attachment

• What is attachment?

  A strong, enduring close two-way emotional bond between two individuals across time and space, in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own​ emotional security. It is characterised by distress if that person is not proximity.
• We can recognise an attachment when people display which 3 following behaviours?

  • proximity (staying physically close to the attachment figure)
  • separation anxiety (being upset what the attachment figure leaves)
  • secure base behaviour (leaving the attachment figure to play and explore but regularly coming back to them)
• Schaffer and Emerson (1964)Role of the father

  • majority of babies became attached to the mother first (within 7 months) but within several months formed secondary attachments
  • 75% within 18 months it was the father
  • 3% father sole primary attachment figure
  • 27% he was the joint first object of attachment
• Grossman (2002) Role of the father

  • longitudinal study
  • play sensitivity was a better predictor of the child's long-term attachment
  • quality of attachment as teenager related most to the mother's nurturing attachment but not father as infant
• Field (1978)


  • Face-to-face interactions were analysed from video footage with infants at 4 months of age
  • Fathers= more playing games and less holding
  • Primary caretaker fathers =more smiling, imitating and holding than secondary caretaker fathers and these were comparable with mothers’ behaviour.
• Are fathers important in attachment?

  These studies are for the against and supporting argument of the role of the father

  
• evaluation of research into the role of father: inconsistent findings as different research looks at different things. ​

  E: Some focusing on fathers as primary attachment figure and others as secondary attachment and they have different findings as a result. As the research focuses on different aspects it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the role of the father. ​

  ​

  E: This is a weakness because it means that psychologist cannot easily answer the question ‘What is the role of the father?’​
• evaluation of research into the role of the father:

  social biases prevent objective observations

  • preconceptions or stereotypes about how fathers behave may cause unintentional observer bias whereby observers see what they expect to see rather than recording actual reality. ​
  • the conclusions about the role of the father in attachment are hard to separate from the social biases about their role. This lowers the validity
• evaluation of research into the role of the father: inconsistent findings as different findings look at different things

  For example some focusing on fathers as primary attachment figure and others as secondary attachment and they have different findings as a result. difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the role of the father. ​

  ​

  E: This is a weakness because it means that psychologist cannot easily answer the question ‘What is the role of the father?’​
• evaluation of research into the role of the father

  P: social biases prevent objective observations

  • E: stereotypes about how fathers behave may cause unintentional observer bias ​
  • E: the conclusions about the role of the father in attachment are hard to separate from the social biases about their role. This lowers the validity of the research and makes it difficult to believe its conclusions about the role of the father. ​
• evaluation of research into the role of the father

  P:competing explanations of why fathers tend not to become primary attachment figures

  E: For example It could be due to learnt gender roles where women are expected to be the nurturers and carers or it could be that women are biologically pre-disposed to be the primary attachment figure due to the female hormone –oestrogen which creates higher levels of nurturing.​

  ​

  E: This is a weakness because the research fails to provide a clear answer about fathers as primary attachment figures. ​
• evaluation of research into the role of the father

  P:important economic and socially sensitive implications

  E: For example mothers may feel pressured to stay home because of research that says mothers are vital for healthy emotional development. ​

  ​

  E: This is a weakness because for some families this may not be economically the best solution for them​
• Stages of attachment – Schaffer and Emerson

  -60 Glaswegian infants at monthly intervals until 18 months and visited homes every 4 weeks

  -mainly self-report with some observations

  -separation anxiety and stranger distress recorded at about 6-8 months.

  -Findings: the strongest attachments were to sensitive mothers, most had multiple attachments and in 39% of cases the prime attachment was not to main carer

  -Common attachment pattern seems biological.​
• Asocial /Pre- attachment phase​

  0- 3/4 months​

  infants equally happy with toys or humans but recognise familiar objects and faces
• Indiscriminate attachment

  3/4 -​7 months​


  • comforted easily by familiar care giver
  • prefer people to objects and toys
• Specific/Descriminate attachment

  7 months -9 months


  Expresses protest/separation anxiety when separated from one particular individual. They attempt to stay close to the person, and show wariness of strangers.
• Multiple attachments

  9 months and onwards

  secondary attachments form with multiple familiar figures such as grandparents, neighbours, siblings etc
• More on Schaffer and Emerson

  On attachments

  
• Schaffer and Emerson evaluations

  Eval:

  
• Evolutionary theory

  • The tendency to form attachments is INNATE​
  • This tendency is present in both infants and mothers​
• Lorenz: imprinting procedure and findings

  • Procedure: Randomly divided 12 goose eggs: half hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment and the other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw with Lorenz.​

  Mixed them up to see who would follow. Also studied their courtship behaviour.

  • Findings: the chicks who saw him before anything else, followed him as if he was their mother. When they were adult, they performed mating displays to him, and ignored other geese.​ The chicks who saw their mothers first did the normal biological things to do.
• Evaluation of Lorenz' research

  P:generalising the findings and conclusions of animal research from birds to humans.​

  E: the mammalian attachment system is quite different from that of birds. For example Mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young , as well as this mammals may be able to form attachments at any time, even if that becomes more difficult with time. ​

  E: This is a weakness because it is not appropriate to generalise Loren’s findings to humans and how they form attachments. ​
• Evaluation of Lorenz' research

  P: There is research support for the concept of imprinting

  E: For example Guiton ( 1966) found that chickens exposed to rubber gloves for feeding them during their first few weeks, became imprinted on the gloves. The male chickens later tried to mate with the gloves, showing that early imprinting is linked to reproductive behaviour.​

  E: This supports idea that young animals aren’t born with a predisposition to imprint on a specific type of object but onto any moving thing that they see within the critical window of development. ​
• Evaluation of Lorenz' research

