What support is there for the concept of social releasers?
Brazelton et al. observed babies trigger interactions with adults using social releasers like smiling or cooing
Primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore these behaviours - found that babies who were normally responsive became distressed and some eventually curled up and lay motionless
Shows importance of social releasers in emotional development suggesting they are also important for attachment development
What support is there for the concept of the internal working model?
Bailey et al. (2007) looked at attachment relationships in 99 mothers and their 1 year-old babies
They also assessed the mothers relationships to their own parents and found that mothers with poor attachment to their own primary caregivers were more likely to have poorly attached babies
Supports Bowlby's idea that people's parenting is heavily based off their experiences of being parented
How is the validity of the monotropic theory weak?
Schaffer and Emerson found that most babies are able to form successful, healthy attachments to people other than their primary caregiver despite fixing on one specific attachment figure
First attachment may be stronger but not different in quality as they can receive equal emotional support and secure base
Weakens Bowlby's idea that there is something unique about the child's primary attachment
How is monotropy a socially sensitive idea?
Laws of continuity and accumulated separation suggest that mothers who work may negatively affect their child's emotional development
Burman - places blame on working, struggling mothers for anything that goes wrong in the child's later life
Provides an excuse for restricting mothers' activities like deciding to return to work
