Attachment Experiments

The role of the father experiment:

• Grossman carried out a longitudinal study to see how important the father is in children's development and whether they have a distinct role 
• He also looked at the role of attachment with the mother as a baby, and the ability to form attachments as a teenager
• The stronger the attachment with the mother as a baby, the easier it was to form attachments as a teenager
• When the father played with the baby it affected the quality of attachments as a teenager. This suggests that fathers have a different role in attachment - one that is more to do with play and stimulation and less to do with nurturing
• Other studies have found that children growing up in single or same sex parent families do not develop any differently from those in two parent heterosexual families, suggesting the fathers role as a secondary attachment figure is not important

• Research into the role of of fathers in attachment is confusing because different researchers are interested in different research questions. On one hand, some psychologists are interested in understanding the role fathers have as a secondary attachment figure, whereas others are more concerned with the father as the primary attachment figure. The former have tended to see fathers behaving differently from the mothers and having a distinct role. The latter have tended to find that fathers can take on a 'maternal' role. This means that psychologists cannot easily answer the questions; what is the role of the father?

Glasgow Babies:

• Aimed to investigate the formation of early attachments, in particular the age at which they developed, their emotional intensity and to whom they were directed
• The study involved 60 Glasgow babies - 31 male, 29 female mainly from skilled working class families
• The babies and their mothers were visited at home every month for the first year and again at 18 months
• The researchers asked the mothers questions about the kind of protest their baby showed in seven everyday separations e.g. adult leaving the room. This was designed to measure the infants attachment
• The researchers also assessed stranger anxiety
• Between 25 and 32 weeks of age about 50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adult, usually the mother (specific attachment)
• Attachment tended to be to the caregiver who was most interactive and sensitive to infant signals and facial expressions. This was not necessarily the person with whom the infant spent most time 
• By the age of 40 weeks 80% of babies had specific attachments and 30% showed multiple attachments

• The study was carried out in the families own homes and most of the observations (except for stranger anxiety) was done by the parents during ordinary activities and repeated to researchers later. This means that the behaviour of the babies was unlikely to be affected by the presence of observers. There is a high chance that participants behaved naturally while being observed giving the study external validity. However there is the risk that mothers may lie about the behaviour of their babies
• A strength of the study was that it was carried out longitudinally meaning the same children were followed up and observed regularly
• One limitation is that all the families involved were from the same district and social class in the same city. This limits the study because child rearing practices vary from one culture to another meaning the results do not generalise well to other social contexts

Imprinting:

• Lorenz divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment
• The other half were hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
• The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group hatched in the presence of their mother, followed her
• When the two groups were mixed up, the control group still continued to follow the mother and the experimental group continued to follow Lorenz
• There is a problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans. The mammalian attachment system is quite different from that in birds e.g. mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young than birds and mammals may be able to form attachments at any time, albeit less easily than infancy

Sexual Imprinting:

• Lorenz also investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences
• He observed that birds imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans
• Lorenz used a case study of a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving object the peacock saw after hatching were giant tortoises
• As an adult this bird would only direct courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises. This is called sexual imprinting 
• Guiton et al. found that chickens would imprint on yellow washing up gloves and would try to mate with them as adults, but with experience they eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens. This suggests that the impact of imprinting on mating is not as permanent as Lorenz thought

Harlow's Monkeys:

• Harlow observed that newborns kept alone in a bare cage usually died but they survived if they were given something soft like a cloth to cuddle
• To test this he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model 'mothers'
• In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother
• In another condition milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother
• The baby monkeys cuddled the cloth covered mother in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth covered one when frightened, regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that contact comfort was more important to the monkeys than food, when it came to attachment behaviour
• Harlow showed that attachment does not develop as a result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort 

Maternally deprived monkeys as adults:

• Harlow followed the monkeys who had been deprived of a real mother into adulthood to see if early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect
• The monkeys reared with the plain wire monkey were the most dysfunctional however even those reared with the cloth covered monkey did not develop normal social behaviour
• They were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and they bred less often than is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at mating
• As mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing in some cases
• Harlow concluded that there was a critical period - a mother had to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days in order for an attachment to form. After this time attachments was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible
• Harlow showed us the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development, including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children
• It helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and so intervene to prevent it

• The monkeys suffered greatly as a result of Harlow's procedures. Monkeys are similar enough to humans to generalise the findings meaning their suffering was human like

Pavlov's Dogs:

• Dogs do not learn to salivate when they see food, it is an unconditioned response
• However there are objects/events that dogs can learn to associate with food that provide the same response (conditioned response)
• Every time Pavlov fed the dogs he rang a bell
• Over times the dogs associated the bell with food
• When hearing the bell the dogs would salivate regardless of whether there was food or not
• Food = unconditioned stimulus, bell = conditioned stimulus, salivating = conditioned response

Skinner's Rats:

