Psychology- Studies to show the importance of attachment.

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  • Created by: Ashley
  • Created on: 19-11-10 20:18

The importance of attachment in child development-

Bowlby-
he conducted a study on 44 thieves (children affected by juvenile delinquency). he wanted to see if there was a link between lack of attachment and crime. He used IQ tests and retrospective interviews, he also interviewed the children's parents. he found that a small but significant proportion of the group had been seperated from the primary care giver at an earlier age. this therefore supported his theory, BUT there are some problems with the study, retrospective interviews may have lead to a lack of memory accuracy (if the child had argued with parent earlier in the day then they would remember them in a bad light). Participant variables may have got in the way, the child may have just been in a bad mood that day, so picked on the parents more. and also, the parents may have suffered from social desirability, and so told the researcher what they "thought" he wanted to hear, to make them sound like good parents. the sample is also very small and conducted in London, therefore there is a lack of generalisability. Rutter (alternative) found that it was not lack of attachment that caused crime, it was actually family discord.

Harlow-
Harlow was an Ethologist (conducted studies on animals), and he wanted…

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