Key Psychological Studies (Attachment)

Meltzoff & Moore (1977) found that infants age 2-3 weeks tended to mimic adults’ specific facial expressions and hand movements. This demonstated that infants imitated actions from adults from only three days old. This suggests that behaviour was innate rather than learned.

The experiment was conducted in a controlled environment to capture finer observations and the babies were unaware that they were being observed so their behaviour didn't change in response.

Their findings lack internal validty because it can be difficult to distingiush between general behaviour and actual interactional synchrony, therefore not actually no accurate measurments of interactional synchrony were observed.

Interactional synchrony doesn't have cross-cultural support and weakens the idea that this behaviour is innate and necessary for attachments to form as it's not culturally universial.

Condon & Sander (1974) analysed frame-by-frame video recordings of infants’ movements, to find they coordinated their actions in sequence with adults’ speech, to form a kind of turn-taking conversation.

Their conclusions supports the idea that interactional synchrony having validty as Isabella et al (1989) found that ifnants with secure attachments demostrated similar beavhiour during their first year.

Isabella et al. (1989) found that infants with secure attachment demonstrated more evidence of synchronised behaviour during their first year of life

It supports interactional synchrony because young babies were able to mimic adult’s facial expressions, showing that these behaviours are innate  at birth and are not a learnt behaviour.

However, she found that the more securely attached the infant, the greater the level of interactional synchrony. This suggests that not all children engage in interactional synchrony and that Meltzoff & Moore’s original findings may have overlooked individual differences which could be a mediating factor.

Ainsworth (1970) investigated the quality of attachment by placing infants age 9-18 months in a situation of mild stress to encourage the infant to seek comfort and exploration behaviours. Ainsworth used 100 middle class American infants and their mothers in a controlled obsveration in a laboratory environment. There were 8 different episode (scenarios) and 70% displayed secure attachment, 15% of the infants displayed resistant and avoidant attachment.

The experiment is easily replicable and has high inter-obsever reliability because obsevers have a clear view of how a securely attached infant should behave through the 4 specfic criteion.

The sample size was restricted so it's unlikely that findings would represent the wider population.

The critera used to classify different types of attachment are based on US, inidividualistic values, so more collectivist cultures will have different behaviours and beliefs about caregiver-infant relationships.

Van Izjendoorm & Kroonemberg (1988) wanted to investigate vultural variations of attachment and access whether attachment types were unverisal or culturally-specific. They conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies across 8 countries using Ainsworth's ** using 1,990 infants altogether. Secure attachment was the most common form with the highest percentage in Great Britain and the lowest in China. They found that there were greater intra-cultural differents (within the same culture) than inter-cultural differences (between different cultures).

They had a large sampe size which increased the internal validity.

Their findings from the meta-analysis were similar to what Ainsworth originally found.

The SST may be culturally biased to the USA and cannot be applied to other cultures; it's eurocentric.

Their findings may be ethnically, racially or social-class specific as the SST was conducted on middle-class, American infants.

Takahashi (1990) conducted the SST on 60 Japanease children and their mothers. The infants displayed 68% secure attachment, 32% insecure attachment and 0% displayed avoidant attachment. 

Effectively demostrated cross-cultural variations.

Standarised procedure which increases the reliability of their findings.

Ethical issues: 90% of participants stopped due to extreme distress

Conclusion: Japanease infants experience less seperation anxiety than American infants. The total lack of insecure-avoidant attachment could be due to cultural beliefs as such behaviour is taught to be impolite and is discouraged.

Jin et al. (2012) investigated attachment types on 87 Korean children to determine whether they're universal or culture-specific. The attachment behaviours were observed through proximity between the infant and the caregiver after 2 seperations. The perecentage of infants that were securely attachment mirrored the global districubitions and there was only 1 child who displayed insecure-avoidant attachment.

Their findings showed the basic function of an attachment and that SST is a valid measure of attachment.

Cultural differentitations between western and eastern caregiver-infant relationships may cause different attachments to form.

