Attachment AO3

Created by

Gabriella Piper

Cards (42)

Strength of research into caregiver-infant interactions: filmed observations 
P - Filmed in highly controlled environment (laboratory).

E - Extreneous variable can be controlled.
- Things that maight distract the baby.
- Using films means observations can be analysed later.
- Unlikely researchers will miss key behaviours.
- More than one observer can record data.
- Produces inter-observer reliability.
- Babies don't know they ar being observed so there's no hawthorne effect.

K - Good reliability and validity.
Strength of research into caregiver-infant interactions: Research support 
P - Research
- Support interactional synchrony

E - Murray and Trevarthen.
- Infants interacted with a video monitor with their mothers in real time.
- After, the video monitor showed the mother not responding to the infant's facial and bodily gestures.
- The infant showed acute distress.
- This shows acute distress comes from withholding interactional synchrony.
- This indicates that the infant was trying to elicit a response from the mother.

K - Infant is an active and intentional partner in the interaction.
- Behaviour is innate, not learned.
Limitation of research into caregiver-infant interactions: difficulty observing babies. 
P - Hard to interpret a baby's behaviour.

E - Meltzoff and Moore.
- Infants mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions tested occur frequently.
- Hard to distinguish between general activity and imitated behaviours.
- To overcome, Meltzoff and Moor had observers (who weren't aware of the expression made by the adult) to record the data.
- Inter-observer reliability.

K - Cannot be sure that behvaiours seen is due to interactional synchrony or reciprocity.
Limitation of research into caregiver-infant interactions: failure to replicate 
P - Failure to replicate Metlzoff and Moore's findings.

E - Koepke et al.
- Replicated procedure.
- Did not find infants were imitating the adult's facial expressions.
- Piaget.
- Said infants in Meltzoff and Moore's study were imitating due to conditioning (being rewarded for doing so).

K - Interactional synchrony is learned and not innate.
Strength of stages of attachment identified by Schaffer and Emerson: Good external validity 
P - Good external validity.

E - Most of the observations made by parents during ordinary activities and resported to researchers.
- If researchers observed babies it might have distacted them or made them more anxious.

A - Issues with parents being observers.
- Unlikely to be objective.
- Biased in terms of what they noticed or reported.
- Babies behaviour may not have been accurately recorded.

K - Highly likely that participants (babies) behaved naturally while being observed.
Strength of stages of attachment identified by Schaffer and Emerson: Real-world application 
P - Practical application.
- Day-care.

E - In asocial and discriminate stages daycare is straightforward as babies can be comforted by any skilled adult.
- Day-care, especially when starting with an unfamiliar adult, may be problematic during specific attachment stage.

K - Parents use of day care can be planned using Schaffer and Emerson's stages.
Limitation of stages of attachment identified by Schaffer and Emerson: Stage theories 
P - Set stages for development.
- Time stamped.

E - Not all babies develop and form attachments at the same rate as others.
- If babies do not develop at this specified rate they may be labelled as abnormal.
- Single parent household, foster homes and hospitalisation can affect the rate babies develop at and the stages they go through.

K - Infants and parents may be judged for not meeting this 'criteria' of development.
- Stage theories can cause stigma towards parents whose babies dont fit them.
Limitation of stages of attachment identified by Schaffer and Emerson: Lacks population validity 
P - Lacks population validity.

E - Only looked at working class families from Glasgow.
- Glasgow: individualist culture.
- Research shows many multiple attachments are formed in collectivist cultures in comparison to individualistic cultures.

K - Not generalisable to wider population.
- Not suitable in explaining attachments worldwide due to different cultures, lifestyles and socialisation.
Strength of research into the role of the father: real-world application 
P - Real-world application.
- Can be used to offer advice to parents.

E - Parents sometimes agonise over decisions like who should take on the PCG role.
- Mothers may feel pressured to stay at home becuase of the steryotypical views of mothers' and fathers' roles.
- Equally, fathers may be pressured to focus on work rather than parenting.
- In some families this may not be economically the best solution.
- Research into the role of the father can be used to offer reassuring advice to parents.
- Heterosexual parents can be informed that fathers are quite capable of becoming primary attachment figures.
- Also, lesbian-parent and single-mother families can be informed that not having a father around does not affect a childs development.

