Attachment

• Baby face hypothesis


  Adults have evolved a preference for baby features because this ensures that we care for our young and for this reason such features elicit attraction
• interactional synchrony


  when two people interact they tend to mirror what the other is doing. Includes imitating emotions and behaviours (copying)
• Reciprocity


  responding to the action of another with another action as a response. ( like a conversation)
• primary attachment figure


  The person who has formed the closest bond with a child, demonstrated by the intensity of the relationship.
• separation anxiety


  the distress displayed by infants when a separated from their caregiver
• stranger anxiety


  distress shown by an infant when approached by someone unfamiliar
• imprinting


  an innate readiness to develop a strong bond with the mother which takes place during a critical period
• social learning theory


  learning through observation and imitation
• classical conditioning


  learning through association between a natural stimuli paired with an unconditioned stimuli
• operant conditioning


  learning through reinforcement
• internal working model


  A set of beliefs and expectations about how people behave in social relationships, and also guidelines for interpreting others' actions, and habitual responses to make in social settings.
• social releaser


  A social behaviour or characteristic that elicits caregiving and leads to attachment
• insecure-avoidant attachment


  infant avoids connection with the caregiver, as when the infant seems not to care about the caregiver's presence, departure, or return. Avoids social interaction
• insecure-resistant attachment


  infant both seeks and rejects intimacy and social interaction
• secure attachment


  a relationship in which an infant obtains both comfort and confidence from the presence of his or her caregiver
• Meltzoff and Moore


  Infants as young as two weeks old were able to imitate specific facial and hand gestures by a caregiver model
• Stages of attachment (Schaffer and Emerson)


  Stage 1: indiscriminate attachments

  Stage 2: the beginning of attachment

  Stage 3: discriminate attachments

  Stage 4: multiple attachments
• Lorenz


  gosling eggs divided into group either with their mother or in an incubator. The goslings born with their mother followed her around(imprinted on mother), those born with Lorenz followed him (imprinted on him). He said imprinting was irreversible
• Harlow


  cloth monkey mother and wire monkey mother. All monkeys spent most time on cloth mother, even if their food bottle was on the wire mother. When frightened the monkey went to the cloth mother. Shows attachment is linked to comfort, not food. The motherless monkeys had long lasting impacts on their social tendencies.
• disinhibited attachment


  a form of insecure attachment where children don't discriminate between people they choose as attachment figures. these children will treat near strangers with friendliness and may be attention seeking
• individual difference un caregiver-infant interactions


  Isabella et al - found that more strongly attached infants showed greater interactional synchrony
• Jean Piaget


  believed that true imitation only developed towards the end of the first year and before this was 'response training' where the infant repeats behaviour that was rewarded such as smiling encouraging a baby to continue the behaviour
• drive-reduction theory


  the idea that a physiological need creates a motivation to do things that decrease discomfort such as a baby crying to get the mother to feed them
• Ainsworth Strange Situation


  a sequence of staged episodes that illustrate the strength of attachment between a child and (typically) his or her mother finding 3 main attachment styles. Tested separation anxiety, stranger anxiety and reunion
• evaluation of the strange situation

  -Main and Solomon proposed an attachment type D (lack of consistent patterns of social behaviour)

  - inter-observer reliability (comparing the ratings made by a panel of judges - Ainsworth found 94 agreement rate)

  - low internal validity - Main and Weston found that children behaved differently with different parents
• Tronick et al


  studied an African tribe living in extended families where infants were raised by different women but usually slept with their mother at night and still showed a primary attachment by 6 months
• Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg


  Conducted a meta-analysis of different Strange Situation experiments from around the world and found secure attachment was always the most common, with variations within countries was 1.5 times greater than that between countries
• Grossman and Grossman


  German infants tended to be classified as insecurely attached as German culture tends to encourage independence. They showed a lack of secure base behaviour and anxiety.
• behaviours influenced by the internal working model

  childhood friendships

  poor parenting

  mental health
• Bowlby's 44 thieves study


  44 thieves in the Child Guidance Clinic and 44 as the control group in the clinic. Some of the thieves were affectionless psychopaths. 86% of the affectionless psychopaths experienced frequent separation. 39% of all thieves experienced separation.

  Showed a link between separation and emotional maladjustment or mental disorders
• affectionless psychopathy


  lacking normal signs of affection, shame or sense of responsibility
• continuity hypothesis


  The idea that emotionally secure infants go on to be emotionally secure, trusting and socially confident adults.
• internal working model of attachment


  a set of expectations about how the primary caregiver will respond when the child feels insecure
• Privation


  the child fails to develop a bond with a caregiver
• Deprivation


  A bond has developed but through prolonged or traumatic separations is disrupted or lost
• critical period


  A biologically determined period of time, during which certain characteristics can develop. Outside of this time window such development will not be possible.
• monotropy


  The idea that the one relationship that the infant has with their primary attachment figure is of special significance in emotional development.
• Rutter and Songua-Barke


  165 Romanian children who spent their early lives in Romanian institutions
• Rutter and Songua-Barke findings


  at time of adoption, Romanian orphans lagged behind,. but by age 4 some had caught up and by age 6 almost all had caught up.
• Effects of institutionalisation

  Disinhibited attachment

  poor parenting

  physical and intellectual underdevelopment