explanations for attachment

• learning theory explanation

  children learn to become attached to there caregiver as they give them food, sometimes referred to as 'cupboard love'

  learning can be due to associations between different stimuli such as food and the mother
• classical conditioning - learning by association

  food is an unconditioned stimulus that is paired with the caregiver who is the neutral stimulus that brings the unconditioned response (pleasure), making the caregiver slowly become associated with the food making the caregiver the conditioned stimulus and the pleasure they bring is the conditioned response
• operant conditioning - learning by reinforcement

  suggesting that a hungry infant feels uncomfortable and this creates a drive to reduce discomfort

  any behaviour resulting in rewards is positively reinforces and therefore likely to be repeated and any behaviour that results in punishment is unlikely to be repeated

  a hungry infant feels uncomfortable(cry) and is driven to reduce discomfort and when fed they feel pleasure(reward)

  food is the primary reinforcer and the caregiver is the secondary so the infant seeks out the thing that offers pleasure
• learning theory evaluation strengths

  conditioning could be involved in some aspects of attachment, the baby may feel warm and comfortable and may influence who the main attachment figure is
• learning theory evaluation limitation

  lack of support from animal studies as the geese in Lorenz's study imprinted on the first moving things regardless on whether they had food or not and Harlow's monkeys picked the cloth mother over the wire mother in the variation where the wire mother produced food showing that they picked comfort over food
• Bowlby's monotropic theory

  suggested that attachment is an innate process that serves an important evolutionary function

  it is rooted in biology
• Bowlby's theory - monotropy

  monotropy is the idea that a child forms an attachment to a primary caregiver(usually the mother) and he believed that the more time a baby spent with the primary caregiver the better
• Bowlby's theory - critical theory

  there is a critical period from one to three years old where the attachment system is active, if a child does not form an attachment within this time it will be very difficult to form attachments later on
• Bowlby's theory - social releases

  suggested that babies are born with innate 'cute' behaviours such as smiling, cooing and gripping which will trigger adults into wanting to take care of them

  he recognised that attachment was reciprocal as adults have an innate predisposition to become attached and the social releasers trigger that response in caregivers
• Bowlby's theory - internal working model

  suggested that children form a mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver as it serves as a model for what relationships are like, an unpleasant experience can alter this internal working model as later relationships will be based off this bad experience
• Bowlby's theory evaluation strengths

  the theory has a real life application in hospitals as a newborn baby gave skin to skin contact immediately starting to form a attachment

  
  

  Hazen and Shaver(1987) - used the 'love quiz' to see the correlation between childhood attachment and later adult relationships showing that babies who didn't form an attachment at a young age impacted their later relationships resulting in jealousy and abandonment issues
• Bowlby's theory evaluation limitations

  Schaffer and Emerson found that children are able to form multiple attachments at the same time which is going against Bowlby's monotropy as it contradicts single attachments