attachment

• caregiver-infant interactions in humans
• precocial v altricial


  precocial animals are born at a fairly advanced stage of development. They can walk and run around soon after birth. However, humans are altricial and are born at a very early stage of development, so need to form attachment bonds with adults who will protect and nurture them
• attachment definition


  a close two-way emotional bond between 2 individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
• adaptive


  means of survival
• what can attachment bonds be characterised by?

  proximity - staying physically close to person they are attached to, separation distress - when person they are attached to leaves they will show separation distress eg crying, secure-base behaviour - checking that attachment figure is still there and regularly makes contact with them even whilst playing independently
• from an early age babies have meaningful social interactions with their carers. It is believed that these interactions have important functions for the child's social development, in particular for the development of caregiver-infant attachment
• Interactional synchrony

  Infant moves their body in time with rhythm of carers spoken language with the infants and caregivers behaviour synchronised because they are moving in the same or similar pattern. This reinforces the bond.
• Reciprocity 


  A caregiver-infant interaction is a 2 way/mutual process; each party responds to the others signals to sustain interaction (turn talking). the behaviour of each party elicits a response from the other eg if adult smiles the child smiles back
• Babies facial expressions matched the experimenters significantly more often than would happen by chance, Infant imitation of facial expressions is an innate ability. it aids attachment
• Meltzoff and Moore found that mothers pick up signals 2/3 of the time
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977) aimed to investigate the imitation of facial expressions in newborn infants
• procedure for meltzoff and moore

  conducted a controlled experiment where they selected 4 different stimuli and observed behaviour of infants in response. to record observations an observer watched video types of the 12-21 day old infants in real time, slow motion and frame by frame. the video is then judged by independent observers who had no knowledge of what the infant had just seen.
• each observer was asked to note all instances of infant tongue protrusions and head movements using behavioural categories - mouth opening, termination of mouth opening, tongue protrusion and termination of tongue protrusion. Observers who were blind to research aim later watched the videos and coded the babies facial expression. each observer scored the tapes twice so that intra-observer and inter-observer reliability could be calculated
• stages of attachment
• schaffer and emerson (1964) study aims


  To observe the formation of early infant-adult attachments in a natural environment
• procedure


  study involves 60 babies - 31 boys and 29 girls. All from Glasgow and majority from working class families. researchers visited babies and mothers in their own homes every month for first year and again at 18 months. researcher asked the mother questions about the kind of protest shown by their babies in 7 everyday separations. designed to measure babies attachment. researchers assessed stranger anxiety
• results at 25-32 weeks and 40 weeks

  50% of the babies showed separation anxiety towards a certain caregiver

  30% of babies had developed multiple attachments and 80% had developed specific attachment
• conclusion

  stage 1 = A social stage

  stage 2 = indiscriminate attachment

  stage 3 = specific attachment

  stage 4 = multiple attachment
• stage 1 - A social stage


  in the babys first few weeks its observable behaviour towards humans and inanimate objects is fairly similar but tend to show a preference for the company of familiar people and are more easily comforted by them
• stage 2 - indiscriminate attachment

  Started to display more obvious and observable social behaviours, showed a clear preference for humans over inanimate objects. Accepts comfort from anyone, does not show separation anxiety so can be babysat quite easily.
• stage 3 - specific attachment

  specific signs of attachment to particular people, secure base behaviour
• stage 4 - multiple attachments

  attachments with people who have spent time with them - secondary caregivers. schaffer and emerson found 29% of the children formed secondary attachments within a month of forming a primary attachment. by age of 1 majority of babies had formed multiple attachments
• Role of the father

  shaffer and emersons observational study showed how infants form multiple attachments around the age of 10-11 months. Fathers were the first joint attachment figure in about 1/3 of infants in 1964. 50 years later, many are a lot more involved especially in western countries. eg present at birth and feed and change nappies on an equal basis.
• Field (1978) fathers as a primary attachment

