Schaffer's stages of attachement

• Stages of attachment

  Many developmental theories identify a sequence of qualitatively different behaviours linked to specific ages. in the case of stages of attachment qualitatively different infant behaviours are linked to different ages and all babies go through them in the same order
• Stage 1: Asocial stage

  • first few weeks of life it’s observable behaviour towards humans and inanimate objects is fairly similar.
  • Schaffer and emerson did not believe it was entirely asocial because even at this stage babies show signs that they prefer to be with other people
• Stage 2: Indiscriminate attachment

  • 2-7 months
  • babies start to display obvious and observable social behaviours
  • clear preference for being with other people rather than objects
  • usually do not show separation anxiety when caregivers leave or stranger anxiety in the presence of unfamiliar people.
• Stage 3: Specific attachment

  • around 7 months
  • babies show signs of attachments towards a particular person. These signs include anxiety directed towards strangers especially if attachment figures are absent.
  • at this point babies are said to have formed a specific attachment. The person the baby attached to is the primary attachment figure. 65% of the time it’s the babies mother
• Stage 4: Multiple attachments

  • shortly after babies start to show attachment behaviour towards one person they usually extend this behaviour to multiple attachments with other people they regularly spend time with. These are called secondary attachment. 29% of babies formed secondary attachment within a month of forming a primary attachment
• Schaffer and Emerson’s (procedure)

  • study involved 60 babies (31 boys and 29 girls) all from glasgow and majority from skilled working class families
  • visited every month for a year then at 18 months
  • asked mother questions about protest. baby makes after separation designed to measure the babies attachments also assessed stranger anxiety
• Schaffer and Emerson (finding)

  the study helped identify the 4 distinct stages in the development of infant attachment behaviour
• Evaluation (good external validity)

  Strength

  • Research has good external validity
  • Most observations were made by parents during ordinary activities and reported to the researchers. alternative was to have researchers present to record observations this may have distracted the baby
  • means its highly likely that the participants behaved naturally while being observed
• Evaluation (poor evidence for the asocial stage)

  Limitation

  • Schaffer and Emerson’s stages validity of the measures they used to assess attachment in the asocial stage
  • young babies have poor coordination and are immobile. if babies under 2 months felt anxiety they would not be able to show it. made it difficult for the mothers to report back to researchers for signs of anxiety
  • means that babies may actually be social but because of flawed methods they appear to be asocial
• Evaluation (Real-world application)


  Strength

  • Schaffer and Emerson’s stages had practical application in day care
  • in the first 2 stages day care is likely to be straight forward as babies can be comforted by any skilled adult. however this may be a problem i’m the specific attachment stage
  • This means that parents use of day care can be planned using Schaffer and Emerson’s stages