influence of early attachment

• what is the internal working model?

  Mental representation of self and others in relationships.
• what did Myron - Wilson and Smith 1998 do?

  assessed 196 children's attachment type and bullying by questionnaire and found that INSECURE-AVOIDANT infants are most likely to be bullied and INSECURE-RESISTANT are most likely to be bullies
• what is the procedure of Hazan and Shaver's love quiz?

  • love quiz placed in a small town paper and it asked questions about: current attachment experiences, attachment to history to identify current, assessing attachment type by responding to one of three statements that 'best describes me'
  • questions included attitude towards love
  • 620 responses
• what were the findings of Hazan and Shaver?

  • 56% classified as secure
  • 25% as avoidant
  • 19% as resistant
• what did Hazan and Shaver find that securely attached adults were?

  • Had certain beliefs - love is enduring
  • reported certain experiences - mutual trust
  • less likely to have been divorced
• what did Hazan and Shaver find insecurely attached adults to be?

  • felt true love was rare
  • found relationships less easy
  • more likely to be divorced
• what is the relationship like between a secure adult and their mother?

  positive image of mother as dependable and caring
• what is the relationship between a resistant adult and their mother like?

  conflicting memories of mother being positive and rejecting
• what is the relationship between an avoidant adult and their mother like?

  remember mother as cold and rejecting
• what did Bailey et al do (relationships in adulthood as a parent)

  • assessed 99 mothers and their infants AND their own mothers using the strange situation and interviews
  • Found the majority of the mothers had the same attachment type with their infant as with their own mother
• Behaviours influenced by the internal working model: Mental health

  • the lack of an attachment during the critical period in development would result in a lack of an internal working model
  • children with an attachment disorder have no preferred attachment figure, an inability to interact and relate to others is evident before 5 as well as experience of severe neglect or change in caregivers
• Strength - strong research support

  • many studies show a link between infant attachment type and later development
  • Fearon and Roisman supported this
  • disorganised attachment was most predictive
• Weakness - not all evidence supports the link between infant attachment and later development

  • Regensburg longitudinal study found no continuity of attachment type
• weakness - Zimmerman

  • assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attached to parents. There was very little relationship between the quality of infant and adolescent attachment
• weakness - assessment methods

  • self - report mostly used which leaves it open to bias
  • retrospective data used - recollection problems
• weakness - research is correlated

  • correlations doesn't show causation
  • could be innate temperament
  • Temperament hypothesis - this may affect their issues with relationships later in life - intervening variable
• weakness - confounding variables

  • some studies do make assessments of infant attachment and follow up children, assessing their later development
  • however, these studies may be affected by confounding variables - parenting style and personality may affect both attachment and later development
• Evaluation extra - Clark and Clark

  • the influence of infant attachment on later relationships are PROBALISTIC, people are not doomed to have bad relationships due to early attachments - just have a greater risk
  • Bowlby exaggerated the significance of the early relationships on later relationships
  • could lead to self-fulfilling prophecy
  • knowing someone's attachment type may do more harm than good