Schaffer’s stages of attachment

• Aim of Schaffer and Emerson‘s study


  Wanted to investigate at what age different attachments form and the emotional intensity of the attachment.
• Schaffer and Emerson’s procedure

  • 60 babies from working class families in Glasgow
  • All children were studied from their own homes
  • Children were visited monthly for a year and again at 18 months
  • Mothers were asked about protest behaviours in seven everyday situations. E.g adult leaves the room (separation anxiety) and responses to strangers (stranger anxiety)
  • These behaviours are indicators of attachment.
• What did Schaffer and Emerson’s study find?

  • Between 25 and 32 weeks of age about 50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adult.
  • Attachment tended to be towards the caregiver who was the most interactive and sensitive to infant signal and facial expressions (reciprocity). Not necessarily the person the infant spent the most time with.
  • By the age of 40 weeks, 80 of the babies had a specific attachment and almost 30 displayed multiple attachments.
• What conclusion can be made from Schaffer and Emersons study?

  • Indicate that attachments develop in stages
  • Results also suggest they were most likely to form attachments with those who responded accurately to the baby’s signals, not the person they spent the most time with (sensitive responsiveness)
  • The most important fact in forming attachments is not who feeds and changes the child but who plays and communicates with him or her.
• Sensitive responsiveness

  • Typically defined as the extent to which a parent is in-tune with a child’s emotional state, can decode those signals accurately, and able to respond appropriately and in timely fashion.
• External validity

  • For example the study was conducted in the families own homes and observations were recorded by the parents.
  • The parents carried out observations whilst doing normal daily activities and the infant is familiar with the parents so behaviour is natural. parents were asked to communicate their observations with the researchers and this ensured the babies behaviour was not influenced by the presence of strangers.
  • The findings can be generalised to day to day caregiver-infant interactions.
  • however mothers may not be objective observers and may be biased, not accurate.
• Useful- Longitudinal study

  • For instance, the children were followed up and observed regularly.
  • The longitudinal study focuses on the same children and allows us to see how attachment develops as the study progresses. It also reduces individual differences as the same babies were studied. This would have been an issue if different babies were part of the experiment.
  • Schaffer and Emerson’s study has high internal validity.
• Issues with sample

  • For example, the sample consisted of participants from the same culture and social class.
  • The findings cannot be generalised as this sample consists of Scottish babies whose culture tends to be individualistic so the findings cannot be applied to collectivist cultures. Furthermore, since the study was conducted on working class families, this makes it difficult to apply the findings to different social groups.
  • This limits the extent to which the findings are generalisable due to a very limited and constrained sample.
• Stages of attachment

  • Asocial stage
  • Indiscriminate stage
  • Specific attachment
  • Multiple attachment
• Asocial stage

  • Behaviour between humans and inanimate objective is fairly similar.
  • babies tend to show a preference for the company of familiar people and are more easily comforted by them.
• Indiscriminate attachment

  • From 2-7 months babies start to display observable social behaviours.
  • Clear preference for humans rather than inanimate objects
  • Recognise and prefer the company of any person
  • Don’t show separation anxiety or stranger anxiety
• Specific attachment

  • From 7 months, most babies show signs of attachment to one person.
  • Signs include stranger and separation anxiety.
  • Attachment to primary caregiver. This person is not the individual who spends the most time but offers the most interactions.
• multiple attachment

  • Babies extend attachment behaviour to multiple attachments with other people whom they regularly spend time with.
  • These are called secondary attachments.
  • Schaffer and Emerson observed, 29% of children secondary attachment within a month of forming specific attachment
  • By the age of 1, most babies develop multiple attachments.
• Problems studying the asocial stage

  • For example, young babies in this stage have poor co-ordination and are generally pretty much immobile.
  • This makes it difficult to make judgements about infants from observing their behaviour and from a young age they do not have much observable behaviours. Furthermore, because we are unable to rely on their observations it is difficult to draw any conclusion.
  • Stages of attachment is based on unreliable evidence.
• Real world application- Day care

  • For example, in the asocial and indiscriminate attachment stage day care is likely to be straightforward as babies can be comforted by any skilled adult.
  • However, Schaffer and Emerson’s research tells us that day care, especially starting day care with an unfamiliar adult may be problematic during the specific attachment stage.
  • Therefore this means that parents use of day care can be planned using Schaffer and Emersons stages.
• Conflicting evidence on multiple attachments in different cultures

  • Research by Bowlby, indicates that most babies form attachments to a single main carer before they become capable of developing multiple attachments, whereas other research by Van Ijzendoorn suggested that in collectivist cultures, multiple attachments are the norm because families work together when producing food and child-rearing.
  • Differences seem to be culturally specific. Multiple attachments are likely to be formed earlier in collectivist cultures compared to individualistic (Van Ijzendoorn)
  • Lack of application
• What type of Observation was Schaffer and Emerson’s study?

  • Naturalistic observation
  • All the observations of babies and their carers took place in the family homes.
  • Nothing was altered to observe the effect on the babies behaviour.
• Data on separation anxiety was collected from the mothers themselves. In what way may this have challenged the validity of the data collection?

  • The validity of the observations could be challenged because it depended on the mothers being honest, not biased by the social acceptability of their answers and being able to be objective about what happened during separations.
• In what way could Schaffer and Emerson’s study be described as a participant observation?

  • Separation anxiety was observed by the parents, who were the ones separating from infants, and stranger anxiety towards researchers was observed by the same researchers.
  • Therefore both separation and stranger anxiety towards anxiety were observed by participant observers.