Attachment

• Attachment is a strong and long lasting emotional bond between two people (an infant and a caregiver). They see each other as essential
• Reciprocity is when an infant and caregiver exchange interacts for each others benefit. E.g. Parent smiles and the infant smiles back.
• Interactional synchrony is when two people interact and mirror each other. E.g. both the mother and infant wave at the father.
• Meltzoff and Moore investigated interactional synchrony. They used an adult model making different faces. After the dummy was removed, and they found babies imitated the adults faces
• Shaffer investigated the age where infants become attached and who they become attached to.
• Shaffer procedure: Conducted a longitudinal study (long period of time). Infants ranged from 5 weeks - 23 weeks. They visited the children monthly and asked questions to the caregiver.
• Shaffer findings: 50% of first attachment formed was at 7 months of age. Secondary attachments formed to other family members. The mother was the main attachment for 65% at 18 months and 3% were attached to the father. After, 75% then formed attachments to the father.
• Shaffer conclusions: They concluded that an attachment doesn't form by who feeds them, but who communicates, plays and has sensitive responsiveness.
• Strength of Shaffer's study: It is a longitudinal study so it allows more in depth shown of the changes of attachment. It can pin point where change occurred. However, it is time consuming so low economical.
• Strength of Shaffer's study: It has high ecological validity since observation is done in the home which is a natural environment
• Weakness of Shaffer's study: It has low population validity since the study was restricted to working-class homes in Glasgow.
• Weakness of Shaffer's study: It is era dependant. There is an increase of gay couples adopting after the gay equality law. Therefore fathers in todays society could have an increase of attachment rate
• Stages of attachment: Asocial, indiscriminate attachment, discriminate attachment, multiple attachment.
• Asocial: Infants begin acting similar to inanimate objects and humans.
• Indiscriminate: More social and can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people. They don't show separation anxiety.
• Discriminative: Start to display separation anxiety towards strangers.
• Multiple attachments: Infant forms a wider comfort to people with secondary attachments
• Role of the father: Researchers claim men are not equipped to form a primary attachment. Due to not having the hormone oestrogen (caring behaviour). Shaffer concluded that a primary care giver requires sensitive responsiveness what the fathers can't provide. More research says the father's role is a play mate.
• Strength of the role of the father: Supported by research. Found fathers who spend more time smiling and playing with the child become primary caregiver. They are able to adopt the emotional role associated with mothers.
• weakness of the role of the father: Researcher bias. The idea of how fathers should behave relies of stereotypes. Suggesting research is no longer reliable.
• Strength of the role of the father: Has real world application. It shows the father can be an attachment figure, reducing pressure from the mother.
• Animal explanations: Lorenz geese study took gosling eggs and divided them into 2 groups, one staying with the natural mother and one in an incubator. Found the goslings when put together naturally divided into the two groups due to the critical period of imprinting.
• Weakness of Geese study: Ethical issues since they were separated from their natural mother and fails to protect from harm
• Weakness of Geese study: Can't be generalised since we don't have the same brain as birds.
• Harlows monkey study: Created two robotic monkeys, one was wrapped in a cloth, the other wasn't. 4 monkeys were fed with cloth monkey, 4 fed by the wire monkey. All monkeys spent most time with the cloth monkey.
• Weakness of monkey study: Two stimuluses were varied. The heads were also different so a confounding variable.
• Weakness of monkey study: ethical issues since they were scared and failed to protect from harm however it has cost benefit analysis.
• Bowlbys Evolutionary Monotropic theory suggests attachment is innate
• Bowlbys monotropic theory suggests it is due to adaptive, social releasers, critical period, monotropy and the internal working model
• Adaptive attachment helps the infant increase chance of survival by staying near to the caregiver
• Social releasers means babies are born with innate behaviours e.g. smiling, crying to encourage attention
• Critical period is the time period for forming an attachment (6 months - 2 years)
• Monotropy suggests infants have one special bond
• Internal working model the representation of relationships with primary caregiver and is the template for future relationships
• weakness of Bowlbys theory: Rutter argues it is actually the sensitive period rather the critical period. Rutter found it is possible to form attachments after 3-6 months. This caused the time period to change to 6 months - 2 years. Decreasing the validity of the theory
• Weakness of monotropy theory: Bowlby suggests that an infants makes one special bond, however staffer argued the role of the father to be just as important (play mate) for child development.
• strength of internal working model: Shaver found the internal working model to represent future relationships and act as a template.
• The strange situation aimed to assess the quality of attachment for middle-class American infants. The procedure was 106 American infants and mothers were observed through a 1 way mirror over 8 episodes to highlight separation anxiety, reunion, response to a stranger. They reordered proximity, contact, interaction avoidance and resistance.
• Secure results of the strange situation: 66% showed secure attachment. distressed when mother leaves but calms down, avoidant of stranger when alone, used mother as a safe place.
• insecure resistant results of the strange situation: 12% showed insecure resistant attachment. very distressed when mother leaves and cannot be soothed, high stranger anxiety, resists mother at reunion.