable attachment behaviour, e.g. accept cuddles from any adult
- Specific attachments - stranger and separation anxiety in regard to one particular adult
- Multiple attachments - attachment behaviour directed towards more than one adult
Evaluation
- Asocial stage - social behaviour is hard to observe in the first few weeks but this doesn't mean that the baby is 'asocial'
- Conflicting evidence - van Ljzendoorn et al: research in different contexts has found multiple attachments may appear first
- Measuring multiple attachments - just because a child protests when an adult leaves does not necessarily mean attachment
- Scaffer and Emerson used limited measures of attachment
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Animal Studies of Attachment
Lorenz's Research
- Goslings saw Lorenz or mother goose when they hatched
- Newly hatched chicks attach to the first moving object they see (imprinting)
- Sexual imprinting - adult birds try to mate with whatever species or object they imprint on
Evaluation
- Generalisability - birds and mammals have different attachment systems so Lorenz's results may not be relevent to humans
- Some observations questioned - Guiton et al: birds imprinting on rubber gloves did later prefer their own species
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Animal Studies of Attachment
Harlow's Research
- Baby monkeys given cloth or wire 'mother' with feeding bottle attached
- Monkeys clung to the cloth surrogate rather than the wire one, regardless of which dispensed milk
- Maternally deprived monkeys grew up socially dysfunctional
- Critical period - after 90-days attachments wouldn't form
Evaluation
- Theoretical value - demonstrated that attachment depends more on contact-comfort than feeding
- Practical value - Howe: informs understanding of risk factors for child abuse
- Ethical issues - suffering of the monkeys would be human-like
- Can Harlow's findings be applied to humans?
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Explanations of Attachment: Learning Theory
Learning Theory
- Classical conditioning - caregiver (NS) associated with food (UCS), caregiver becomes the conditioned stimulus
- Operant conditioning - crying behaviour reinforced positively for infant, and negatively for caregiver
- Attachment as a secondary drive - attachment becomes a secondary drive through association with hunger
Evaluation
- Animals studies - Lorenz and Harlow showed that feeding is not the key to attachment
- Human research - Scaffer + Efferson: most primary attachment figures were the mother even when others did most the feeding
- Ignores other factors - cannot account for the importance of sensitive and interactional synchrony
- Some elements of conditioning could still be involved
- There is a newer learning theory explanation
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Explanations of Attachment: Bowlby's Theory
Bowlby's Theory
- Monotropy - one particular attachment is different in quality and importance than others
- Social releasers + critical period - innate 'cute' behaviours in the first 2 years
- Internal working model - mental representations of the primary attachment relationship are templates for future relationships
Evaluation
- Mixed evidence for monotropy - some babies form multiple attachments without a primary attachment; Suess et al: other attachments may contribute as much as a primary one
- Support for social releasers - Brazleton et al: when social releasers were ignored babies were upset
- Support for internal working model - Bailey et al: quality of attachment is passed on through generations in families
- Monotropy is a socially sensitive idea
- Temperament may be as important as attachment
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Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Strange Situation
- 8-stage controlled observations
- Child + caregiver enter unfamiliar playroom
- Child is encouraged to explore
- Stranger comes in + tries to interact with child
- Caregiver leaves the child and stranger together
- Caregiver returns + stranger leaves
- Caregiver leaves the child alone
- Stranger returns
- Caregiver returns + is reunited with the child
- Assessed proximity seeking, exploration + secure base, stranger + separation anxiety, response to reunion
- Infants showed consistent patterns of attachment behaviour
- Three types of attachment
- Secure - enthusiastic greeting, generally content
- Insecure avoidant - avoids reunion, generally reduced responses
- Insecure resistant - resists reunion, generally more distressed
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Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Evaluation
- Support for validity - attachment type predicts later social and personal behaviour (e.g. bullying)
- Good reliability - different observers agree 90%+ of the time on children's attachment types
- Culture-bound - attachment behaviour may have different meanings in different cultures
- Strange Situation may be measuring different things
- What does the Strange Situation measure?
- There is at least one more attachment type
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Cultural Variations in Attachment
Studies
- Van Ljzendoorn
- Compared rates of attachment types in 8 countries
- Found more variation within than between countries
- Simonella et al
- Italian attachment rates have changed
- May be due to changing practices
- Jin et al
- Korean attachment rates similar to Japan
- Could be due to similar child-rearing styles
- It appears that attachment is innate and universal
- Secure attachment is the norm
- However, cultural practices affect rates of attachment types
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Cultural Variations in Attachment
Evaluation
- Large samples - reduces the impact of anomalous so improves internal validity
- Sample unrepresentative of cultures - countries do not equate to cultures nor to culturally specific methods of child-rearing so cannot make generalisations
- Method of assessment is biased - research using Strange Situation imposes a USA test on other cultures (imposed etic)
- Alternative explanation for similarity
- Strange Situation lacks validity
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Bowlby's Theory of Maternal Deprivation
Theory of Maternal Deprivation
- Separation vs deprivatoion - physical separation only leads to deprivation when the child loses emotional care
- Critical period - the first 30-months are critical and deprivation in that time causes damage
- Goldfarb: deprivastion causes low IQ
- Bowlby: emotional development, e.g. affectionless psychopathy
Bowlby's 44 Thieves Study
- Examine links between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation
- Sample of 44 criminal teenagers, accussed of stealing + control of 44 non-criminals
- Participants interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy (lack of affection, lack of guilt, lack of empathy)
- Families interviewed to establish if there was prolonged early separation from mothers
- 14/44 were affectionless psychopaths, 17/44 had maternal deprivation
- 12/14 had also experienced deprivation in first 2-years of their life
- Control: 2/44 had maternal deprivation, 0/44 were affectionless psychopaths
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Bowlby's Theory of Maternal Deprivation
Evaluation
- Evidence may be poor - orphans have experienced other traumas; Bowlby may have been a biased observer
- Counter-evidence - Lewis: sample of 500, no link between early separation and later criminality
- Sensitive period - Bowlby exaggerated the importance of the critical period
- Animal studies show effects of maternal deprivation on social development
- Failure to distinguish deprivation from privation
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Romanian Orphan Studies: Institutionalisation
Romanian Orphan Studies
- Rutter's ERA Study
- 165 orphans adopted in Britain
- Some of those adopted later show low IQ and disinhibited attachment
- Bucharest Early Intervention Project
- Random allocation to instutional care or fostering
- Secure attachment in 19% of instutuional group vs 74% in control
- Disinhibited attachment and delay in intellectual development if institutionalisation is prolonged
Evaluation
- Real-world application - both instituational care + adoption practices have been improved
- Lewer extraneous variables - Romanian orphans had fewer negative influences before institutionalisation than e.g. war orphans
- Romanian orphanages not typical - conditions were so bad that results may not generalise
- Ethical issues, especially Bucharest Early Intervention Project
- Practical applications to adoption and instituaional care practice
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Influence of Early Attachment on Later Relationshi
Attachment and Later Relationships
- Internal working model - Bowlby's idea that the primary attachment relationship provides a template for later relationships
- Relationships in later childhood - Kerns: securely attached children have better friendships; Myron-Wilson + Smith: securely attached children less likely to be involved in bullying
- Relationships with romantic partners - McCarthy: securely attached adults have better relationships with friends + partners
- Hazan + Shaver's 'Love Quiz'
- Analysed 620 replies from quiz in American newspaper
- 3 sections - current/most important relationship, general love experiences, + attachment type
- Found postitive correlation between attachment type and love experience
- Insecure-avoidant tended to reveal jealousy and fear of intimacy
- Hazan + Shaver's 'Love Quiz'
- Paternal relationships - Bailey et al: mothers' attachment type matched that of their mothers and their babies
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Influence of Early Attachment on Later Relationshi
Evaluation
- Evidence is mixed - Zimmerman et al: found little relationship between quality of attachment and later attachment
- Low validity - most studies assess infant attachment by retrospective self-report which lacks validity
- Association does not mean causation - a 3rd factor like temperament might affect both infant attachment and later relationships
- Influence of attachment is probabilistic
- Self-report is conscious but working models are not
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