Intro to attachment

• Reciprocity


  A description of how two people interact
• Caregiver-infant interaction


  • Both caregiver and baby respond to each other's signals and each elicits a response from the other
• Interactional synchrony


  Caregiver and baby reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated (synchronised) way
• Babies have meaningful social interactions with their carers. Psychologists believe that these interactions have important functions for the child's social development, in particular good quality early social interactions are associated with the peaceful development of attachments between babies and their caregivers
• Reciprocity


  An interaction is said to show reciprocity when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them
• Babies have periodic 'alert phases' in which they signal (e.g. making eye contact) that they are ready for a spell of interaction. Research shows that mothers typically pick up on and respond to their baby's alertness around two-thirds of the time, although this varies according to the skill of the mother and external factors such as stress
• From around three months this interaction tends to become increasingly frequent and involves both mother and baby paying close attention to each other's verbal signals and facial expressions
• Active involvement


  Both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions and they appear to take turns in doing so
• Interactional synchrony


  The temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour where caregiver and baby interact in such a way that their actions and emotions mirror the other
• Interactional synchrony begins as early as two weeks old, where babies' expressions and gestures are more likely to mirror those of the adults more than chance would predict
• Interactional synchrony


  • It is believed to be important for the development of caregiver-infant attachment
• Stages of attachment


  • Asocial stage
  • Indiscriminate attachment
  • Specific attachment
  • Multiple attachments
• Schaffer and Emerson's research involved observing 60 babies and their mothers in their own homes every month for the first year and again at 18 months, assessing the babies' attachment behaviours
• Fathers are much less likely to become babies' first attachment figure compared to mothers, but most fathers go on to become important attachment figures by the age of 18 months
• Attachment to fathers


  • Attachment to fathers is less important than attachment to mothers for emotional development, but the quality of fathers' play with babies is related to the quality of adolescent attachments
• When fathers take on the role of primary caregiver, they are able to adopt the emotional role more typically associated with mothers, such as spending more time smiling, imitating and holding babies
• Imprinting


  A phenomenon where newborn animals attach to and follow the first moving object they see
• Sexual imprinting


  The relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences
• Harlow's research on rhesus monkeys


  • Contact comfort was more important to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour, and monkeys deprived of a real mother in early life had severe social and behavioural problems as adults
• Harlow concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation - a young monkey had to be exposed to a caregiver within 30 days for an attachment to form, after which the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible