Attachment Theory

• What is attachment?

  A strong emotional bond formed between infant and caregiver in the second half of the child’s first year
• Earliest bonds

  
• Separation anxiety

  Distress caused by separation from caregivers

  Separation distress/anxiety:

  • Indicates a specific bond (usually between child and caregiver)
  • Is culturally universal
  • As infants age, their display of separation distress changes:
  • Crawling babies will begin to seek out their caregivers, while talking infants will ask for them
• Psychoanalytic Theory

  Freud emphasised the mother–child bond

  • Nursing is earliest form of pleasure
  • Babies have different bonds (based on gender roles) to their different parents, and these persist throughout life
• Learning Theory

  • Babies have physical drives like thirst and hunger
  • When caregivers respond to these drives, the child associates the caregiver with positive reinforcement
  • These biological drives guide attachment
• Ethological Theory

  • John Bowlby was the first to call the parentchild bond ‘attachment’
  • Infant wants to be proximal to caregiver
  • Focus on evolutionary role of attachment
  • Instinctual behaviours ensures that parents care for their child
  • Mutual attachment – distinct from dependency (e.g., reliance for sustenance)
• Phases of attachment

  
• Basis of social interaction

  Smiling

  
• Basis of social interaction

  Contingent responding

  • Person A does something; Person B responds
  • By 1.5 months, babies get uneasy if adults keep a “still face”

  
• Basis of social interaction


  Social referencing

  • Look to others to see how to react
  • Joint attention/gaze following:
  • Call attention to something by looking at it, looking back at caregiver, and looking at it again
• Basis of social interaction

  Clinging

  • Perhaps more important for primates – these babies have to grab on!
  • Human babies’ touch also creates proximityseeking responses in parents
• Bowlby’s internal working model

  Infant has one internal working model, which persists over time and is shaped by the quality of early interactions

  • Promotes continuity of attachment patterns across generations