K - Parental anxiety about the role of fathers can be reduced.
Limitation of research into the role of the father: conflicting evidence 
P - Conflicting evidence.
- Finding vary according to the methodology used.

E - Longitudinal studies such as that of Grossmann et al. have suggested that fathers as secondary attachment figures have an important and distinct role in their childrens development, involving play and stimulation.
- However, if fathers have a distinctive and important role we would expect that children growing up in single-mother and lesbian-parent families would turn out in some way different from those in two-parent heterosexual families.
- McCallum and Golombok.
- Showed that these children do not develop differently from children in two-parent families.

A - However...
- These lines of research may not in fact be in conflict.
- It could be that fathers typically take on distinctive roles in two-parent heterosexual families, but that parents in single-mother and lesbian-parent families simply adapt to accomodate the role played by fathers.

K - Question as to whether fathers have a distinctive role remains unanswered.
Limitation fo research into the role of the father: confusion over research questions 
P - Lack of clarity over the question being asked.

E - The question 'What is the role of the father?' in the context of attachment is much more complicated than it sounds.
- Some researchs attempting to answer this question actually want to understand the role of fathers as secondary attachment figures.
- But others are more concerned with fathers as a primary attachment figure.
- The former have tended to see fathers as behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role.
- The latter have found that fathers can take on a maternal role.

K - Difficult to offer a simple answer as to the role of the father.
- It depends on what specific role is being discusssed.
Strength of Lorenz's animal study of attachment: research support 
P - Research support.
- Concept of imprinting.

E - Regolin and Vallortigara (1995).
- Chicks were exposed to simple shape combinations that moved (e.g. a triangle with a rectangle in front).
- A range of shape combinations were moved in front of them and they followed the original most closely.

K - Young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical period,
- As predicted by Lorenz.
Strength of Lorenz's animal study of attachment: real-world application 
P - Real world application.
- Farming.

E - Used by sheep farmers.
- A newborn lamb (whose mother has died) will not normally be accepted by another sheep who has lost its own lamb.
- However, if the dead lamb is skinned and its pelt tied to the orphaned lamb, there's a good chance attachment will occur.
- This is an example of olfactory imprinting (through smell).

K - Lorenz's theory of imprinting can be used practically in farming.
Limitation of Lorenz's animal study of attachment: generalisability to humans 
P - Lacks generalisability from birds to humans.

E - The mammalian attachment system is quite different and more complex than that in birds.
- E.g. in mammals attachment is a two-way process, so it is not just the young who become attached to their mothers but also the mammalian mothers show an emotional attachment to their young.

P - Not appropriate to genralise Lorenz's ideas to humans.
Limitation of Lorenz's animal study of attachment: conflicting research 
P - Conflicting research.
- Imprinting is reversible.

E - Guiton et al.
- Chickens exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding them during their first few weeks became imprinted on the rubber gloves.
- In later life, chickens tried to mate with the gloves.
- However when they spent time with their own species they developed a taste for mating with these animals instead.

K - Lorenz's theory is flawed.
- Imprinting is not irreversible like he suggested.
Strength of Harlow's animal study of attachment: real-world value 
P - Important real-world applications.

E - Howe (1998)
- Helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in child development.
- Allows them to intervene to prevent poor outcomes.
- Now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in the zoo and breeding programmes in the wild.

K - Value of Harlow's research is not just theoretical but also practical.
Limitation of Harlow's animal study of attachment: generalisability to humans 
P - Lacks generalisability from monekys to humans

E - Rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than Lorenz's birds, and all mammals share some common attachment behaviours.

A - However...
- The human brain and behaviour is still more complex of that than monkeys.

K - Not appropriate to generalise Harlow's findings to humans.
Limitation of Harlow's animal study of attachment: ethical issues 
P - Study was unethical.

E - Monkey's were not offered protection from harm.
- They suffered psychological harm.
- Long term effects.
- Bad parents to their own offspring.
- Social abnormalities.
- Sexual abnormalities.

A - Harlow chose monkeys due to their position high up on the evolutionary scale.
- Some psychologists believe that the benefit of learning about human deprivation outweighed the cost of the monkeys suffering.

K - Harlow's study gave important insight into attachment when individuals are deprived a proper primary caregiver.
Strength of learning theory's (OC) explanation of attachment: research support 
P - Research support.

