Schaffer's stages of attachment

• asocial stage - first few weeks


  some preference for familiar adults and are happier in the presence of other humans. baby's behaviour towards objects and humans is similar.
• indiscriminate attachment - 2 to 7 months


  babies display more observable social behaviour, with a preference for people. they recognise and prefer familiar adults. no stranger or separation anxiety. attachment is indiscriminate because it's the same towards all.
• specific attachment - from around 7 months


  babies experience stranger and separation anxiety, and said to have formed a specific attachment with a primary caregiver (often the person who responds to the baby's signals with the most accuracy). the bio mother in 65% of cases
• multiple attachments - by 1 year


  secondary attachments are formed with other adults. in Schaffer and Emerson's study 29% of babies formed a secondary attachment one month after their primary.
• Schaffer and Emerson - Stages of attachment procedure

  60 babies from Glasgow from working-class families. babies and their mothers were visited at home once a month for a year and then once at 18 months. separation anxiety was measured by asking mothers about their children's behaviour during everyday separations. stranger anxiety was measured through how the children behaved around unfamiliar adults.
• Schaffer and Emerson - Stages of attachment findings

  50% of babies showed separation anxiety towards a particular adult between 25 and 32 weeks of age. this specific (primary) attachment was usually the mother
• Schaffer and Emerson - Stages of attachment conclusion

  attachment tended to be to the caregiver who was most interactive and sensitive to the infant signals and facial expressions. this was not necessarily the person the infant spent the most time with.
• strength of Schaffer and Emerson on stages of attachment - has external validity


  most of the observations were made by parents during ordinary activities and then reported these to researchers. the behaviour of the baby was unlikely to be affected by the presence of others. it is highly likely that all participants behaved naturally while being observed = high validity
• limitation of Schaffer and Emerson on stages of attachment - there's a problem in studying the asocial year


  Schaffer and Emerson describe the first few weeks as the 'asocial stage', even though important interactions take place. young babies have poor coordination and are fairly immobile which makes it difficult to make judgements based on observations of their behaviour. it may be that babies are quite social but due to flawed methods they appear asocial
• Another limitation of Schaffer's research on stages of attachment is evidence n the timing of multiple attachments is conflicting. 


  Bowlby argues that most babies form attachments to a single main carer before they are able to develop multiple attachments. But multiple attachments appear from the outset in cultures where multiple attachments are the norms. Such cultures are called collectivist because families work together jointly in everything (e.g. producing food and raising children).
• A strength of Schaffer and Emerson's study is that it was carried out longitudinally.

  This means that the same children were followed-up and observed regularly. The quicker alternative would have been to observe different children at each age. This is called a cross-sectional design. But longitudinal designs have better internal validity because they do not have the confounding variables of individual differences between participants (aka. participant variables).