intro to attachment

• 2 key elements of caregiver-infant interactions:

  • reciprocity
  • Interactional synchrony
• An interaction is reciprocal when each person responds to the other and elects a response
• reciprocal interactions are described as a dance as they respond to each others moves
• interactional synchrony takes place when mother and infant's actions and emotions mirror each other
• when observing 2 week old babies, an association was found between the expressions shown buy the mother and actions of the baby
• high levels of interactional synchrony is associated with better quality of mother-infant attachment (Isabella et al)
• Schaffer and Emerson forum that the majority of babies become attached to their primary caregiver around 7 months
• Grossman carried out a longitudinal study looking at both parents attachments into their teens

  • found that the quality attachment with mother but not farther related to the child's attachment in adolescence
  • the quality of fathers play with their infant related to the thier quality of attachment
• Grossman suggests that the fathers role in attachment have to do with play and stimulations and less with nurturing
• father's can be the more nurturing attachment figure. the key to the attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness not the gender of the parent (Field 1978)
• limitations into observing care-giver infant interactions

  • difficult to fully understand what is happening only by observing
  • observations don't tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity
• synchrony describes behaviours that occur at the same time but doesn't tell us their purpose
• a strength of observations into caregiver and infant attachment is that controlled observations capture fine detail
• how are observations into caregiver-infant attachment able to capture fine detail?

  well-controlled procedures that were filmed from multiple angles

  • ensuring that very fine details of behaviour can be recorded
  • babies don't know that they are being recorded (usualling a limitation)

  therefor research has good validity
• Limitations of Grossman's role of the father

  • inconsistent findings on fathers
  • diminishes father's role as a secondary attachment figure
  • socially sensitive research: working mothers
• different researchers are interested in different questions about the role of the father. Some researchers have found that fathers behave differently from fathers and have distinct roles however others have found that fathers take on a maternal role. Hence inconsistent research
• Grossman and other research have found the single parent children do not develop any differently from a two-parent house hold suggesting that the secondary attachment of the father isn't as important
• research into mother-infant attachment suggests that children may be at a disadvantage if their mothers go back to work quickly as they are unable to achieve interactional synchrony.