ATTACHMENT AQA PSYCH

• Attachment

  An emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the attachment figure
• Caregiver-Infant Interactions In Humans


  • Interactions between very young babies and their parents are baby led, with the adult responding to the behavior of the baby
• Reciprocity


  A form of interaction between infant and caregiver involving mutual responsiveness, with both infant and mother responding to each other's signals, and each elicits a response from the other
• Smiling is an example of reciprocity – when a smile occurs in the infant, it triggers a smile in the caregiver and vice versa
• Jaffe et al. said that from birth, babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult, almost as if they were taking turns as people do when having a conversation
• Interactional synchrony


  A form of rhythmic interaction between infant and caregiver involving mutual focus, reciprocity, and mirroring of emotion or behavior
• Interactional synchrony


  • Most likely to develop if the caregiver attends fully to the baby's state, provides playful stimulation when the infant is alert and attentive, and avoids pushing things when an overexcited or tired infant is fussy and sending the message "Cool it. I just need a break from all this excitement"
• Heimann showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth onwards had been found to have a better quality of relationship at 3 months
• It is extremely difficult to be certain, based on observations of mother-infant interactions, what is taking place from the infant's perspective
• Observations of mother-infant interactions are generally well-controlled procedures, with both mother and infant being filmed, often from multiple angles
• Babies don't know or care that they are being observed, so their behavior does not change in response to controlled observation which is generally a problem for observational research
• Stages Of Attachment

  • Asocial (0 – 6 weeks)
  • Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 7 months)
  • Specific Attachment (7 – 9 months)
  • Multiple Attachment (10 months and onwards)
• The study's results indicated that attachments were most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby's signals, not the person they spent more time with
• Sensitive responsiveness

  The key to the attachment
• Intensely attached infants had mothers who responded quickly to their demands and, interacted with their child. Infants who were weakly attached had mothers who failed to interact
• The most important fact in forming attachments is not who feeds and changes the child but who plays and communicates with him or her
• Evaluation of Schaffer and Emerson study

  • Low population validity
  • Small sample size
  • Unreliable data collection
  • Lacks historical validity
• Multiple Attachments


  • Many of the babies from the Schaffer and Emerson study had multiple attachments by 10 months old, including attachments to mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, and neighbors
  • By 18 months, 31% had five or more attachments
  • The mother was the main attachment figure for about half of the children at 18 months old and the father for most others
  • The multiple attachments formed by most infants vary in their strength and importance to the infant
• The Role Of The Father


  • Fathers adopt a more play-mate role than mothers
  • Most infants prefer contact with their father when in a positive emotional state and wanting to play
  • Most infants prefer contact with their mothers when they are distressed and need comfort
• Factors affecting the father's role


  • Culture
  • Father's age
  • Amount of time the father spends away from home
• Field found that when fathers have the main caregiver role, they adopt behaviors more typical of mothers; therefore, the key to attachment is the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent
• McCallum and Golombok found that children growing up in single or same-sex families didn't develop differently from those in two-parent families – Evidence undermines the idea of fathers having distinct roles
• Until very recently, men were expected to be breadwinners and not directly involved in their children's care. However, this might be a stereotypical view rather than reflect reality, as fathers might not have been directly involved in day-to-day care
• In the UK, fathers until recently were not given any paternal leave, so the responsibility for child care was implicitly given to the mothers
• Men seem to lack the emotional sensitivity to infant cues (Heerman et al. 1994) that women offer spontaneously. This could be due to the fact that women produce a hormone, estrogen, which increases emotional response to others' needs
• Freeman et al. (2010) found that male children are likelier to prefer their father as an attachment figure than female children. He also found that children are more likely to be attached to their fathers during their late childhood to early adolescence
• Manlove et al. (2002) found that fathers are less likely to be involved with their infant if the infant has a difficult temperament
• Harlow's Animal Studies


  • Harlow used rhesus monkeys to study attachment
  • Harlow found that the monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth-covered monkey, which provided contact comfort
• Evaluation of Harlow's study

  • Unnecessarily cruel (unethical)
  • Limited value in attempting to understand the effects of deprivation on human infants
  • Monkeys suffered from emotional harm
  • Confounding variable present
  • Findings cannot be generalized to humans
• Lorenz's Imprinting Theory


  • Lorenz found that geese follow the first moving object they see during a 12-17 hour critical period after hatching
• on animals which raises the question of whether it can be generalized to human behavior. Though behaviorists believe that animal behavior can be generalized to human behavior, the behavior displayed by humans differs largely due to conscious decisions
• Schaffer and Emerson found that infants were not predominantly attached to the person that fed them but to the person who responded most sensitively to their needs
• This suggests that Harlow's study on rhesus monkey is not valid in determining attachment as the cognitive level of humans greatly exceeds that of animals. In this context, Harlow's findings cannot be generalized to humans
• Imprinting


  The process where young animals form attachments to the first moving object they encounter during a critical period after birth
• Lorenz's Imprinting Theory

  • Animal studies have been largely useful in describing attachment and imprinting
  • Lorenz (1935) found that geese follow the first moving object they see during a 12-17 hour critical period after hatching
  • This process is known as imprinting and suggests that attachment is innate and programmed genetically
• Imprinting research


  • Guiton (1966) used chicks and yellow rubber gloves to feed them during the critical period, and the chicks were imprinted on the glove
  • The chicks were then later found trying to mate with the yellow rubber glove
• This largely corroborates with the findings originally found in Lorenz's study as this suggests the long-lasting effects of the study as this is an irreversible change affecting social and sexual behavior known as sexual imprinting
• However, there are criticisms of imprinting as the concept of imprinting within Lorenz's study suggests that within this context, the object leads to an irreversible situation on the nervous system
• Hoffman (1976) suggested that this is not an irreversible change which is then further supported by Guiton, who suggested that after spending time with their own species, they were able to engage in normal sexual behavior, suggesting that imprinting is moderately reversible
• Learning Theory of Attachment

  Attachment is a learned behavior acquired through classical and operant conditioning