  Field filmed 4 month old babies face to face interaction with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers and primary care giver fathers. found that primary caregiver fathers like mothers spent more time smiling, imitating and holding babies than secondary caregiver fathers. interactional synchrony and reciprocity. Overall, found fathers can respond to the emotional needs of infant and found that primary caregiver fathers interact with their new born baby in a similar way to a primary caregiver mother.
• Grossmann et al (2002) distinctive role for fathers


  longitudinal study where babies attachments were studied until they were into their teens. the reseachers looked at both parents behaviour and its relationship to the quality of their babies later attachment to other people. Found the quality of babys attachment to mother related to attachments in adolesence. this was not the case for babys attachments with fathers. However, they also found that the quality of fathers play with babies related to quality of adolescent attachment
• Animal research. Lorenz (1935) aims and procedure


  to observe the phenomenon of imprinting

  he randomly divided a large number of goose eggs. half eggs hatched with mother goose in natural environment and other half in an incubator where first moving object they saw was Lorenz
• results and conclusion

  incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas control group followed the mother. when to groups met and mixed control group still followed the mother and experiment group Lorenz

  bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow first moving object they see. Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place. departure on species can be as brief as a few hours after hatching. If imprinting does not occur with that time Lorenz found chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.
• Harlow (1959) aim and procedure

  to test the learning theory of attachment by comparing behaviour in 16 baby monkeys

  Harlow created 2 types of surrogate mothers - a harsh wire and soft towelli. 1st condition = cage with wire + towelling + no milk. 2nd condition = wire (no milk), towelling (milk). 3rd = cage with wire (milk) and cage with towelling (milk). Harlow recorded the amount of time spent with each other and feeding time, Harlow frightened monkey with loud noise to test for mothers preference, also put baby monkey into larger cage to test exploration.
• results 


  the baby monkeys preferred contact with towelling mother, regardless of whether she provided milk. the baby monkeys would even stretch across the wire mother to feed whilst clinging to towelling mother. Monkeys who had access to the wire mother had diarrhoea as a sign of stress. when frightened with a loud noise monkeys cling to towelling mother when she was available. monkeys with towelling mother explored more and visited them more often.
• conclusion


  the rhesus monkeys had an innate, unlearned need to seek contact and comfort from their surrogate mother. therefore, emotional security is important in development of attachments, as well as food
• explanations of attachment


  dollard and miller used classical and operant conditioning with cupboard love theory. states infants form an attachment through association
• operant conditioning


  focuses on mutual reinforcement which strengthens an attachment
• bowlbys explanation of attachment
• bowlbys monotropic theory 


  he placed great emphasis on childs attachment to one particular caregiver, he believed this attachment is different and more important than others. law of continuity stated that the more constant and predictable a childs care the better the quality of attachment
• social releasers and critical period


  innate behaviours which encourage caregiving is smiling, cooing and gripping. they are social releasers as their purpose is to activate adult social interaction and an adult attach to a baby. bowlby stated attachment is a reciprocal process as interplay between baby and mother gradually builds a relationship. suggested the critical period is around 6 months, harder to form attachments after the critical period. critical period is more like a sensitive period.
• internal working model


  a child forms a mental representation of their relationships with their primary attachment figure - model for future relationships. can also affect childs ability to be a parent themselves
• Ainsworth's strange situation


  type A - insecure avoidance, explores freely without bothering where mum is and not bothered when she comes back. not bothered by appearance of stranger. explores freely and does not seek proximity or show secure base behaviour. 20-25% of babies.

  type b - secure attachment, babies explore happily but regularly go back to their caregiver. show moderate separation distress and stranger anxiety. require and accept comfort from caregiver in reunion stage 60-75% of babies
• type c - insecure resistant, seek greater proximity than others so explore less. shows high levels of stranger and separation distress, comfort when reunited with caregiver. 3% of British baby's.
• cultural variations 


  individualist v collective society's
• Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg 1988

  aim - to investigate whether previously found differences in attachment patterns in different countries were real or due to research error, to investigate intracultural differences, to use a larger sample of data than had previously been examined

  
  

  procedure - meta-anaylsis, 32 studies in 8 countries, over 2000 babies studied, only studies involving strange situation, mother-infant interaction, "normal" children. sample of more than 35 children