Attachment

• Ainsworth developed the strange situation test to measure attachment styles.
• Reciprocity is responding to the baby/mother's actions. Interactions between mother and baby should be intense and highly pleasurable.
• Reciprocity is like a dance
• A alert phase of a baby occurs periodically. The baby signals (with eye contact) the it is in a period where it wants interaction with the caregiver.
• Feldman & Eidelman said in 2007 the caregivers respond Two Thirds of the time. In 2016, Finegood et al said that it depends on the skill of the mother.
• babies have an active role in interactions
• baby or mother can initiate interactions
• interactional synchrony is when two people are carrying out the same action and the same time.
• According to Isabella et al, high levels of interactional synchrony lead to a better quality attachment.
• According to Broth et al, depressed mothers are less accurate at interpreting babies' facial expressions, but do not differ in their ability to interoperate the babies' emotions.
• By filming interactions with babies, researchers can analyse the interactions later. Other distraction variables can also be controlled and more than one researcher can observe each interaction (Inter - rater reliability). Babies also don't know that they're being filmed so do not change their behaviour
• The difficulty with observing babies is that babies lack coordination so subtle expression changes and behaviours are difficult to interpret.
• Monotropy means that infants become attached to only one person who provides all their caregiving needs.
• Feldman argued that reciprocity and synchrony are just giving names to observable behaviours but we don't actually know the effect of these behaviours. However, Isabella argued that interactional synchrony helps achieve a better attachment.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's study that lead to the 4 stages of development: It was an observational study on working class babies/ mothers from Glasgow. They visited them at home and asked two questions: they asked what the child does if the mother leaves the room (separation anxiety) and what the baby does if a stranger enters the room (stranger anxiety).
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 1 is the asocial stage and it takes place in the first few weeks of life. They show similar behaviour to inanimate objects as to humans but prefer to be with humans who they are familiar with. The bond formed here is the basis of later attachments.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 1 is the asocial stage and it takes place in the first few weeks of life. They show similar behaviour to inanimate objects as humans but prefer to be with humans who they are familiar with. The bond formed here is the basis of later attachments.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 2 is the indiscriminate phase. This takes place from 2 - 7 months. infants begin to show a preference to humans and observable social behaviour. At this stage they do not show social anxiety or stranger anxiety.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 2 is the indiscriminate phase. This takes place from 2 - 7 months. infants begin to show a preference to humans and observable social behaviour. At this stage they do not show social anxiety or stranger anxiety.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 3: The specific attachment phase. This takes place from 7 months. they show attachment to one PAF, They show separation anxiety and stranger anxiety, especially if the PAF is not present.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 3: The specific attachment phase. This takes place from 7 months. they show attachment to one PAF, They show separation anxiety and stranger anxiety, especially if the PAF is not present.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 4 is the multiple attachments phase. in this phase stranger anxiety and separation anxiety is extended to other multiple attachments that they have formed. Secondary attachments have formed with other people who spend time with the baby. After one year a baby has multiple attachments.
• The PAF is not necessarily who spends the most time with the baby: it is usually whoever interacts with the baby the most.
• Schaffer and Emerson found that one month after forming a primary attachment, 29% of babies had formed a secondary attachment.
• Schaffer & Emmerson's 4 stages of infant development (1964). Stage 4 is the multiple attachments phase. in this phase stranger anxiety and separation anxiety is extended to other multiple attachments that they have formed. Secondary attachments have formed with other people who spend time with the baby. After one year a baby has multiple attachments.
• fathers are much less likely to be the PAF than mothers.
• In Schaffer & Emmerson's study, the babies protested when the fathers left the room - showing an attatchment
• Fathers' main roles in attachment with infants is through play. Fathers spend a significant amount of time in playful interactions involving rough and tumble. Their play positively contributes to social, emotional and cognitive outcomes of the baby.
• An infant's primary attachment forms the basis of all of their later attachments in life
• Lorenz studied imprinting in animals. In Lorenz's First method, he evenly divided goose eggs. Half of the eggs hatched with the mother naturally and half hatched in an incubator and Lorenz was the first thing that they saw when they hatched. When hatched, the incubator geese followed Lorenz and the natural geese followed their mother. In his second method, Lorenz mixed up groups of hatchlings: the incubator group still followed Lorenz.
• A critical period for imprinting is a time period in which imprinting must happen. If it's missed then the infant may not attach to it's mother.
• Lorenz demonstrated Sexual imprinting in animals when he raised a peacock with giant tortoises, them being the first thing that it saw. It was raised in the reptile house and later displayed courtship behaviour to giant tortoises.
• Harlow's 1958 study on monkeys had two methods: in his first method, the monkeys that were left alone in a room died and the ones left alone with a cloth to cuddle survived. In Harlow's second method, the baby monkeys were reared with two wire model mothers which dispensed milk. One mother was built out of wire and the other was built with wire with cloth over it. Harlow found that the monkeys would cuddle the cloth mother instead of the wire mother and the monkeys sought the cloth mother when frightened.
• Harlow found that the plain wire mothers reared the most dysfunctional monkeys because they were the most maternally deprived. The monkeys in his experiment did not develop normal social behaviours - They were aggressive, bred less often and were unskilled in mating. As mothers they neglected their children, some of their children were even attacked and killed.
• Inter-rater reliability is achieved from having multiple researchers observe the same behaviour and confer on their interpretations
• Dollard & Miller's Learning theory is based on two conditioning types: Classical conditioning and Operant conditioning. They said that the baby attaching to the caregiver happens through learning theory.
• Classical conditioning is learning to associate two stimuli together so that we respond to them both in the same way. For example: Food is an unconditioned stimulus for a newborn baby, being fed leads to pleasure which is also an unconditioned response. The caregiver is a neutral stimulus to begin with but then the baby understands that the caregiver and being fed happens at the same time, so seeing the caregiver becomes a conditioned response for pleasure.
• Operant conditioning is learning to repeat behaviour based on the consequences of that behaviour. If the consequence is positive then the baby understands that the behaviour is pleasurable and so that is reinforced and if the consequence is negative, the behaviour is reduced. If the baby cries and the caregiver responds with feeding, crying becomes reinforced in the baby's mind as the way of getting fed. Receiving negative reinforcement in that situation would cause crying to stop.
• Sears et al said that attachment is a secondary drive for babies and that hunger is a primary drive. The caregivers provide food, so food becomes associated with them and so attachments form as a secondary drive as an association with the primary drive.
• Bowlby 's Monotropic theory of attachment is an evolutionary explanation for attachment: attachment is innate and so provides a survival advantage. Imprinting leads to infants staying close to their PAF, keeping them protected. Monotropy is the emphasis on one PAF - the attachment is different and more important than any other. Bowlby's theory is based on two principles: the law of continuity and the law of accumulated separation.