Attachment

• what is attachment?

  a close two-way emotional bond between two individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security.
• how can we recognise an attachment?

  • Proximity- people try to stay physically close to their attachment figure.
  • separation anxiety/distress - people show signs of anxiety when attachment figure leaves their presence
  • secure-base behaviour- where we make regular contact with our attachment figure even while being independent from them e.g. babies when playing continuing to go back to their parent
• what do psychologists believe help develop social skills in babies?

  Caregiver-infant interactions
• Types of caregiver-infant interactions?

  Reciprocity

  interactional synchrony

  alert phases

  active involvement
• What is reciprocity?

  a description of how two people interact - each individual takes it in turns to respond like a conversation

  e.g. A baby cries and the caregiver responds by soothing them by rocking or picking them up.
• What are alert phases?

  Periodic phases that babies have in which they signal that they are ready for interaction e.g. making eye contact.
• research around alert phases?

  That mothers typically pick up and respond to their babies alertness around 2/3 of the time (Feldman 2007) although this varies due to skill of mother and external factors like stress (Finegood et al 2016)

  
  

  From about 3 months this interaction becomes more frequent and involves both mother and baby paying close attention to each others verbal signals and facial expressions (Feldman 2007)
• What is active involvement?

  goes against traditional views that babies have a passive role in Caregiver-infant interactions, suggesting babies play an active role too as both adult and baby initiate reactions and take turns in doing so.
• What is interactional synchrony?

  When Caregiver and baby reflect both the actions and emotions of the other in a co-ordinated way - by mirroring one another (carrying out the same action simultaneously)
• Research into importance of interactional synchrony on attachment?

  • Russell Isabella et al (1989) - observed 30 mothers and babies together and assessed the degree of synchrony.
  • The researchers also assessed the quality of mother-baby attachment.
  • They found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-baby attachment (e.g emotional intensity)
• Who proposed the 4 stages of attachment?

  Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
• what are the 4 stages of attachment?

  Asocial

  indiscriminate

  Specific

  Multiple
• What are characteristics of the asocial stage?

  • easily comforted by familiar people
  • No clear preference between inanimate objects and humans
• Characteristics of The indiscriminate stage?

  • clear preference of humans compared to inanimate objects
  • Don't usually show separation anxiety or stranger anxiety
• when is the indiscriminate stage?

  from 2-7 months
• When is the asocial stage?

  0-2 months
• Characteristics of the specific stage?

  • Stranger anxiety and separation anxiety
  • Has formed a specific attachment with primary caregiver (mother 65% of the time)
• When is the specific stage?

  from 7 months
• Characteristics of Multiple stage?

  • They form secondary attachments with other family members
• Research into the role of the father?

  Grossman et al (2002) carried out a longitudinal study studying babies attachments until their teens, they found that quality of babies attachment to mothers was related to attachments in adult life but not fathers.

  -This suggests that fathers role is less important than the mothers.

  However Grossman also found that the role of the father was different to the mothers but was still important to quality of adult attachment.
• What did Grossman conclude the role of the father is?

  • A role that is to do with play and stimulation and less to do with emotional development
• What did Lorenz research?

  • Imprinting - he randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs, half were hatched with their mother goose in their natural environment and the other half in an incubator where the first moving object saw was lorenz
• What did Lorenz find?

  • That the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed their mother everywhere
  • When he mixed the groups the experimental group continued to follow Lorenz and the control group still followed their mother
• What did Lorenz conclude from his findings?

  That there is a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place - this can be as little as a few hours.

  If imprinting doesn't occur during this period then the animal wont attach to the mother figure
• What is Imprinting?

  Where bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see
• What did Lorenz find while investigating sexual imprinting?

  That birds that imprinted on a human would later display courtship behaviour towards humans
• Case study for sexual imprinting?

  Lorenz described a peacock that had been brought up in a reptile house of a zoo and the first moving objects it saw were giant tortoises, then in adulthood the peacock would only direct courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises
• What did Harlow research?

  Attachment with monkeys - specifically contact comfort