A03

• What is a weakness(s and E)

  -Schaffer and Emerson found that in 39% of cases, the baby’s primary attachment figure was not the person who fed them.

  -This shows that attachment is more likely linked to responsiveness and sensitivity rather than food, contradicting the learning theory’s focus on conditioning through feeding.

  -These human studies reduce the explanatory power of learning theory in accounting for real-life attachment formation.
• What is another weakness?(metapelets)

  -Fox (1977) studied attachment bonds between mothers babies and metapelets

  -they found that children were generally more attached to thier mothers despite the metapelets doing the majority of the feeding

  -contradicts learning theory that food is main reason for attachment
• Define a metapelet

  -specially trained full time carers of newborn infants in a Kibbutz community
• What is another weakness?(Learning theory is reductionist)

  - theory reduces complex emotional bonds to simple stimulus-response associations, ignoring other important factors like emotional security and innate mechanisms.

  -Bowlby’s evolutionary theory, for instance, accounts for innate biological drives to form attachments for survival, which learning theory does not address.

  -overly simplistic explanation
• Another weakness is lack of support from animal research

  -Research by Harlow (1958) found that infant monkeys formed attachments with a soft cloth “mother” rather than a wire mother that provided food.-This suggests that attachment is not based solely on feeding, as the learning theory proposes, but instead on comfort and contact, undermining the theory’s central assumption.-contradicts theory
• Another weakness is Ignores the role of reciprocity and interactional synchrony

  -Research by Isabella et al. (1989) found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality attachments.-This suggests that attachment depends on meaningful social interactions, not just feeding.-By ignoring the importance of these social behaviours, the learning theory overlooks key processes involved in forming attachments.