  P: imprinting is not set in stone as Lorenz says

  E: Guiton was able to reverse the imprinting in chickens on gloves by allowing them to spend more time with their own species. ​

  E: This is a weakness as it goes against lorenz’s conclusions because imprinting maybe reversible. Now it is believed that imprinting is more ’plastic’ or flexible than set in stone.
• Harlow & Harlow (1959)​ procedure

  • attachment is not based on the supply of food​
  • Harlow reared 16 rhesus monkeys in isolation ​
  • In each cage there were two ‘surrogate’ mothers, one made of wire mesh and contained a feeding bottle, the other was made of cloth​ with no food
  • Harlow's measured the amount of time the monkeys spent clinging to each mother ​
  • He would put a noisy toy into cage to frighten the monkeys to see which ‘mother’ they clung to in times of distress ​
  • He continues to study the moneys into adulthood​
• Harlow and Harlow findings

  • Baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire mother and regardless of which one dispensed milk.​
  • Monkeys used the soft mother as their base, returning to her for comfort and only visiting the wire mother to feed​
  • This suggests contact comfort was of more importance than food​
  • As adults, the monkeys that had been deprived of their real mothers suffered sever consequences: they were more aggressive, less sociable and less skilled in mating than other monkeys. They sometimes neglected and even killed their own offspring.​
• Evaluation of Harlow: confounding variables

  For example it may be that the difference between tothe two conditions in the experiment – cloth covered v not

  cloth covered wasn’t the only way in which the surrogatemothers differed. The two heads were different so it maybe that the reason the little monkey’s preferred onemother to the other was because the cloth covered mother had amore attractive head!

  • E: Therefore this is a weakness because the conclusionslack internal validity ( it may not measure what it sets out to measure- why infants attach
• evaluation of Harlow: severe ethical concerns

  • E:Rhesus monkeys are similar enough to humans for us to generalise the findings, -> suffering was also presumably human like. Harlow even named the wire mother the ‘the iron maiden’ after the medieval torture device. ​
  • E: Weakness because distress was inflicted that lasted a lifetime. The moneys did not develop normally and had problems throughout their lives. ​
• evaluation of Harlow's research into monkeys: important practical applications (strength)

  • E: Helped social workers understand risk factors in child abuse and so intervene to prevent it. We also now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in Zoo’s and breeding programmes in the wild.​
  • E: Therefore this is a strength because the usefulness increases its value. ​
• what is meant by 'imprinting'

  Imprinting is a phenomenon in which certain animals (especially those mobile from birth) attach themselves to and follow the first moving object they see. (It is type of very rapid learning which is very resistant to change.)​
• Outline the procedure and findings of Harlow (1958). (4 marks)​

  Procedure: 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in a second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother.​

  Findings: monkeys spent more time with the cloth one in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
• Schaffer and Emerson: research into the stages of attachment

  • mothers and babies were visited once a month for a year and then again at 18 months and parents had to observe their children and keep a diary e.g separation/ stranger anxiety
  • this was a longitudinal study and this means that a strength of this is that over time the parents get used to it and begin to act naturally (validity increases)
  • aim: to investigate the formation of early attachment during the age of development, the emotional intensity and whom they were directed to
  • method: observed 60 babies for 18 months from W/C family
• Explain why Harlow’s study undermines the learning theory explanation of attachment. (3 marks) ​

  Learning theory assumes that an infant attaches because it learns to associate the carer with food ( Cupboard Love theory). However, Harlow’s study showed that infant rhesus monkeys chose to attach to the cloth ‘mother’, in other words, for contact comfort, rather than to a caregiver that provided food.
• what does 'monotropic' mean?

  • having a primary attachment figure

  -mono= one

  -tropic= leaning towards
• Schaffer and Emerson: stages of attachment findings

  • Between 25 – 32 weeks – 50% of the babies showed separation anxiety towards a particular adult, usually the biological mothers (specific attachment).​
  • Attachment tended to be to the caregiver that was most sensitive to the infants signals and facial expressions (reciprocity) - the primary attachment figure​​
  • At 40 weeks – nearly 30% had formed multiple attachment (usually formed once the specific attachment had been formed). These were described as secondary attachments.​
• Schaffer and Emerson stages of attachment: evaluation(validity)

  Social desirability bias: those who do not have a good enough relationship with their child (as that is not socially desirable) may not have participated. This includes even being observed or writing in diary entry. They may be worried to be judged on their parenting skills by the researchers as good parenting is regarded as an important part of our identity. Therefore research may be skewed onto to success stories and hinder validity. S+E knew this and built up rapport+ triangulated self report with their own observations
• Evaluation of Schaffer and Emerson: high external validity

  • naturalistic observation- occurs where behaviour takes place
  • e.g parents took notes in natural situations such as putting their child to sleep in their room
  • the researcher was not present so the parent would act more natural
  • good external validity
• evaluation of schaffer and emerson: longitudinal study (strength)

  • study carried out longitudinally
  • same children followed up over 18 month period
  • children could be observed at each stage e.g cross sectional design
  • internal validity and confounding variables avoided
• schaffer and emerson: difficulty studying the asocial phase (weakness)

  • hard to gather meaningful data as they are immobile and have little co-ordination
  • Secondly, evidence has shown that infants ARE social at this age e.g. Melzoff and Moore – ability to imitate at 3 days.​

  ​

  Evidence has also shown that babies prefer their mother’s face/voice to that of a stranger. ​
• Bowlby believed that the more time the infant spent with the mother the better. This is because..

  1. Law of continuity – the more constant a child's care, the better the quality of attachment.​
  2. Law of accumulated separation – the effects of every separation adds up so the safest dose therefore is ‘zero dose’.​