stages of attachment

• Schaffer and Emerson

  • Procedure - longitudinal study on 60 working class new-born infants and their mothers from Glasgow, The infants and mothers were visited at their own homes every month for the first year of the infant’s life and again at, 18 months, observations and interviews(with mothers) were used.
  • separation anxiety - assessed by the infant being left alone in a room, or the researcher asking the mother how the infant reacts in this instance..
  • stranger anxiety – assessed by the researcher starting each home visit by approaching the infant to see if this distressed the child
• 4 stages of attachment

  • Asocial
  • Indiscriminate
  • Specific
  • Multiple
• Asocial

  (first few weeks) Infants behaviour to adults and inanimate objects was similar
• Indiscriminate

  (2-7 months) Infants show a preference to people over inanimate objects but usually do not show stranger or separation anxiety
• Specific

  From around 7 months infants start to form attachments and show separation and strangers anxiety when separated. In 65% of cases the specific attachment was with the mother
• Multiple

  Within 1 months of forming a specific attachment, 29% of children formed multiple attachment. By 1 year most infants had multiple attachments. At 18 months, 75% of children had an attachment with their father