bowbly's monotropic theory

• DO NOW: How might the quality of a child's first attachment affect their future friendships and romantic relationships?
• Bowlby's Theory


  An explanation of attachment
• EXT: How is learning theory as an explanation of attachment reductionist?
• CHALLENGE: Which other issues and debates could be used to evaluate learning theory?
• Monotropy


  An idea that one of the most famous developmental psychologists, John Bowlby, came up with. He believed that infants are born with the innate need to create one main and special bond with their attachment figure.
• Bowlby (1988) rejected learning theory as an explanation for attachment because, as he said: '...were it [learning theory] true, an infant of a year or two should readily take to whomever feeds him and this is clearly not the case'.
• Instead Bowlby looked at the work of Lorenz and Harlow for ideas and proposed an evolutionary explanation: that attachment was an innate system that gave a survival advantage. Imprinting and attachment evolved because they ensure that young animals stay close to their caregivers and this protects them from hazards.
• Bowlby's theory (1958, 1969) is described as monotropic because he placed great emphasis on a child's attachment to one particular caregiver (hence the world mono), and he believed that the child's attachment to this one caregiver is different and more important than others.
• Bowlby called this person the 'mother' but it was that it doesn't need to be the biological mother. Bowlby believed that the more time a baby spent with this mother-figure (or primary attachment figure as we usually call them now) - the better.
• The law of continuity


  States that the more constant and predictable a child's care, the better the quality of their attachment.
• The law of accumulated separation


  Stated that the effects of every separation from the mother add up 'and the safest dose is therefore a zero dose' (Bowlby, 1975).
• Social releasers


  Innate 'cute' behaviours that babies are born with that encourage attention from adults. Their purpose is to activate the adult attachment system i.e. make an adult feel love towards the baby.
• Bowlby recognised that attachment was a reciprocal process. Both mother and baby have an innate predisposition to become attached and social releasers trigger that response in caregivers.
• Critical period


  Bowlby proposed that there is a critical period around two years when the infant attachment system is active. In fact, Bowlby viewed this as more of a sensitive period. A child is maximally sensitive at the age of two but, if an attachment is not formed in this time, a child will find it much harder to form one later.
• Bowlby proposed that a child forms a mental representation of their relationship with their primary caregiver - This is called an internal working model because it serves as a model for what relationships are like.
• It therefore has a powerful effect on the nature of the child's future relationships - A child whose first experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable caregiver will tend to form an experience is of a loving relationship with a reliable caregiver will tend to form an expectation that all relationships are as loving and reliable, and they will bring these qualities to future relationships.
• Bowlby's theory also theorises that a child whose first relationship involved poor treatment from other or treat other in that way. Most importantly, the internal working model affects the child's later ability to be a parent themselves. People tend to base their parenting behaviour on their own experiences of being parented. This explains why children from functional families tend to have similar families themselves.
• Bowlby identified a critical period after which human children cannot easily form a secure attachment.
• Mark and Millie are considering adopting a child. They have been made contact with a potential adoptee with a troubled past. The boy, Hugo, is now four years old. For his first two years Hugo lived with an abusive family and never formed a proper attachment.
• Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found most babies did attach to one person first. However, they also found that a significant minority appeared able to form multiple attachments at the same time. It is also unclear whether there is something unique about the first attachment. Studies of attachment to mother and father tend to show attachment to the mother is more important in predicting later behaviour (e.g. Suess et al., 1992). However, this could simply mean that attachment to the primary attachment figure is stronger than other attachments, not necessarily that it is different in quality.
• Brazleton (1975) observed mothers and their babies during their interactions, reporting the existence of interaction synchrony in which they then extended the study from an observation to an experiment. Primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore their babies' signal – in Bowlby's terms, to ignore their social releasers. The babies initially showed some distress, but when the attachment figures continued to ignore the baby, some responded by curling up and lying motionless.
• The idea of internal working models is testable because it predicts that patterns of attachment will be passed on from one generation to the next. Bailey et al. (2007) tested this idea. They assessed 99 mothers with one-year-old babies on the quality of their attachment to their own mothers using a standard interview procedure. The researchers also assessed the attachment of the babies to the mothers of observation. It was found that the others who reported poor attachment to their own parents in their own parents in the interviews were much more likely to have children classified as poor according to the observations.
• The law of accumulated separation states that having substantial time apart from a primary attachment figure risks a poor quality attachment that will disadvantage the child in a range of wars later. Feminists like Erica Burman (1994) have pointed out that this places a terrible burden of responsibility on mothers, setting them up to take the blame for anything that goes wrong in the rest of the child's life. It also pushes mothers into particular lifestyle choices like not returning to work when a child is born. This was not Bowlby's intention – he saw himself as boosting the status of mothers by emphasising the important of their role.
• Bowlby's approach emphasis the role of attachment in the child's developing social behaviour. However, a different tradition of child development emphasised the role of temperament in the development of social behaviour (temperament is the child's genetically influenced personality). For example, temperament researchers suggest that some babies are more anxious than others and some more sociable than others as a result of their genetic make-up (Kagan, 1982). These temperamental differences explain later social behaviour rather than attachment experiences
• Bowlby believed that babies are generally formed one attachment to their primary caregiver, and that this attachment was special, in some way different from later attachments and that only after this attachment was established could a child from multiple attachments. This is not supported by Schaffer and Emerson (1964). As we have reported, they found most babies did attach to one person first. However, they also found that a significant minority appeared able to form multiple attachments at the same time. It is also unclear whether there is something unique about the first attachment. Studies of attachment to mother and father tend to show attachment to the mother is more important in predicting later behaviour (e.g. Suess et al., 1992). However, this could simply mean that attachment to the primary attachment figure is stronger than other attachments, not necessarily that it is different in quality.
• There is clear evidence to sow that cute infant behaviours are intended to initiate social interaction and that doing so is important to the baby. Brazleton (1975) observed mothers and their babies during their interactions, reporting the existence of interaction synchrony in which they then extended the study from an observation to an experiment. Primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore their babies' signal – in Bowlby's terms, to ignore their social releasers. The babies initially showed some distress, but when the attachment figures continued to ignore the baby, some responded by curling up and lying motionless.
• PLENARY: Brain dump 1) Learning Theory 2) Bowlby's Theory Write down anything and everything you can think of to do with the explanations of attachment discussed so far.