Attachment

• Attachments

  • Two-way emotional bond between individuals
  • They see each other as essential for emotional security
  • Reciprocal
  • Can take a few months to develop
• Behaviours

  • Proximity - we want to stay close to the people we are attached to
  • Separation anxiety - get angry/upset when we are separated from our attachment figure
  • Secure-base behaviour - like to keep regular contact
• Caregiver-infant interactions

  Reciprocity

  • How two people interact (mother and baby respond to each other's signals)
  • Turn-taking: baby does something, mother responds

  Feldman (2007)

  • Proposed caregiver-infant interactions are more frequent around 3 months
  • Close attention is paid to verbal and facial expressions
• Caregiver-infant interactions

  Interactional synchrony

  • Interaction is co-ordinated (like looking through a mirror)
  • Only possible through reciprocity
  • Includes actions and emotions

  Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

  • Controlled observation
  • Imitation in infants 12-27 days old

  Four stimuli:

  • Tongue protrusion
  • Opened the mouth wide
  • Lip protrusion
  • Opening the hand

  
  

  • Independent observers
  • Event sampling
  • Concluded an association between infant behaviour and an adult model
  • Further study carried out with infants as young as 3 days
  • Suggests behaviours are innate
• Caregiver-infant interactions

  Evaluation

  • Difficult to interpret infant behaviour
  • Infants cannot communicate, so observations are based on behaviour alone
  • Difficult to know what they are conveying without talking
  • Lacks validity
  • Unsure if we are measuring the correct behaviour
  • Inconsistent behaviours = lacks reliability
  • Difficult to say caregiver-infant behaviour is solely determined by reciprocity and interactional synchrony
• Caregiver-infant interactions

  Evaluation

  • Uses controlled procedures
  • Both mother and infant are filmed, often from multiple angles
  • Fine details are captured
  • Babies don't know/care if they are being filmed, no stranger anxiety
  • High validity
• Caregiver-infant interactions

  Evaluation

  • Observations don't say the purpose of reciprocity or interactional synchrony
  • Feldman (2012) points out synchrony simply shows that behaviours occur at the same time
  • Some evidence suggests interactions help in developing the mother-infant attachment, morals, stress, empathy and language
  • Questions validity
• The role of the father

  • Traditionally, the role was to bring in money for the family
  • Now, fathers take bigger roles in parenting due to more working mothers
• Schaffer and Emerson (1964)


  • Investigated parent-infant attachment by observing whether an infant would protest when the father walked away
  • Majority of babies become attached to the mother first
  • Within a few weeks/months, formed secondary attachments
  • 18 months - 75% formed attachments with the father
• Field (1978)


  • 4 month old babies
  • Interacting with primary caregiver mothers and fathers and secondary caregiver fathers
  • Primary caregiver fathers spent more time smiling and holding the baby
  • Suggests they can take the primary role
  • Children develop a secure attachment with fathers when they show sensitive responsiveness
  • Gender is not key
• Grossman et al. (2002)


  • Longitudinal study
  • Studied baby attachments until their teens
  • Assessed quality of attachments to others later in life and parents' behaviours
  • Suggested father attachment was less important
  • Quality of fathers' play related to quality of adolescent attachments
  • Suggests they have a different role: play
• Role of the father

  Evaluation

  • Inconsistent findings
  • Some psychologists are more focused on fathers as secondary attachment figures, others focused on primary attachment
  • Latter tend to find they taker on a more maternal role, former find them taking on a distinct role
  • Means psychologists cannot explicitly define the role
• Role of the father

  Evaluation

  • Children without fathers are not different to those with fathers
  • Grossman found fathers as secondary attachment figures have a distinct role
  • Other studies suggest children growing up in single or same-sex parent families do not develop differently
  • Suggests the role of the father is not important
• Role of the father

  Evaluation

  • Most research has focused on mother-infant interactions as the primary attachment
  • The fact that fathers don't tend to become the primary caregiver may be due to traditional gender roles
  • Oestrogen creates higher levels of nurturing, so women are also biologically predisposed to be the primary attachment figure
  • Psychologists have neglected exploring the role of the father due to the mother's prominence
• Schaffer's stages of attachment

  • Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
  • Studied 60 babies (31M, 29F)
  • Working class families in Glasgow
  • Investigating early attachment
  • Babies and mothers visited every 4 weeks
  • Asked to report on different behaviours in separations
  • Also recorded response to unfamiliar adults (stranger anxiety)
  • 50% between 25-32 weeks demonstrated separation anxiety
  • 80% formed a specific attachment by 40 weeks
• Schaffer's stages of attachment

  Evaluation

  • High external validity
  • Carried out in the family's own homes
  • Most observations done by parents in ordinary activities and reported to researchers later
  • Behaviour unlikely to be affected by stranger anxiety
  • Participants behaved naturally
• Schaffer's stages of attachment

  Evaluation

  • Limited sample characteristics
  • Families all lived in the same district, social class and city over 50 years ago
  • Child-rearing practices vary across time and cultures
  • Results cannot generalise to other social or historical contexts
• Stages of attachment

  Asocial

  • First few weeks
  • Behaviours towards humans and objects are similar
  • Preference for human contact towards the end
  • Reciprocity and interactional synchrony are key
• Stages of attachment

  Indiscriminate

  • 2-7 months
  • No specific attachment
  • Preference for humans
  • Can prefer familiar adults
  • Less likely to demonstrate stranger or separation anxiety
• Stages of attachment

  Specific

  • ~7 months
  • More likely to display separation and stranger anxiety
  • Develop a specific attachment to those able to respond to a babies signals
• Stages of attachment

  Multiple

  • Forms multiple attachments to people they see regularly (secondary attachments)
• Schaffer's stages of attachment

  Evaluation

  • Contained a mixture of self-report and observations
  • Research also carried out in the participants' own homes
  • Mothers interviewed
  • Research rich and valid
  • Shows validity due to wide range of information collected
  • Behaviour was natural, so conclusions can be drawn
  • Can be subjective
  • Low reliability
• Schaffer's stages of attachment

  Evaluation

  • Difficult to study the asocial stage
  • Babies have poor co-ordination and are immobile
  • Difficult to make judgements on behaviour as there isn't much to judge
  • Evidence cannot be relied on
• Schaffer's stages of attachment

  Evaluation

  • Cultural relativism
  • Does not account for collectivist cultures, babies develop multiple attachments early on
  • Lack of generalisability across cultures
  • Not all babies will develop specific attachments
• Lorenz

  • Imprinting - species which can move from birth attach to the first thing they see
  • Can be as brief as a few hours
  • If imprinting doesn't occur, babies are not attached to their mothers

  
  

  • Goose eggs hatched in a natural environment with mother, or in an incubator with a researcher
  • Control group followed the mother everywhere, incubator group followed the researcher
  • When groups mixed, they still followed the first thing they saw
• Lorenz

  Evaluation

  • Further research support for imprinting during a critical time period
  • Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) found when chicks were exposed to a single shape combination that moved, they followed the original more closely
  • Makes the findings more reliable
  • Increases validity of imprinting
• Lorenz

  Evaluation

  • Animals are very different to humans
  • Mammalian attachment system is different to birds
  • Mammalian mothers shows more attachment to their young than birds
  • Mammals may also be able to form attachments at any time
  • Problem with generalising findings from birds to humans
• Lorenz

  Evaluation

  • Questioned by other researchers
  • Idea that imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour
  • Guiton et al. (1996) found chickens who imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try to mate with them as adults (as predicted)
  • Eventually learned to prefer other chickens
  • Suggests impacts of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed
• Harlow

  • 16 baby rhesus monkeys separated from mothers and placed in a cage with two "wire model" mothers
  • One plain wire, the other covered in cloth
  • Condition 1 - milk dispensed by plain wire mother
  • Condition 2 - milk dispensed by cloth mother
  • Babies spent most time cuddling cloth mother
  • When frightened, they ran to the cloth mother
  • Condition 1 would take milk from the plain wire mother, but cuddled the cloth mother when finished
  • Comfort > food in attachment

