explanations of attachment - learning theory

• what is cupboard love?

  the belief that children learn to love whoever feeds them
• what is used to explain cupboard love?

  classical conditioning
• Dollard and Miller:

  • hungry infant feels uncomfortable - drive to reduce discomfort
  • when fed the drive is reduced and it produces pleasure (reward)
  • food becomes primary reinforcer
  • person supplying the food becomes a secondary reinforcer and a source of reward in their own right
• strength - conditioning could still be involved

  • probably not food but a baby could get attached to a caregiver that has become associated with warmth and comfort
  • HOWEVER this ignores the fact that babies take a very active role in attachment. they imitate interactions - Feldman
• Weakness - counter evidence from animal studies

  • Lorenz's goslings imprinted on the first moving thing they saw and Harlow's monkeys preferred the cloth monkey with no nourishment
• Weakness - counter evidence from human studies

  • Schaffer and Emmerson showed that for many babies their main attachment was not to the person who fed them. Isabella et al found that intersectional synchrony predicted attachment quality