explanations of attachment

• Two types of explanations:

  • Learning theory
  • Bowlby's monotropic theory
• Learning theory AO1

  • Classical conditioning - unconditioned stimulus (milk) provides a unconditioned response (pleasure), neutral stimulus (feeder) through repetition of feeding infant learns to associate feeder with pleasure, conditioned stimulus(feeder) produces a conditioned response (pleasure)
  • Operant conditioning - can be used to explain why infant cry for comfort, infant is hungry and cries this leads to response from caregiver (positive reinforcement, receives reward of food), when caregiver feeds infant crying stops(negative reinforcement)
• Learning theory AO3

  • Environmental reductionism - reduces complex human behaviour to simple basic units through stimulus, response + association.
  • Research to contradict by Harlow
  • Research to contradict by Schaffer + Emerson
• Monotropic theory - A01

  Adaptive

  social releasers

  critical period

  monotropy

  internal working model
• Adaptive

  • innate system, it is inherited in order to improve survival, therefore it is adaptive
  • programmed’ to attach and parents are also ‘programmed’ to attach.
• social releasers

  • born with social releasers such as smiling, crying and looking ‘cute’, this triggers a response in a care giver and ensures interaction takes place to form an attachment.
• critical period

  • critical period for attachment in an infant to take place, this is a biological period
  • attachment does not take place during the set developmental period of the first 2.5 years of life – THEN IT MAY NOT TAKE PLACE AT ALL.
• monotropy

  • placed great emphasis on a child’s attachment to one caregiver
  • most important attachment in the child’s development, the mother but said it didn’t need to be the biological mother.
• Internal working model

  • ‘mental representation’ that the child forms of their relationship with their primary caregiver
  • model/template for what relationships are like
  • attachment relationship with their caregiver to build an expectation of what future relationships will be like
  • Internal Working Models are passed on from one generation to the next, people base their parenting on their own experiences of being parented