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


  Powerfully affects the nature of their future relationships
• Secure attachment


  • Baby assumes relationships are meant to be loving and reliable, seeks out functional relationships, behaves appropriately within them
• Insecure-avoidant attachment


  • Baby struggles to form relationships, may be too uninvolved or emotionally close
• Insecure-resistant attachment


  • Baby may be controlling and argumentative in relationships
• Attachment type


  Associated with quality of peer relationships in childhood
• Secure attachment


  Children very unlikely to be involved in bullying
• Insecure-avoidant attachment


  Children most likely to be victims of bullying
• Insecure-resistant attachment


  Children most likely to be bullies
• Internal working models

  Affect romantic relationships and parental relationships with own children in adulthood
• Secure attachment as a baby

  Conveys advantages for future development
• Disorganised attachment as a baby

  Seriously disadvantages children
• Not all evidence supports close links between early attachment and later development
• Most research on link between early attachment and later development uses retrospective measures, which have validity issues
• Associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables
• Disinhibited attachment

  Attention-seeking, clinginess and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, both familiar and unfamiliar
• Adoption before 6 months

  Rarely displays disinhibited attachment
• Adoption after 6 months

  Shows signs of disinhibited attachment
• Institutionalisation


  Leads to disinhibited attachment and intellectual disability
• Adoption before 6 months


  Allows recovery of intellectual development
• Romanian orphanage studies have improved understanding of effects of early institutional care and how to prevent worst effects
• Romanian orphanage studies have fewer confounding variables than previous orphan studies
• Romanian orphanage studies lack data on adult development outcomes
• Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation proposed that continual presence of mother or mother-substitute is essential for normal psychological development
• Separation


  Child not being in presence of primary attachment figure
• Deprivation


  Child becoming deprived of emotional care, which can happen even if mother is present
• Theory of maternal deprivation

  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, both emotionally and intellectually
• Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment


  • Bowlby believed that being separated from a mother in early childhood has serious consequences (maternal deprivation)
• Bowlby (1953) famously said that 'mother-love in infancy and childhood is as important for mental health as are vitamins and proteins for physical health
• 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 and, say, depressed)
• Brief separations, particularly where the child is with a substitute caregiver who can provide emotional care, are not significant for development but extended separations can lead to deprivation, which by definition causes harm
• Critical period


  The first two-and-a-half years of life, which Bowlby saw as critical for psychological development
• If a child is separated from their mother in the absence of suitable substitute care and so deprived of her emotional care for an extended duration during this critical period then (Bowlby believed) psychological damage was inevitable
• Bowlby also believed there was a continuing risk up to the age of five
• Intellectual development


  Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would experience delayed intellectual development, characterised by abnormally low IQ
• William Goldfarb (1947) found lower IQ in children who had remained in institutions as opposed to those who were fostered and thus had a higher standard of emotional care
• Emotional development


  Bowlby identified affectionless psychopathy as the inability to experience guilt or strong emotion towards others, which prevents a person developing fulfilling relationships and is associated with criminality
• Bowlby's 44 thieves study

  1. Examined the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation

  2. Interviewed 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing to assess for signs of affectionless psychopathy

  3. Interviewed their families to establish whether the 'thieves' had prolonged early separations from their mothers

  4. Compared to a control group of 44 non-criminal but emotionally-disturbed young people
• Bowlby concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy