Schaffers’ stages of attachment

• Describe the method that Schaffer and Emerson carried out

  Involved 60 babies. 31 male, 29 female. All were from Glasgow and the majority were from skilled working-class families. Thr babies and their mothers were visited at home every month for the first year and again at 18 months. The researched asked the mothers questions about the kind of protest their babies showed in seven everyday separations. E.g adult leaving the room (separation anxiety). This was designed to measure the infant attachment and also they assesed stranger anxiety.
• what were the findings of Schaffer and Emerson’s

  Between 25 and 32 weeks of age about 50% of the babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adult, usually the mother (Specific attachment). Attachment tended to be to the caregiver who was more interactive and sensitive to infant signals and facial expressions. By the age of 40 weeks 80% of the babies had a specific attachment and almost 30% displayed multiple attachments.
• describe asocial stage (stage 1)


  The baby is recognising and forming bonds with its carers, however, the baby’s behaviour towards non-human objects and humans is quite similar. Babies show some preference for familiar adults. Babies are also happier when in the presence of other humans.
• Describe indiscriminate attachment

  from 2-7 months babies display more observable social behaviour. They show a preference for people rather than inanimate objects, and recognise and prefer familiar adults. At this stage babies usually accept cuddles and comfort from any adult, they don’t usually show separation anxiety or stranger anxiety. This attachment behaviour is known as indiscrimate because it’s not different towards any person.
• Describe specific attachment (stage 3)

  From around 7 months, the majority of babies start to display anxiety towards strangers and become anxious when separated from a particular adult (Biological mother in 65% of cases). This adult is termed the primary attachment figure. This person is not always the person the child spends the most time with but the one who offers the most interaction and responds to the baby’s signals with the most skill.
• Describe multiple attachments (stage 4)

  After babies show attachment behaviour towards one adult, they start to extend this attachment behaviour to multiple attachments with other adults who spend regular time with them. These relationships are called secondary attachments. I. Schaffer and Emerson’s study, 29% of the children had secondary attachments within a month of forming a primary attachment. By the age of one year, the majority of infants had formed multiple attachments.
• EVALUATION: good external validity

  Schaffer and Emerson’s study was carried out in the families‘ own homes and most of the observation was actually done by parents during ordinary activities and reported to researchers later. This means that the behaviour of the babies was unlikely to be affected by the presence of observers.
• EVALUATION: longitudinal design

  The same children were followed-up and observed regularly. The quicker alternative would have been to observe different children at each age. This is called a cross-sectional design. However, longitudinal designs have better internal validity than cross-sectional designs because they don’t have the confounding variables of individual differences between participants.
• EVALUATION: limited simple characteristics.

  The fact that all the families involved were from the same district and social class in the same city and a time over 50 years ago is a limitation. Child-rearing practices vary from one culture to another and one historical period to another.
• EVALUATION: problem studying the Asocial stage

  in the ‘asocial’ stage, babies that are young have poor co-ordination and are generally pretty much immobile. It’s therefore very difficult to make any judgments about them based on observations of their behaviour. There isn’t much observable behaviour.
• EVALUATION: measuring multiple attachment

  Just because a baby gets distressed when an individual leaves the room doesn’t necessarily mean that the individual is a ‘true’ attachment figure. Bowlby (1969) pointed out that children have playmates as well as attachment figures and may gets distressed when a playmate leaves the room but this doesn’t signify attachment. This is a problem for S&E stages because their observation does not leave us a way to distinguish between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and shows towards playmates.