E - Dollard and Miller.
- They calculated that in a babies first year, they are fed 2000 times, generally by PCG.
- Creates ample opportunity for mother to become associated with the removal of the unpleasant feeling of hunger.
- Negative reinforcement.

K - Babies form attachment to individuals that provide them releif, drive reduction.
Strength of learning theory's explanation of attachment: explanatory power 
P - Explanatory behaviour.
- Aspects of human attachment behaviour.

E - Infants do learn through association and reinforcement, but food may not be the main reinforcer.
- Attention and responsiveness from a caregiver are important rewards that assist in the formation of attachment.

A - However...
- Such reinforcers (attention) were not part of the original learning theory of attachment.
- May also be that responsiveness is something infants imitate and thus learn about how to conduct relationships.

K - Learning theory does have explanatory power on the whole but it may not be fully complete.
Limitation of learning theory's explanation of attachment: conflicting research 
P - Conflicting research.
- Goes against key foundation of learning theory of attachment.

E - Schaffer and Emerson.
- Studied 60 babies.
- Asked mothers about babies protests in various seperation situations including: being left alone, being left with babysitter, and being put to bed.
- The babies were not always attached to those who were involved in feeding them.

K - The association between the person feeding babies and drive reduction isn't how attachments are necessarily formed.
Limitation of learning theory's (CC) explanation of attachment: conflicting research 
P - Conflicting research.

E - Harlow.
- Found that the monkeys formed an attachment with the cloth mother over the one that provided food.

A - However...
- The monkey did still go to the wire mother for food when it was hungry causing drive reduction.

K - Attachments are formed with the caregiver that provides the most comfort and not the one that provides food.
Strength of Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment: support for social releasers 
P - Evidence supporting the role of social releasers.

E - Evidence that cute baby behaviours are designed to elicit interaction from caregivers.
- Brazelton et al. observed babies trigger interactions with adults using social releasers.
- The researchers then instructed adults to ignore their babies' social releasers.
- Babies became increasing distressed and some eventually curled up and lay motionless.

K - Illustrates the role of social releasers in emotional development.
- They are important in the process of attachment development.
Strength of Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment: support for internal working model 
P - Support for internal working model.

E - Bailey et al.
- Assessed attachment relationships in 99 mothers and their one year old babies.
- They measured the mothers attachment to their own PCG.
- They also assessed the attachment quality of the babies.
- They found that mothers with pooor attachment to their own PCG were more likely to have poorly attached babies.

A - However...
- It can be difficult to measure attachment in adults as factors like separation and stranger anxiety won't affect them.

K -Supports Bowlby's idea.
- Mothers ability to form attachment to their babies is influenced by their internal working model.
- Which comes from their own early attachment experiences.
Limitation of Bowlby's monotropic theory of attachment: validity of montropy challenged 
P - Concept of monotropy lacks validity.

E - Schaffer and Emerson.
- Found that although babies did attach to one person at first, a significant minority formed multiple attachments at the same time.
- Although first attach,emt does appear to have a particularly strong influence on later behaviour, this may simply mean its stronger, not neccessarily different from the childs other attachments.
- Other attachments to family members provide all the same key qualities (e.g. emotional support, a safe base etc.)

K - Bowlby may be incorrect.
- That there is a unique quality and importance to the childs primary attachment figure.
Strength ofAinsworth's strange situation - types of attachment: good reliability 
P - Good inte-rater/observer reliability.

E - Internal reliability was tested through inter-observer reliability and they found an agreement attachment type in 94% of cases.
- This high level of reliability may be becuase behaviours (e.g. proximity seeking and stranger anxiety) involve large movements and are therefore easy to observe.
- E.g. anxious babies cry and crawl away from strangers.

K - We can be confident that attachment type as assessed by the strange situation does not depend on subjective judgements.
Strength of Ainsworth's strange situation - types of attachment: good predictive validity 
P - Good predictive validity.
- Findings predict a number of aspects of the baby's later development.

E - A large body of research has shown that infants assess as Type B (secure) tend to have better outcomes.
- In both later childhood and adulthood.
- In childhood this includes better achievment in school and less involvement in bullying.
- In adulthood this includes better mental health.
- Those babies assessed as having Type C (insecure resistant) and those not falling into Types A, B, and C tend to have the worst outcomes.

A - Strange situation measures something important that's associated with later development.
- However...
- Not all psychologists believe it measures attachment.
- Kagan (1982).
- Suggested that genetically-influenced anxiety levels could account for variations in attachment behaviour in the SS and later development.
- May not actually measure attachment.

K - Strange situation measures something real and meaningful in a baby's development.
Limitation of Ainsworth's strange situation - types of attachment: culture bound 
P - Culture bound.
- May not be a valid measure of attachment in different cultural contexts.

E - The SS was developed in Britain and the USA.
- It's use may only be valid in certain cultures, in this case western Europe and the USA.
- One reason for this is that babies have different experiences in different cultures and these may affect their responses to the SS.
- Takahashi (1986).
- Found, in a Japanese study, that babies displayed very high levels of separation anxietty and so a disproportionate number were classified as insecure-resistant.
- He suggests that this anxiety level was not due to high rates of attachment insecurity but to the unusual nature of the experience in Japan where mother-baby separation is very rare.

K - Very difficult to know what the SS is measuring when used outside western Europe and the USA.
Strength of research into cultural variations in attachment: explanatory power 
P - Explanatory power.
- Has provided an understanding of why there may be similarities between cultures.

E - Similarities may be due to global culture.
- Bowlby's theory of attachment states the reason for universal similarities, in how attachments form, is because attachment is an innate mechanism.

A - However...
- Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg.
- Conducted meta-analysis of 32 studies across 8 countries.
- They stated similarities in attachment can be explained through mass media.

K - Cultural similarities in attachment may not be due to innate biological influences, but our increasing global culture.
Strength of research into cultural variations in attachment: research methods 
P - Research methods.
- Use of meta-analysis.

E - Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg.
- Used meta-analysis.
- The classification included 32 studies from 8 different countries looking at over 2000 strange situations.
- Allowing reliable conclusions to be drawn.

A - However...
- Issue with meta-analysis.
- Secondary data means we don't know how well each of the studies were conducted.
- This could hide any errors in the methods that were used.
- E.g. participants may not have been representative of the country.

K - Overall using this research method has allowed us to study whether behaviours are universal.
- And it has found a global effect; agreement that secure attachment is the mos t common.
- It can be argued that the research is useful.
Limitation of research into cultural variations in attachment: imposed etic 
P - Trying to impose a test designed for one cultural context to another context.

E - Imposed etic occurs when we impose an idea or technique that works in one cultural context to another.
- An example of this in attachment research is in the use of babies' response to reunion with the caregiver in the SS.
- In Britain and the USA, lack of affection on reuinion may indicate avoidant attachment.
- But in Germany, such behaviour would be more likely interpreted as independence rather than insecurity.
- Therefore, that aspect of the SS may not work in Germany.

K - Behaviours measured by the SS may not have the same meanings in different cultural contexts.
- Comparing them across cultures is meaningless.
Limitation of research into cultural variations in attachment: countries rather than cultures 
P - Issues with conclusions drawn by Van Ljzendoorn and Kroonenberg.
- They were not comparing cultures, but countries.

E - They compared studies across 8 different countries.
- However, within each country there are many different sub-cultures.
- Upon looking at variations in attachment between sub-cultures, they found more variation across those sub-cultures than across countries.
- Variation is 1.5x more likely within cultures than between countries.

K - Caution needs to be exercised when using the term 'cultural variations'.
- Especially when assessing whether an individual sample is representative of a particular culture.
Strength of Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation: real-world applications 
P - Real-world application.
- In the way children are looked after in hospital.

E - In the past mothers were separated from their children in hospitals and visiting was discouraged.
- Robertson.
- Found that Laura became very distressed during her 8 day stay in hospital.

K - Bowlby and Robertson's work led to major social change in the way that children were cared for in hospital.
Limitation of Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation: flawed evidence 
P - Poor quality of evidence its based on.

E - Bowlby's 44 thieves study is flawed because Bowlby himself carried out both family interviews and the assessments for affectionless psychopathy.
- This left him open to bias as he knew in advance which teenagers he expected to show signs of psychopathy.
- Bowlby was also influenced by the findings of Goldfarb's research on the development of deprived children in wartime orphanages, which was also flawed.
- This study has problems of confounding variables because the children had experienced early trauma and institutional care as well as prolonged separation from their primary caregivers.

