attachment

• Internal working model


  Mental representation of a baby's first relationship with their primary attachment figure, which acts as a template for future childhood and adult relationships
• Quality of a baby's first attachment

  • Crucial because it will powerfully affect the nature of their future relationships
  • A baby whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable attachment figure will tend to assume this is how relationships are meant to be and seek out functional relationships
  • A child with bad experiences of their first attachment will bring these bad experiences to bear on later relationships, struggling to form relationships or not behaving appropriately within them
• Attachment type


  Associated with the quality of peer relationships in childhood
• Attachment type and bullying involvement

  • Secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying
  • Insecure-avoidant children were the most likely to be victims
  • Insecure-resistant children were most likely to be bullies
• Internal working models


  Affect romantic relationships and parental relationships with own children in adulthood
• People tend to base their parenting style on their internal working model so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family
• Research on attachment and later relationships

  • Consistent evidence that early attachment predicts later attachment, emotional well-being and attachment to own children
  • Secure attachment as a baby appears to convey advantages for future development while disorganised attachment appears to seriously disadvantage children
• Not all evidence supports the existence of close links between early attachment and later development
• Most research on the link between early attachment and later development assesses early attachment retrospectively, which causes validity problems
• Associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables
• Disinhibited attachment


  Symptoms include attention-seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, both familiar and unfamiliar
• Age of adoption


  Affects recovery of intellectual development and risk of disinhibited attachment in Romanian orphans
• Romanian orphanage studies


  • Improved understanding of effects of early institutional care and how to prevent the worst effects
  • Lack of confounding variables compared to previous orphan studies
• Current lack of data on adult development of Romanian orphans
• The Romanian orphan studies are socially sensitive as the results show late-adopted children typically have poor developmental outcomes
• Maternal deprivation theory


  Proposed by John Bowlby, focused on the idea that the continual presence of care from a mother or mother-substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies and toddlers
• Separation vs deprivation


  Separation means the child not being in the presence of the primary attachment figure, which only becomes a problem if the child becomes deprived of emotional care
• Theory of maternal deprivation

  Bowlby's theory that the continual presence of care from a mother or mother-substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies and toddlers, both emotionally and intellectually
• Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment


  • Earlier in his career he proposed the theory of maternal deprivation
• Separation


  The child not being in the presence of the primary attachment figure
• Deprivation


  The child becoming deprived of emotional care, which can happen even if a mother is present
• Critical period

  The first two-and-a-half years of life, where Bowlby believed psychological damage was inevitable if a child was separated from their mother in the absence of suitable substitute care
• Effects of maternal deprivation

  • Delayed intellectual development, characterised by abnormally low IQ
  • Affectionless psychopathy - the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others, preventing the development of fulfilling relationships and associated with criminality
• Bowlby's 44 thieves study examined the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation
• Bowlby found that 14 of the 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths and 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives
• Bowlby concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy
• Bowlby's original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and would not be taken seriously as evidence nowadays
• A new line of research has provided some modest support for the idea that maternal deprivation can have long-term effects
• Deprivation


  The loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed
• Privation


  The failure to form any attachment in the first place, as may happen when children are brought up in institutional care
• Bowlby may have overestimated the seriousness of the effects of deprivation in children's development
• Lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation, and the 'critical period' is better seen as a 'sensitive period'
• Most attempts to replicate the 44 thieves study failed to produce similar findings
• Cross-cultural research on attachment patterns


  • Secure attachment seems to be the norm in a wide range of cultures, supporting Bowlby's idea that attachment is innate and universal
  • Cultural practices have an influence on attachment type
• Strengths of cross-cultural attachment research

  • Many studies were conducted by indigenous psychologists, enhancing validity
  • Some studies were conducted by outsiders, which may have introduced bias and communication difficulties
• Limitations of cross-cultural attachment research

  • Confounding variables like methodology, sample characteristics, and environmental factors may affect findings
  • Imposed etic - assuming an idea or technique that works in one cultural context will work in another, when the behaviours measured may not have the same meanings
• Ainsworth's Strange Situation


  A controlled observation procedure designed to measure the security of attachment a baby displays towards a caregiver, based on behaviours like proximity-seeking, exploration, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, and response to reunion
• Behaviours used to judge attachment

  • Proximity-seeking
  • Exploration and secure-base behaviour
  • Stranger anxiety
  • Separation anxiety
  • Response to reunion
• Strange Situation procedure


  1. Caregiver and baby enter an unfamiliar playroom

  2. Baby is encouraged to explore

  3. Stranger comes in, talks to caregiver and approaches baby

  4. Caregiver leaves baby and stranger together

  5. Caregiver returns and stranger leaves

  6. Caregiver leaves baby alone

  7. Stranger returns

  8. Caregiver returns and is reunited with baby
• Purpose of Strange Situation procedure

  • Tests exploration and secure base
  • Tests stranger anxiety
  • Tests separation and stranger anxiety
  • Tests reunion behaviour and exploration/secure base
  • Tests separation anxiety
  • Tests stranger anxiety
  • Tests reunion behaviour