development of attachment

• schaffer and emmerson aim?

  to investigate the development of attachment
• schaffer and emerson procedure ?

  60 working class Glaswegian babies aged between 5 and 23 weeks old, studied until the age of one and visited every four weeks, they measured separation protest and stranger anxiety, they asked mothers about separation protest in 7 everyday occurrences and had to rate the intensity on a four point scale, stranger anxiety measured by assessing infants response o researcher
• schaffer and emerson used the findings to construct a description of how attachment develops
• schaffer and emerson findings ?

  four stages, indiscriminate, beginnings, discriminate, multiple
• whats indiscriminate attachment ?

  0-2 months old, start to show preference for social stimuli, reciprocity and interactional synchrony are important
• whats the beginnings of attachment ?

  approx four months old, prefer human company, can tell between familiar and unfamiliar faces, can be comforted by anyone (no stranger anxiety)
• whats discriminate attachment ?

  around seven months, show preference for one person that is usually the most responsive, has seperation anxiety when that person leaves and experience joy upon reunion, their one person is their specific primary attachment
• whats multiple attachments ?

  occurs soon after first specific primary attachment forms, form multiple attachments based on the number of consistent relationships, these are called secondary attachments and these relationships suffer theyre own separation anxiety
• within 1 month of becoming attached 29% of infants had multiple attachments, after 6 months 785 had secondary attachments
• schaffer and emeerson conclusion ?

  by the age of one year majority of infants had formed multiple attachments, they developed after infant had developed specific attachment to primary caregiver
• schaffer and emerson critique ?

  collected data may be unreliable as its based off of mothers report, some may be less sensitive and therefore less likely to report their childrens protests, there could also be an issue with social desirability bias as mother wants to be seen as primary attachment therefore reducing the internal validity
• critique of schaffer and emerson ?

  sample was from 1960's so cannot generalise today, parental care has changed since childcare has become commercialised, emancipation of women and stay at home dads have quadrupled in the last 25 years, if it was conducted today we may see different results meaning it lacks temporal validity
• critique of schaffer and emerson ?

  biased sample, all wrking class so may not apply to different social groups, cultural bias by using individualistic sample may not apply to collectivist cultures so therefore it lacks population validity
• opposing views on multiple attachments ?

  schaffer and emerson = they are not as important, called secondary attachments. Bowlby= the multiple attachments aren't equal, infant forms one specific emotional relationship (monotropy hypothesis) and secondary attachments are important for different reasons. Rutter= all attachments are equal, they combine to produce overall attachment type