attachment

• what is reciprocity


  both mother and infant respond to each other’s signals and elicit a response from the other
• what is interactional synchrony


  mother and infant reflect actions and emotions of other in a coordinated and synchronised way
• reciprocity A03


  Tronicks still face experiment : when mother responding and interacting baby is comfortable and responds back however when still face and no longer turn taking baby distress - shows importance of reciprocity
• interactional synchrony AO3


  Isabella et al - securely attached mothers and infants show more interactional synchrony in first year - suggest strong emotional attachment associated
• overall caregiver-infant interaction AO3


  it is hard to know what is happening for sure when observing infants and whether for example infants imitation is conscious or delibetate - therefore cannot know if special meaning In addition observations do not tell us purpose of synchrony and reciprocity
• Schaffer and Emerson key study

  1964 60 babies working class glasgow, longitudinal study - visited every month for first year then again at 18 months, families asked questions reg, separation anxiety, stranger anxiety
• Schaffer and Emerson findings - stages of attachment

  STAGE 1 - ASOCIAL (FIRST FEW WEEKS) - babies bvr towards non human objects and humans similar, some preference to familiar adults STAGE 2 - INDISCRIMINATE (2-7 MONTHS) - preference for people, prefer familiar adults however comforted by anyone no seperation or stranger anxiety STAGE 3 - SPECIFIC (7 MONTHS) - anxiety towards strangers and axiety when seperated from one particular adult - PAF the one who responds most to babys signals STAGE 4 - MULTIPLE - secondary attachment figures
• Schaffer and Emerson AO3 - studying asocial stage


  first few weeks - babies too young and poor coordination therfore difficult to make judgement based on observations - evidence cannot be relied on
• Schaffer and Emerson AO3 - conflicting evidence on multiple attachments

  not entirely clear when multiple att. are formed Bowlby - all form single attachment to main carer vefore capable of multiple attachments. however in collectivist cultures multiple attachments are the norm and therefore some psychologists believe they are formed from the outset - evaluate study - longitudinal
• Schaffer and Emerson data findings

  • 65% Biological mother is primary attachment figure 29% of children had secondary attachments withing month of forming primary, by age of 1 year majority had multiple attachments
• Role of the father AO1 - Grossman 2002


  quality of mothers attachment but not fathers related in adolescence suggesting fathers less important However - quality of fathers play with infants related to quality of adolescents attachments - fathers have different role in attachment - to do with play and stimulation less nurturing
• Role of the father AO1 - Tiffany Field 1978


  filmed 4 month old babies face to face with PCG mothers. SCG fathers and PCG fathers - found PCG fathers spent more time smiling, imitating infants than SCG fathers - suggests fathers can take more nurturing att. figure - key in attachment is responsiveness not gender
• Role of the father AO3 - inconsistent findings

  some psychologists interested in fathers as secondary att. figures whilst others concerned with fathers as primary attachment figure - former has led to seeing fathers behaving differenly to mothers and having distinct role whilst the later fins fathers on ‘maternal’ role - problem as psychologists can not easily determine role of father
• Role of the father AO3 - absence of father

  IF FATHERS HAVE DISTINCT ROLE WHY ARE NOT CHILDREN WITHOUT DIFFERENT - Grossman found decondary att. figures had impt role in childs dev. H/ other studies e.g MacCallum and Golumbok 2004 have found children growing up in single or same sex parent families do not dev. any differently - suggesting fathers role as secondary att. figure not impt.
• role of the father Schaffer and Emerson

  SCHAFFER AND EMERSON - babies attached to mother first around 7 months and within few weeks secondary attachment figures including father 75% of the infants formed an attachment with the father by 18 months
• Lorenz AO1

  • investigated mechanics of imprinting - divided goose eggs, half-hatched w/ mother whilst half hatched and saw first moving object Lorenz Found - incubator group followed lorenz around everywhere wheras control followed mother lorenz identified critical period in which imprinting needs to take place if it does not occur then wont attach to mother figure
• Lorenz AO3

  • not necessarily generalisable to humans - the risk of anthropomorphism as differences in birds and humans ignored
  • -Lorenz observations questioned - idea of imprinting having a permanent effect of mating bvr
  • Guiton et al found can be reversed by learning therefore not as permanent as Lorenz believed
• Harlow AO1

  • rhesus monkeys (1958) - two wire mothers, one milk from plain wire mother, other cloth-covered mother
  • Found monkeys seeked comfort from cloth mother regardless of which dispensed milk
  • ‘Contact comfort’ more important in attachment bvr monkeys who had been deprived of real mother faced consequences as adults
  • wire mother only were most dysfunctional, more aggressive and less sociable concluded critical period of 9- days to form att. otherwise irreversible effects
• Harlow AO3

  • anthromorpormis - not generalisable
  • -theoretical value - helped understand mother-infant att. as not result of food but contact comfort
  • -practical value - has helped social workers understand risk of child neglect and abuse so can intervene and prevemt it (Howe 1998)
  • -ethical issues - monkeys suffered greatly, similar enough to humans to generalise however makes suffering more human like- justifiable?
• classical conditioning in attachment AO1

  food unconditioned stimuls, gives unconditioned reponse, PCG neitral stimulus, over time PCG associated with food - conditioned stimulus - conditioned reponses of pleasure
• Operant conditioning in attachment AO1

  reinforcement/punishment - learning bvr based on consequences - crying leads to response from PCG e.g feeding, crying reinforced - baby directs comfort to caregiver who responds with social suppressor bvr - reinforcement two way process as caregiver also negative reinforcement as crying stops
• learning theory of attachment AO3