• Skinner identified positive reinforcements, negative reinforcements and punishments that would affect whether a behaviour was likely to be repeated or not
• Rats were placed in a box with lever attached to a feeding tube. When the lever was pushed food was released. The rats learned that when they pushed on the lever they would be given food. This was positive reinforcement
• Rats were placed in a box and subjected to an unpleasant electric current which caused them some discomfort. When the rat oushed the lever the current would be switched off. The rat learned that when they oushed the lever the electric current would switch off. This was negative reinforcement
• Rats were placed in a box and when they pushed on the lever they were given a shock. The rats learned to stop pushing the lever because it would hurt them. This was punishment because it eliminated a particular behaviour 

Cultural Variations:

• They conducted a study to look 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 analysed the results from 32 strange situation studies done in 8 countries, 15 of which were done in the USA
• There was a wide variation between the proportions of attachment types in different studies
• In all countries secure attachment was the most common classification. However the proportions varied from 75% in Britain to 50% in China
• Insecure-resistant was overall the least common type although proportions ranged from 3% in Britain to 30% in Israel
• Insecure-avoidant proportions ranged from 6% in Japan to 35% in Germany
• The variations between results of studies within the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries. In the USA for example one study found only 46% securely attached compared to one sample as high as 90%

• Large samples increase internal validity by reducing the impact of anomalous results
• The study claimed to research cultural variations however the comparisons were between countries not cultures
• The strange situation was designed by an American researcher based on a British theory. There is a question over whether Anglo-American theories and assessments can be applied to other cultures

44 Thieves:

• Bowlby interviewed 44 criminal teenagers, accused of stealing, for signs of affectionless psychopathy
• Their families were also interviewed in order to establish whether the 'thieves' had prolonged early separations from their mothers 
• A control group of non criminal but emotionally disturbed young people was set up to see how often maternal separation/deprivation occurred in the children who were not thieves
• 14 of the 44 thieves were described as affectionless psychopaths
• Of the 14, 12 had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives
• Only 5 of the remaining 30 thieves has experienced separations
• Of the control group only 2 out of 44 had experienced long separations
• It concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy

• The study had some design flaws - Bowlby carried out the assessments and interviews knowing what he hoped to find
• Lewis replicated the 44 thieves study on a larger scale and found that prolonged separation from the mother did not predict criminality or difficulty forming close relationships
• Bowlby called it a critical period because he believed that prolonged separation inevitably caused damage if it took place within that period. However later research has shown that damage is not inevitable. Some cases of severe deprivation have had good outcomes provided the child has some social interaction and good aftercare. For example, Koluchovi reported a case of Czech twin boys, that were kept in a cupboard from 18 months until they were 7. When they were found they were looked after by two loving adults and recovered fully. This shows it is a sensitive period rather than a critical one

Romanian Orphan Study:

• Rutter followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britain to test what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institutions
• Physical, cognitive and emotional development was assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15 years
• A group of 52 British adopted around the same time were used as a control group
• When they first arrived in the UK, half the adotpees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and the majority were severely undernourished
• At age 11 the adopted children showed different rates of recovery that were related to their age of adoption
• The mean IQ of children adopted before the age of 6months was 102 compared with 86 for those adopted between 6months and 2years, and 77 for those adopted after 2years. These differences remained at age 16
• Children adopted after they were 6months showed disinhibited attachment whereas children adopted before 6 months didn't
• Good internal validity as there are no confounding variables e.g. abuse/bereavement
• Children were not randomly assigned to conditions and researchers didn't interfere with the adoption process meaning the children that were adopted early may have been the more sociable ones

Romanian Orphan Study:

• They assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12 - 31 months who had spent most of their lives (about 90%) in institutional care
• They were compared to a control group of 50 children who never lived in an institution
• Their attachment type was measured using the strange situation. In addition carers were asked about disinhibited attachment behaviours
• They found that 74% of the control group were securely attached however only 19% of the institutional group were securely attached with 65% described as disorganised attachment
• 44% of the institutional group showed disinhibited attachment compared to the 20% of the control group
• Studying Romanian orphans has enhanced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation which has led to improvements
• Conditions were so bad in Romanian orphanages, results cannot be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care. This is a limitation because the unusual situational variables means the study lacks generalisability

Love Quiz:

• They analysed 620 replies to a love quiz printed in an American newspaper
• The quiz had 3 sections. The first assessed respondents current/most important relationship. The second part assessed general love experiences such as number of partners. The third part assessed attachment type by asking respondents to choose which of 3 statements best describes their feelings
• 56% of respondents were identified as securely attached with 25% insecure-avoidant and 19% insecure-resistant
• Those reporting secure attachments were the most likely to have good and longer lasting romantic experiences
• Those reporting insecure-avoidant attachments tended to reveal jealousy and fear of intimacy

99 mothers:

• They assessed 99 mothers with one year old babies on the quality of their attachment to their own mothers using a standard interview procedure
• They also assessed the attachment of the babies to their mothers by observation
• Mothers who reported poor attachments to their own parents in the interviews were much more likely to have poor attachments with their own children