Simomella et al. (2014) conducted the SST on 76, 12-month old infants in Italy, who's mothers all had varying levels of education. They found that 56% were securely attached, 14% were insecure-resistant and 36% were insecure-avoidant. They found that mothers who had long working hours were less likely to have a child with secure attachment.

High temporal validity because it reflects modern caregiver-infant relationships.

Their findings give insight into changing modern childcare practices.

Large comparison groups.

Comparisons couldn't be drawn due to culture characterisitcs.

One background sample isn't representative of the whole culture.

Bowlby suggested that humans need an evolutionary tendancy to form attachments to a primary caregiver, which gives humans a developmental advantage. He stated that infants have a critical period during their first 2 and a half years and if they don't form an attachment, they will suffer devlopmental disadvantages later in life.

Adaptive: attachments are adaptive and increase the chance of survival.

Social releasers: infants have the tendancy to display innate bheaviours to help esnure proximty and cntact with theit attachment figure.

Monotrophy: a single bond between the infant and caregiver developed as an innate ability to attach primarily to their attachment figure.

Internal working model: a blueprint of how attachments form which is based on the relationships formed during the critical period that act as a templaate for future attachments.

Continunity hypothesis: the concept that early relationships with caregivers affect later relationships in adulthood.

Bowlby (1944) conducted interviews of 44 adolescent juvenile thieves and their families and compared the results to the findings from the control group of 44 children with emotional problems. Their IQ was tested by biopsychologists.

He found that 32% of them were affetionless psychopaths who were seperated from their mother for more than 6 months in the first 5 years. 27/44 didn't suffer from maternal deprivation and and 17/30 were. They discovered that 14 of the thieves were affectionless psychopaths.

Their findings highlight the importance of a strong monotrpohic bond which has been in devloping in good childcare practices (daycares/ prolonged hospital visiting hours).

Investigator effects: Bowlby self-reported himself and his findings so his findings could be distored through researcher conforimation bias.

Conclusions are correlational so it cannot be confirmed that seperation was the sole cause of the development of affectionless psychopathy.

Rutter et al. (1998) investigated the negative impact that instituionalised care has on the development and whether it can be reversed with a more nuturing and enriching environment.

There were 3 conditions: when the 111 Romainian infants were adopted before 6 months, infants between 6 months and 2 years and then infants over 2 years. They were assessed on height, head circumference and cognitive functioning when entering Britiain and then again at 4. Their results were comapred with 52 British children. 

50% of the orphans were mentally retarted and underweight and after 4 years, their physical disadvanatges improved and they developed at the same reate as the control group if they were adopted before 6 months.

Real-life application: gained a bteer understanding of the effects of insitiutionalisation and lead to improvements in children care.

Generalisability: the orgpahnage conditions are so poor that the results collect may not be applicable to general situations of deprivation.

Harlow (1958) tested the learning theory by comparing attachment behaviours in baby monkeys when presented with a milk-producing wire mother and a clothsurrogate mother. The amount of time spent with each mother was recorded and their feeding time. The monkeys were frightened by loud noises to test the mother's presence during periods of stress.

The monkeys preferred contat with the cloth mother, clung to the cloth mother more, explored the cages more and visited the surrogate mother more frequently.

The monkeys have a innate, unlearned need for conatct and comfort, which shows attachments form involving emotional security over food.

Laboratory setting: controlled setting so he could control possible extraneous variables and produce more reliable results.

Ethical problems: he breached psychological guidlelines as he caused the onkeys emotional distress and they displayed long-term effects of the study.

Lorenz (1935) split a clutch of goose eggs into two batches, one hatched with their mother and the other as hatched in an incubator where Lorenz was the first thing they encountered. Their behaviour was recorded after the geese had been marker to differentiate.

Both batches followed either the mother or Lorenz and he noticed that imprinting occured between 4 and 25 hours after birth. This showed that imprinting is a form of attachment and close contact is kept between the mother and the newly-hatched bird.

Lorenz's study has been highly influential in the development of psychology, which has allowed other psychologists to use his findings as a basis to development his theory.

Extrapolation: he conucted his study on geese, which are physiologically different to humans. This means his findings could not be generalised to the way that humans develop attachments.