Attachment

• Interactional synchrony


  How a parent’s speech and infant’s behaviour become finely synchronised so that they are in direct response to one another. It was defined by Feldman (2007) as a “temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour” and as “symbolic exchanges between parent and child”. 

  Feldman suggests that interactional synchrony serves a critical role in developmental outcomes in terms of self-regulation, symbol use, and the capacity for empathy.
• Reciprocity


  Reciprocity refers to the process in which a behaviour is matched during an interaction e.g. smiling back when someone smiles at us. 

  Reciprocity develops, in its simplest form, at a very early age. According to Feldman (2007), reciprocity can be seen in interactions from 3 months of age.
• Procedure of Strange Situation - Ainsworth


  1. Child and carer placed in an empty room. The child is free to explore
  2. a stranger then enters the room and talks briefly to the mother
  3. stranger attempts to play and talk with the child
  4. Mother leaves the room and baby is left alone with the stranger. Stranger tries to comfort them.
  5. The mother returns to the room and the stranger leaves
  6. the mother leaves the room and the child is left alone
  7. the stranger returns to the room and tries to comfort the child
  8. mother re-enters the room and the stranger leaves
• Type A: Avoidant children


  • Do not seek proximity and display no secure base behaviour to their caregiver
  • Show no distress when she leaves or make contact when she returns
  • 22% of infants in study
• Type B: Secure children

  • Play independently but seek proximity and show secure base behaviour
  • Moderate separation distress and stranger anxiety
  • Require comfort on reunion with caregiver
  • 66% of infants in study
• Type C: Resistant children

  • Explore less and intensely seek proximity
  • Very distressed when left alone and with a stranger but resist comfort when reunited with caregiver
  • 12% of infants in study
• Bowlbys theory of attachment - critical period

  • mothering is almost useless if it is delayed until after 2 1/2 years - 3 years ( all children ) and useless for most children if delayed after 12 months
  • once formed it activates an inherited survival mechanism that regulates proximity of mother and the amount of fear they respond with to strangers "no form of behaviour is accompanied by stronger feelings than is attachment behaviour . Infant street those to whom they re attached with joy, and become anxious angry and sorrowful when they leave or threaten to leave. Bowlby (1969)

   
• Bowlbys theory of attachment - monotropy


  • attachment to the mother is qualitivley different from any other (strong innate tendency ) he saw this attachment as unique and did not dispute multiple attachments however this did seem to be strongest of them all.
• Internal working model


  Bowlby's theory of attachment
• Bowlby's theory of attachment

  • Developing child develops a schema of what a relationship should be like from their first attachment
  • Around age 3, this schema becomes part of the child's personality and affects their understanding of the world and future interactions
• Model of others as being trustworthy

  Part of the internal working model
• Model of the self as valuable


  Part of the internal working model
• Model of the self as effective when interacting with others


  Part of the internal working model
• First attachment relationship


  Acts as a prototype for all future social relations
• Disrupting the first attachment relationship

  Can have bad implications for the child's future
• Secure attachment

  Leads to emotional stability as an adult
• Insecure attachment

  Leads to difficult late relations
• Lorenz 


  Lorenz conducted an experiment in which goslings were hatched either with their mother or in an incubator. Once goslings had hatched they proceeded to follow the first moving object that they saw between 13 & 16 hours after hatching; in this case, Lorenz.
• Harlow

  Harlow conducted research with 8 rhesus monkeys which were caged from infancy with wire mesh food dispensing and cloth-covered surrogate mothers, to investigate which of the two alternatives would have more attachment behaviours directed towards it.Monkeys were willing to explore a room full of novel toys when the cloth-covered monkey was present but displayed phobic responses when only the food-dispensing surrogate was present.
• Bowlby (1988)


  Reasoned that if patterns of attachment are a product of how their mother has treated them, it could be anticipated that the pattern he develops with his father is the product of how their father has treated them
• Bowlby

  Suggests that fathers can fill a role closely resembling that filled by a mother but points out that in most cultures this is uncommon
• Bowlby


  Argues that in most families with young children, the father's role tends to be different
• Schaffer & Emerson

  Fathers less likely to become primary attachment figures. Only 3% of the cases the father was the sole object of attachment. This rises to 37% when the father is the joint first object of attachment with the mother
• Grossman's (2002)


  Conducted a longitudinal study of 44 families comparing the role of fathers' & mothers' contribution to their children's attachment experiences at 6,10 and 16 years. Play sensitivity was a better predictor of the child's long-term attachment representation than the early measures of the of attachment type that the infant had with their father
• Field (1978)

  Conducted research which compared the behaviours of primary caretaker mothers with primary and secondary caretaker fathers. Face-to-face interactions were analysed from video footage with infants at 4 months of age. Overall, it was observed that fathers engaged more in game playing and held their infants less. However, primary caretaker fathers engaged in significantly more smiling, imitative grimaces, and imitative vocalizations than did secondary caretaker fathers and these were comparable with mothers' behaviour
• Stages of attachment


  Asocial stage (0-6 weeks) - Similar responses to objects & people. Preference for faces/ eyes. Indiscriminate attachments (6 weeks – 6 months) - Preference for human company. Ability to distinguish between people but comforted indiscriminately. Specific (7 months - 12 months) - Infants show a preference for one caregiver, displaying separation and stranger anxiety. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort and protection.   Multiple (1 year +) - Attachment behaviours are displayed towards several different people eg. siblings, grandparents etc.
• Schaffer and Emerson


  Schaffer and Emerson (1964) studied 60 babies from Glasgow at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life using a longitudinal method.  Children were all studied in their own homes and visited monthly for approximately one year. Interactions with their carers were analysed to establish if and when infants started to display separation anxiety. Results revealed that attachments were most likely to form with carers who were sensitive to the baby's signals, rather than the person they spent the most time with.
• Procedure of Van IJzendoorn experiement

  Researchers located 32 studies of attachment where the Strange Situation had been used to investigate the proportions of infants with different attachment types. They were conducted in 8 countries; 15 in the USA.  
• Secure attachment


  The most common classification of attachment types across different studies and countries
• Proportion of secure attachment

  • 75% in Britain
  • 50% in China
• Insecure-resistant attachment


  The least common type of attachment overall, although the proportions ranged from 3% in Britain to around 30% in Israel
• Insecure-avoidant attachment


  Observed most commonly in Germany and least common in Japan
• Variations between results within the same country were actually 150% greater than those between countries
• Securely attached

  Best adult relationships/friendships
• Insecure resistant

  Struggled to maintain friendships
• Insecure avoidant

  Struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships
• Hazan and Shaver study

  • Analysed 620 'love quiz' responses
  • 3 attachment types identified: 56% securely attached, 25% insecure avoidant, 19% insecure resistant
• Securely attached

  Most likely to have good and longer lasting romantic experiences
• Insecure avoidant

  Reveal jealousy and feelings of intimacy
• Patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic relationships