psychology: attachment

• What is attachment?


  A strong reciprocal emotional bond between an infant and a primary care giver
• What is reciprocity?


  This is when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them; when the baby responds to the caregiver in a form of turn-taking, e.g. mother smiles and then baby smiles in response.
• What is interactional synchrony?

  -Interactional synchrony is when the baby mirrors their cargiver's actions or emotions.

  -This mirroring can also be referred to as imitation or simply copying the adult's behaviour.
• What is an alert phase?

  When the baby signals that they are ready for interaction. e.g. by making eye contact
• What was the aim of Meltzoff & Moore's study

  -They aimed to examine the interactional synchrony in infants using a controlled observation
• What was Meltzoff and Moore's procedure?

  -An adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures

  -The baby's response was filmed and labelled by independent observers

  -They observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks old
• What were Meltzoff and Moore's findings?

  Babies' expressions and gestures were more likely to mirror those of adults than chance would predict.
• What was Isabella et al (1989) procedure?


  -Observed 30 mothers and babies together and assessed the degree of synchrony the researchers also assessed the quality of mother-baby attachment.
• What were Isabella et al findings?

  They found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-baby attachment, e.g. the emotional intensity of the relationship.
• What is "Schaffer's stages of attachment"?

  They proposed that there were four identifiable stages of attachment, a sequence which is observed by all babies.
• What is the asocial stage and what age does it describe?

  - 0-2 months

  - An infant shows similar responses to objects and people.
• What is the indiscriminate attachment stage and what age does it describe?

  - 2-6 months

  - An infant now shows a preference for human company over non-human company. They can distinguish between different people and prefer familiar people however as accept comfort from any adult.
• What is the specific attachment stage and what age does it describe?

  - 7-12 months

  - An infant shows a preference for one particular person displaying separation and stranger anxiety.

  The infant looks to a particular person for security and protection.

  At this point the baby is said to have formed a specific attachment to their primary attachment figure.
• What is the multiple attachment stage and what age does it describe?

  - 1 year upwards

  - Attachment behaviours are now displayed towards several different people e.g., siblings, grandparents etc and are sometimes referred to as secondary attachments.
• What was the aim of Schaffer and Emerson's study?

  To examine the formation of early attachments.
• What was the method of Schaffer and Emerson's experiment?

  -Their sample consisted of 60 babies (31 male, 29 female) from working class families in Glasgow aged between 5-23 weeks at the start of the study.

  -The researchers visited the babies in their homes, every month for the first 12 months and once again at 18 months.

  -The researchers interviewed the mothers and observed the children in relation to separation and stranger anxiety in a range of everyday activities. The researchers asked the mothers questions about the kind of protest their babies showed in seven everyday separations, e.g. adult leaving the room (a measure of separation anxiety). This was designed to measure the babies' attachment. The researchers also assessed stranger anxiety - the babies' anxiety response to unfamiliar people.
• What were the results from Schaffers and Emerson's experiment?

  -At around 25-32 weeks, 50% of the children showed separation anxiety towards their mothers (expected for the discriminate attachment stage).

  •By 40 weeks, 80% of the children had a specific discriminate attachment and 30% had started to form multiple attachments
• What was Lorenz's aim?

  To examine the phenomenon of imprinting in non-human animals.
• What is imprinting?


  Imprinting is where the offspring follows and forms an attachment bond to the first large moving object they see after birth.
• What was Lorenz's procedure?

  Lorenz conducted an experiment where he randomly divided greylag goose eggs into two batches. One batch, the control group, was hatched naturally by the mother. The second batch, the experimental group, were placed in an incubator with Lorenz making sure he was the first large moving object that the goslings saw after hatching. The behaviour of both groups was then recorded.

  Lorenz then marked the goslings, so he knew in which condition they were hatched and placed them under an upside-down box. The box was then removed, and their behaviour was again recorded.
• What were Lorenz's findings?

  Lorenz found straight after birth that the naturally hatched goslings followed their mother goose, whereas the incubator hatched goslings followed Lorenz.

  When he mixed the goslings up under the cardboard box and lifted it up, the naturally hatched goslings moved immediately towards their mother, while the incubator hatched goslings followed Lorenz, showing no attachment to their biological mother.

  Lorenz noted that this imprinting only occurred within a critical period of 4-25 hours after hatching. This relationship persisted over time and proved to be irreversible.
• What was Lorenz's conclusion?

  These results suggest that imprinting is a form of attachment that is exhibited by birds that are mobile from birth that attach to or imprint onto the first large moving object they encounter after birth
• What was Harlow's aim?

  To examine the extent to which contact comfort and food influences attachment behaviour in baby rhesus monkeys.
• What was Harlow's procedure?

  Harlow constructed two surrogate mothers: one harsh 'wire mother' and a second wire mother wrapped in a towel material, 'cloth mother'.

  •He removed 16 rhesus monkeys from their mothers at birth and placed them with the two 'surrogate' mothers.

  •In one condition (eight rhesus monkeys) milk was dispensed from the wire mother.

  •In a second condition (the other eight rhesus monkeys) milk was dispensed from the cloth mother.

  •Harlow recorded how long each monkey spent with the different surrogate mothers.

  •To test for mother preference during periods of stress, the monkeys were startled with a loud noise and their responses recorded.
• What was Harlow's results?

  Harlow found that the baby monkeys spent the majority of their time each day cuddling the cloth mother, regardless of whether this mother had the milk or not. It was observed that they would even stretch across to the wire mother for food whilst still clinging to the cloth mother. This suggests that contact comfort was of more importance than food when it came to attachment behaviour.

  •Also, when frightened, the monkeys sought comfort from the cloth mother than the wire mother.

  •As the monkeys grew up, these monkeys, that had been deprived of their real mothers (maternal deprivation), suffered severe consequences. They were more aggressive, less sociable and less skilled in mating than other monkeys. They also neglected their young and sometimes even killed their own offspring.
• What was Harlow's conclusion?

  Harlow concluded that baby rhesus monkeys appear to have an innate drive to seek contact comfort from their parent suggesting that attachment is formed through an emotional need for security rather than food (this in contrast to the learning theory explanation). This contact comfort provided by the mother is associated by a higher willingness to explore their surroundings and lower levels of stress.

  
  

  Like Lorenz, Harlow concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation - a mother figure had to be introduced to a young monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this, damage was irreversible
• What is separation anxiety?


  Distress shown by an infant when separated from an attachment figure
• What is a primary attachment figure?

  Person who has formed the closest bond with the child. Has an intense relationship. Usually biological mother, but others can fulfil the role.
• What is a secondary attachment figure?

  Relationships with adults other than the primary attachment figure. The infant regularly spends time with them.