  • counter evidence from animal research - harlow - do not necessarily attach to those who feed, contradicts these findings - therefore less reliable theory
  • counter evidence from schaffer and Emerson - feeding not impt. babies dev to those who reciprcated and responded to signals most rather than those who fed
  • ignores other factors associated with forming att. factors such as reciprocity and interactional synchrony ignored - if att purely as result of feeding no purpose of complex interactions and would not form relations with them and quality of att
• Bowlby's monotropic theory


  Evolutionary explanation, emphasis on child's attachment to one caregiver
• Bowlby's monotropic theory


  • Believed different and more important than other attachments
  • More time spent with primary attachment figure - the better
  • Law of continuity - more constant and predictable a child's care, better quality of attachment
  • Evolutionary and adaptive feature - social releasers (cute behaviours from infant) activate attachment system in adults
  • Proposed critical period of two years in which infant attachment system active
  • Later sensitive period proposed
  • Internal working model - child's mental representation of attachment with primary caregiver, later serves as model for future relationships and later ability to parent themselves
• Bowlbys monotropic theory AO3 - mixed evidence


  S&E - most babies did attach to one person first however significant minority able to form multiple att. at once - also unclear whether first att. is unique or special as Bowlby claims
• Bowlbys monotropic theory AO3 - evidence for social releasers


  clear evidence infant bvrs intended to elicit social interactions - interactional synchrony and reciprocity

  • BRAZLETON ET AL - when PAT asked to ignore babies signals - initially babies showed some distress but later curled up and lay motionless - fact children responded so strongly supports bowbys ideas of the significance of social releasers in eliciting caregiving
• Ainsworth's strange situation controls and aim

  Controlled lab observation, 9x9ft room, 100 middle class infants and mothers tested for stranger anxiety, secure base behaviour, separation anxiety, seeking proximity and reunion behaviour
• Ainsworth's strange situation procedure

  1. 7 episodes, 3 minutes each:

  2. Child encouraged to explore - secure base

  3. Stranger in and interacts - stranger anxiety

  4. Caregiver leaves, stranger and child - separation and stranger anxiety

  5. Caregiver returns, stranger leaves - reunion behaviour and secure base

  6. Caregiver leaves child alone - separation anxiety

  7. Stranger returns - stranger anxiety

  8. Caregiver reunited with child - reunion behaviour
• Ainsworth strange situation findings

  secure - 66%

  insecure avoidant -22%

  insecure resistant - 12%
• secure attachment (SS)


  (66%) mother safe base, child happily explores and returns to cg seeking proximity, moderate stranger and separation anxiety, but accepts comfort from cg on return
• insecure-avoidant (SS)


  (22%) explore freely but do not seek proximity, play hardly affacted by presencse of mother or stranger, little distress os seperation and rejects comfort from stranger, avoids contact with mother on return
• insecure resistant (SS)


  (12%) fussy and clingy, wary of stranger and great distress when mother leaves, resist comfort from mother on return as appears angry and rejects it
• Ainsworth SS AO3 - culture bound

  ethnocentric - does not mean same out of western culture, secure attachment deemed superior as norm in western countries however in other cultures norm may differ - imposed etic theory devised in west used to study bvr elsewhere at risk of generalising when cultural differences exist.

  e.g TAKAHASHI 1990 japanese mothers rarely seperated from child therefore high levels of seperation anxiety normal therefore attachment types of strange situation may not be relevant outside western culture
• Ainsworth SS AO3 - disorganised type


  AT LEAST ONE MORE ATT TYPE - Main and Solomon 1986 - disorganised type, upon rediagnosing video tapes found some children do not fit into any one type - deemed this disorganised type - lack of consistent patterns of social bvr - existence challenges Ainsworths att types and questions wether only found what looking for
• Ainsworth SS AO3 - reliability


  GOOD RELIABILTY - H/ ss has good inter-rater reliability, different observers generally agree on classification of att types due to controlled conditions and bvral categories easy to observe

  BICK ET AL - inter-rater reliability of ss 94% therefore provides great validity
• Cultural variations in attachment AO1

  • differences in individualist and collectivist cultures observed. emphasis on independence vs family affect attchment however there may be cross cultural similarities with secure attachment being seemingly optimal everywhere whilst any cross cultrual differences may be due to different child rearing practices
• cultural variations AO1 - Van Ijzendoorn


  meta analysis 32 SS studies in 8 countries, 15 US,

  FOUND - in all countries secure base most common att type however proportion varied - found japan mosts insecure resistant whilst Germany most insecure avoidant - japan collectivist and values dependence whilst germany values independance - also found greater variation within countries that between - 1.5x more variation
• cultural variations A03 - sample size

  sample size varied from country to country as well as more than half in US furthermore variation within country shows rather than looking at cultures only looking at country differences whilst exist different child rearing practices within any country and may differ due to social class - one sample may be poorer than other from diff country - an analysis by IJZENDOORN AND SAGI 2001 found that distributions of attachment in Tokyo similar to west whilst rural areas different, therefore comparisons between did countries may have little meaning
• cultural variations AO3 - imposed etic

  METHOD OF ASSESSMENT BIASED - imposed etic - ainsworths strange situation devised in west - therefore should not be applied to other cultures due to cultural diff, for example lack od sep anxiety viewed in SS as insecure att however in germany sign of independence (grossman and grossman 1990) - therefore cannot generalise
• Bowlbys theory of maternal deprivation


  BOWLBY 1951 - being seperated from mother in childhood has great consequences - seperation during critical period of first 30 months if deprived from emotional care - inevitable psychological damage intellectual development delayed - low iq emotional development also affected - bowlby deemed affectionless psychopathy as inabilty to to experience guilt or strong emotions for others - prevents dev of normal relationships