stages of attachment

• Shaffers stages of attachment


  Shaffer concluded that infant behaviours are linked to specific ages and all babies go through them in the same order
• 4 stages of attachment

  1. asocial stage
  2. indiscriminate stage
  3. specific attachment stage
  4. multiple attachment stage
• asocial stage


  0-6 weeks

  babies show similar behaviour towards objects and humans but preference for people

  preference for company of familiar people and are more easily comforted by them

  in this stage the baby is forming bonds with certain people and these bonds form the basis of later attachment
• indiscriminate stage


  2-7 months

  babies start to display more obvious and observable social behaviours

  show clear preference for humans than inanimate objects

  recognise and prefer company of familiar people

  accept cuddles and comfort from any person- hence, indiscriminate

  no seperation anxiety or stranger anxiety
• specific attachment


  around 7 months

  display signs of attachment to one particular person

  stranger anxiety and separation anxiety

  specific attachment is formed - primary attachment figure

  this is not necessarily the person who the child spends the most time with but the one who offers the most interaction and responds to baby's 'signals'.

  mother is the primary attachment figure in 65% of cases
• multiple attachment stage


  10 months+

  people who they regularly spend time with - secondary attchments

  Shaffer and Emerson observed that 29% of the children formed secondary attachments within a month of forming primary attachments

  by the age of 1 the majority of babies developed multiple attachments
• Shaffer and Emerson (1964) 


  based their theory of stages on an observational study they completed