  
  

  • Long-lasting effects: maternal deprivation, developing abnormal social and mating behaviour
  • Critical period of 90 days
• Harlow

  Evaluation

  • Theoretical value
  • Findings had a profound effect on psychologists' understanding of human mother-infant attachment
  • Attachment does not develop as a result of being fed, rather due to contact comfort
  • Showed importance of quality of early relationships for later social development
  • Shows application to human attachment
  • Increases validity of research
• Harlow

  Evaluation

  • Criticism of ethics
  • Monkeys suffered greatly
  • Species also considered very similar to humans, so suffering was human-like
  • Calls into question whether suffering was worth the value the experiment yielded
• Learning theory

  • "Cupboard love"
  • Suggests children learn to love whoever feeds them
• Learning theory

  Classical conditioning


  • Food = UCS
  • Happy = UCR
  • Mother = NS

  
  

  • Mother + food = happy
  • Mother = CS
  • Happy = CR
  • Mother = happy
• Learning theory

  Operant conditioning

  • Explains why babies cry for comfort
  • Crying leads to a response from the caregiver (e.g. feeding) which reinforces the behaviour
  • Caregiver responding to the crying by feeding = negative reinforcement
  • Hunger is a primary drive - innate, biological motivator
  • We eat to reduce the hunger drive
  • Secondary drive - caregivers provide food, so the primary drive is generalised to them
  • Attachment becomes the secondary drive
• Bowlby's Monotropic Theory

  • Used the work of Harlow and Lorenz to propose an evolutionary explanation: attachment is innate and gives a survival advantage
  • Imprinting and attachment evolved so the young stay close to the caregiver, protecting them from hazards
  • Monotropic - emphasis on attachment to one particular caregiver
  • Primary caregiver has a role based on 2 principles:

  1. Law of continuity - more consistent and predictable a child's care, better quality of attachment
  2. Law of accumulated separation - effects of every separation from the mother "add up"
• Bowlby's Monotropic Theory

  • Babies born with social releasers, innate "cute" behaviours which encourage attention from adults, activating their attachment system
  • Critical period of 2 years
  • Internal working model - child forms a mental representation of the relationship with their primary caregiver
  • A model for what relationships are like, having an effect on the child's future relationship
  • Also affects the child's parenting ability later in life
• Bowlby's Monotropic theory

  Evaluation

  • Research support
  • Bailey et al. (2007) assessed 99 mothers with 1-year-old babies on the quality of attachment to their own mothers using a standard interview procedure
  • Then assessed the attachment to their babies using an observation
  • Mothers with a poor attachment to their own parents are more likely to have children with poor attachments too
  • Supports the internal working model being passed through the families
• Bowlby's Monotropic Theory

  Evaluation

  • Bowlby's idea that infants only form one attachment to their primary caregiver and later attachments are different is not supported by Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
  • Most babies did attach to one person first, but a significant minority were able to form multiple attachments at the same time
  • Unclear whether the first attachment is unique
  • Studies (Suess et al. (1992)) show attachment to the mother is more important in predicting later behaviour
  • Could simply mean that the attachment to the primary caregiver is stronger, not different in quality
• Bowlby's Monotropic Theory

  Evaluation

  • Evidence to support social releasers
  • Brazleton et al. (1975) observed mothers and babies interacting
  • Reported interactional synchrony
  • Primary caregivers then instructed to ignore their social releasers
  • Some responded by curling up and lying motionless
  • The fact that children responded so strongly supports Bowlby's ideas about the significance of infant social behaviour in eliciting caregiving
• Bowlby's Monotropic Theory

  Evaluation

  • Can be accused of being socially sensitive
  • Major implications for the lifestyle choices mothers make when their children are young
  • Law of accumulated separation makes mothers seem responsible for anything that goes wrong in a child's life, pushing mothers to avoid returning to work when a child is born
  • Implications on the mother are insensitive, as feminists like Erica Burman have stated