Attachment

• Reciprocity and Interactional synchrony strengths

  Controlled observations: In the studies both mother and baby are filmed from multiple angles and fine details are captured. Babies are not affected by observer bias. Good validity.

  Research such as Isabella et al suggest it promotes a better quality attachment. Other research suggests that interactional synchrony and reciprocity is good for stress responses and empathy.
• Role of the father weaknesses

  Inconsistent findings for fathers: Some research suggested that fathers are secondary caregivers, others suggest they are primary alongside mothers. No agreement.

  Children without fathers don’t develop differently: MacCallum and Gollombok found homosexual or single sex parents don’t raise children who behave any differently. Fathers as a secondary role is not important.

  Socially sensitive implications: Research would suggest that mothers who return to work quickly may disadvantage the attachment. This is SSR.
• Animal studies strengths

  Theoretical application Harlow: Understanding of how maternal deprivation impacts infants. Understand that contact comfort is more important than food.

  Practical Application: The theoretical knowledge can be applied to improve attachments and help administer care.
• Animal studies weaknesses

  Lack of generalisation to humans: Humans don’t imprint or attach like birds do. Cannot explain human attachments.

  Ethical Issues: Even Harlow himself called the surrogate mothers iron maidens. They caused permanent damage in the monkeys. Generalisation to humans: Monkeys maybe more similar to humans than birds but there still might be differences with their attachment.
• Schaffer and Emerson‘s research strengths

  Good external validity: Studied was carried out in the infant’s own home. Natural setting. Infants are also not influenced by observer bias.

  Longitudinal Study: This was good to see trends over time, no individual differences. However this will have been more time consuming for the researchers.
• Schaffer and Emerson’s research weaknesses

  Lack of generalisation: All working class backgrounds from Glasgow. Limited sample. However there was an equal study of male and female infants (31 and 29) so no gender differences reported.

  Problems studying the asocial stage: Babies are so young at this stage they have little central or awareness of what they are doing. Hard to establish what their behaviour means. Subjective interpretation of researchers.

  Conflicting evidence for multiple attachments: In some cultures multiple attachments come first – van iJzendoorn – collectivist cultures.
• Learning theory and attachments weaknesses

  Conflicting evidence from human research: Schaffer and Emerson found that attachment did not go to the person who fed the infant the most but the one who was most sensitive to the child’s needs.

  Some elements of conditioning could still be involved: Much of human behaviour is learnt through conditioning and though the theory may be wrong to alienate feeding as the stimulus, there could still be an association between caregiver and comfort or security.
• Bowlby’s theory strengths

  Support for social releasers: Brazelton et al did a study where mothers faced their child and were told to ignore their signals. The baby was distressed and tried to gain mother’s attention, causing to lie motionless. Showing the importance of reciprocity.

  Support for Internal Working Model: Bailey et al studied 99 mothers with their infants. They assessed the quality of infant and mother attachment using standard interview technique and then the quality of the mother to their own mother’s attachment. There was a similarity between the quality of the two.
• Bowlby‘s theory weaknesses

  Mixed evidence for monotropy: Schaffer and Emerson found that most babies formed one specific attachment first but some formed multiple attachments at the same time. Van iJzendoorn found that collectivist cultures tend to form multiple attachments first. Sometimes fathers can be primary caregivers like mothers.

  Monotropy is socially sensitive idea: Feminists like Burman say it places great stress and emphasis on mothers to do certain things and be there fully for their children. Makes them feel guilty about working.
• Ainsworth Strange Situation strengths

  Support for Validity: The attachment behaviour is predictive of behaviour in later life. Secure attachments tend to have better adult attachments and romantic relationships. Insecure attachments are more associated with some mental illnesses. Kokkinos found that insecure resistant is associated with bullying.

  Good reliability: Inter-rater reliability is strong with SST Bick found that it was at 94%. Attachments observed are not simply as a result of the researcher’s potentially subjective viewpoint.
• Ainsworth Strange Situation weaknesses

  Test is culture bound: Children respond differently to SST. Takahashi found that the study does not work in Japan because mothers were so protective so they reunited so quickly it was hard to observe the child’s behaviour. In Germany children are encouraged to be more independent leading to insecure-avoidant attachments.

  Four attachment types: Ainsworth and Bell identified three attachment types but Main and Soloman say there is a fourth type which is a disorganised type. Their behaviours are resistant and avoidant.
• Cultural variations strengths

  Large Samples: van iJzendoorn had over 2000 participants and Jin et al and Simonella had large samples compared with comparison groups. Increases internal validity by reducing the impact of anomalous results.
• Cultural variations weaknesses

  Samples are unrepresentative of culture: They only represent country and differences within countries was greater than between. 150% greater. Van iJzendoorn found that attachments in Tokyo were similar to Western cultures but attachments in rural Japan were not.

  Method of assessment is biased: SST is a Western method. Grossman and Grossman said it does not work in Germany because lack of pleasure at reunion was assumed to be avoidance but actually just independence.
• Theory of maternal deprivation strengths

  Evidence of poor: Bowlby draws on a number of different places for evidence which lead to the development of his theory but most often the samples were children who had been subject to trauma. Similarly children in institutions are deprived on many things not just maternal care which could have influenced the results.

  Animal Study Support: Levy et al conducted a study where he found that taking rats away from their mothers for a day can have permanent damage.
• Theory of maternal deprivation weaknesses

  Counter-evidence: Hilda Lewis replicated 44 thieves study was 500 teenagers and found that MD did not necessarily predict criminality. Other factors.

  Failure to distinguish between deprivation and privation: Rutter says that Bowlby muddles the two together. Deprivation is where the child is separated from their mother after a bond has been created but privation is where the bond is never allowed to create in the first place.
• Romanian Orphan studies strengths

  Real life Application: Studying the orphans had involved the care of institutions by understanding their effects. Langton. Institutions now avoid having different caregivers each attending to a child and they have key workers.

  Fewer extraneous variables: Most orphan studies are affected by the confounding variable of trauma but this study was not as the orphans had not become orphans through trauma.
• Romanian Orphan Studies weaknesses

  Not a typical sample: The Romanian orphan crisis not a typical situation and such unusual situational variables could have influenced the children’s behaviour. Limited generalisation opportunities.

  Methodological Issues: Children were not randomly assigned to conditions as researchers had no say in the adoption process causing confounding variables. Bucharest Early intervention programme did randomly allocate but ethical issues. In the case of the Romanian orphans researchers would not have been able to influence the adoption process.
• Attachments and later relationships strengths

  Supporting Evidence: McCarthy - 40 women were assessed for their childhood attachments. Those that had secure attachments had the best friendships in adulthood. Insecure resistant struggled to maintain friendships and avoidant feared intimacy within the relationship.
• Attachments and later relationships weaknesses

  Contradictory Evidence: Zimmerman studied infant and adolescent attachment and found little link between the two.

  Methodological Issues: Most studies do not rely on SST but instead use questionnaires or interviews which causes problems with validity. This is because they are subject to social desirability bias. However questionnaires are much easier to gather data from.