A - However...
- New research has provided some support that maternal deprivation can have long term effects.
- Levy et al.
- Showed separating baby rats from their mother for as little as a day had a permanent effect on their social development.

K - Bowlby's original sources of evidence for maternal deprivation had serious flaws and would not be taken seriously as evidence nowadays.
- However, there are other sources of evidence that support his ideas.
Limitation of Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation: critical vs sensitive period 
P - Bowlb's idea of a critical period.

E - For Bowlby, damage was inevitable if a child had not formed an attachment in the first two and a half years of life. Hence this is a critical period.
- However, there is evidence to suggest that in many cases good quality aftercare can prevent most or all of this damage.
- Koluchova.
- Reported the case of the Czech twins.
- The twins experienced very severe physical and emotional abuse from the age of 18 months to seven years.
- Although they were severely damaged emotionallu be their experience they recieved excellent care and by their teens had recovered fully.

K - Lasting harm is not inevitable even in cases of severe privation.
- The critical period is therefore better seen as a sensitive period.
Strength of research into the effects of institutionalisation - Romanian orphan studies: real world application 
P - Real world application.
- To improve conditions for children growing up outside their family home.

E - Studying Romanian orphans has improved psychologists' understanding of the effects of early institutional care and how to prevent the worst of these effects.
- This has led to improvements in the conditions experienced by looked-after children.
- E.g. children's homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child.
- Instead the children have one or two 'key workers' who play a central role in their emotional care.
- Institutional care is now seen as an undesireable option for looked-after children.
- Considerable effort is made to accomadate such children in foster care or to have them adopted instead.

K - Children in institutional care have a chance to develop normal attachments and disinhibited attachment is avoided.
Strength of research into the effects of institutionalisation - Romanian orphan studies: fewer confounding variables 
P - Lack of confounding variables.

E - There were many orphan studies before the Romanian orphans became available to study (e.g. orphans studied in WW2).
- Many of the children studied in orphanages had experienced varying degrees of trauma, and it is difficult to disentangle the effects of neglect, physical abuse and bereavement from those of institutional care.
- However the children from Romanian orphanages had, in the main, been handed over by loving parents who could not afford to keep them.

A - On the other hand...
- Studying children from Romanian orphanages might have introduced different confounding variables.
- The quality of care in these institutions was remarkably poor, with children receiving very little care or comfort.
- Harmful effects seen in Romanian orphan studied may represent the effects of poor institutional care rather than institutional care itself.

K - Results were much less likely to be confounded by other negative ealy experiences.
- Producing higher internal validity.
Limitation of research into the effects of institutionalisation - Romanian orphan studies: lack of adult data 
P - Lack of data on adult development.

E - The latest data from the ERA study looked at the children in their early to mid 20s.
- We do not currently have data to answer some of the most important questions about the long term effects of early institutional care.
- These research questions include: the lifetime prevalence of mental health problems and participants success in forming and maintaining adult romantic and parental relationships.
- It will take a long time to gather this data due to the longitudinal design of the study.

K - It will be a long time before we know more completely what the long term effects are for the Romanian orphans.
Strength of research into the influence of early attachment on childhood relationships: Research support 
P - Research support.

E - Youngblade and Belsky.
- Found 3-5 year old children who had secure attachment were more curious, competent, empathetic, resilient and self-confident.
- They got along with children better and were more likely to form close friendships.

A - Furthermore...
- Mullis et al.
- Reported that in late childhood attachments that are made to peers reflect those made to parents in infancy.
- Laible.
- Found that late in childhood individuals transfer attachment behaviours learned in childhood to social situations and peer groups.

K - Securely attached children form a positive internal working model that influences later childhood relationships.
Limitation of research into the influence of early attachments on childhood relationships: contradictory research 
P - Contradictory research.

E - Becker-stroll et al.
- Conducted a longitudinal study which followed 43 individuals from one year of age.
- Their attachment was assessed up until age 16 and they found no evidence of continuity.

A - However...
- Longitudinal studies aren't always the most reliable as many participants may drop out.
- Leaving a much smaller participant pool which may have less population validity.

K - The theory of the internal working model may not be completely valid as some individuals may not base their future relationships off of it.