attachment

• Attachment


  A close two-way emotional bond between individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
• Consequences for a child who doesn't develop an attachment to another human being
• How we first form an attachment

  1. During infancy, children communicate with their caregivers through non-verbal communication

  2. Interactions form the basis of attachment between infant and caregiver

  3. The more sensitive each is to the other's signals, the deeper the relationship
• Reciprocity


  • From around 1 month, interactions between babies and parents become increasingly reciprocal, with babies responding to parents' behaviour and increasingly matching their actions
• Interactional synchrony


  • When two people's actions and emotions mirror each other, it is important in the development of an attachment bond between mother and infant
• Infants as young as two weeks old can imitate both facial and manual gestures of an adult
• Securely attached mother-infant pairs had shown more interactional synchrony in the first year of life
• Stages in the development of attachment

  • Asocial stage (0-6 weeks)
  • Indiscriminate attachments (6 weeks-6 months)
  • Specific attachments (7-9 months)
  • Multiple attachments (10/11 months onwards)
• Characteristics of attachment stages

  • Asocial stage: Babies produce similar responses to objects and people, do not prefer specific people
  • Indiscriminate attachments: Babies become more sociable, can tell people apart but do not prefer specific individuals, do not show fear of strangers
  • Specific attachments: Baby begins to show separation anxiety, fear of strangers
  • Multiple attachments: Baby forms multiple secondary attachments in addition to primary attachment
• In Schaffer and Emerson's study, the mother was the main attachment figure for 65% of the children at 18 months old, whilst only 3% of the infants developed a primary attachment to their father
• By 18 months old, 31% of the infants had formed multiple attachments, e.g. to grandparents
• Attachments were most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby's signals, not the person they spent most time with
• The most important factor in forming attachments is not who feeds and changes the child but who plays and communicates with him or her
• Issues with Schaffer and Emerson's study

  • Validity issues due to reliance on mothers' reports
  • Limited sample characteristics - all from same district and social class
  • Study is over 50 years old, so may not generalise to current contexts
  • Stage theory may only apply to individualistic cultures, not collectivistic cultures
• Children often form multiple attachments for different purposes, e.g. attachment to mother for care and love, attachment to father for unpredictable play
• Children with multiple attachments are at an advantage as they are more used to forming and conducting social relationships, and have several attachment figures to turn to
• Role of the father


  • Fathers tend to be more physical, unpredictable and exciting in their play than mothers
  • Fathers can quickly develop sensitivity to children's needs if they assume the position of main caregiver
  • Factors affecting father-child attachment: degree of sensitivity, type of attachment to own parents, marital intimacy, supportive co-parenting
• Children with secure attachments to their father go on to have better relationships with peers, less problem behaviours, and better emotion regulation
• Children who grow up without a father tend to do less well at school and be more aggressive, particularly boys
• Fathers are less able than mothers to detect low levels of infant distress, which suggests that males are less suitable as primary attachment figures
• Lamb (1987) found that fathers who become main care providers seem able to quickly develop more sensitivity to children's needs and become a safe base from which to explore, which suggest sensitive responsiveness is not a biological ability limited to women
• The key to the attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent
• Fathers


  • Play a key role in the development of children's social development
  • Children with secure attachments to their father go on to have better relationships with peers, less problem behaviours and are able to regulate their emotion
• Children who grow up without a father tend to do less well at school and are more aggressive, particularly boys
• Pederson (1979) points out that most studies have focused on female single mothers from poor socio-economic backgrounds, so it may be social factors related to poverty that produces these negative outcomes and not the absence of fathers
• When fathers spend more time with their children, the children develop more secure attachments, which suggests that the amount of interaction is an important factor
• It may be that fathers with more sensitivity to their children's needs interact with them more
• Imprinting


  A process where the young follow and form an attachment to the first large moving object they meet
• Lorenz's imprinting study


  1. Divided a clutch of goslings eggs into two groups, one left with their natural mother and the other placed in an incubator

  2. The group in the incubator followed Lorenz when they hatched

  3. Lorenz marked the two groups and placed them together, the goslings quickly divided themselves up, one group following Lorenz and the other their natural mother
• Critical period


  The time period in which the strongest tendency to imprint occurs
• Imprinting is a process similar to attachment in that it binds a young animal to a caregiver in a special relationship
• Harlow's study on effects of privation

  • 16 monkeys separated from mothers and placed with wire and cloth surrogate mothers
  • Monkeys spent more time with cloth mother even if she had no milk
  • Monkeys who grew up with surrogate mothers were much more timid, didn't know how to behave with other monkeys, had difficulty with mating, and the females were "inadequate" mothers
• The effects of maternal deprivation could be reversed in monkeys if an attachment was made before the end of the critical period, but if it lasted after the end of the critical period then no amount of exposure to mothers or peers could alter the emotional damage
• Learning theory explanation of attachment

  • Children learn to become attached to their caregiver because they give them food (classical conditioning and operant conditioning)
  • Attachment occurs because the child seeks the person who can supply the reward (food)
• John Bowlby's theory suggests that infants are born with an innate tendency to form an attachment that serves to increase their chances of survival, and that adults are also innately programmed to become attached to their infants
• Bowlby's Monotropic Theory of Attachment
• Bowlby's theory


  • Attachment is an innate process that serves an important evolutionary function
  • Infant who is less well attached is less well protected
• How does attachment develop?

  1. Attachment behaviour has become programmed into human beings

  2. Operates similarly in almost all cultures

  3. Purpose and function of attachment is the same regardless of ethnic or cultural background

  4. Allows the child to explore and learn within a safe context (secure base)

  5. Develop a loving and reciprocal relationship which can be passed on through generations
• Social releasers


  Behaviours like smiling, cooing and grasping that encourage attention from adults
• Bowlby's key ideas


  • Monotropy - attachment to one particular caregiver is more important and different to all the others
  • Critical period - attachment must occur during the first 2-3 years of the child's life
  • Internal working model - template for future relationships based on the infant's primary attachment