Explanations of Attachment

• Peels - Learning theory:

  1. Weakness - animal studies provide evidence against it - Harlow's Monkeys preferred towelling mothers comfort over wired mothers food - partial explanation
• Peels - Learning theory:

  2) Weakness - Human research opposes the theory - Schaffer and Emerson showed that not all babies primary attachment was to those who fed them

  • loses scientific credibility
• Peels - Learning theory:

  3) Weakness - learning theory ignores other factors linked with attamchent - e.g. reciprocity and interactional synchrony

  • loses explanatory power
• Peels - Learning theory:

  4) Strength - some elements of conditioning could be involved in forming attachments - many aspects of human development are affected by conditioning

  • Some explanations are plausible
• Remembering the PEELs - Learning Theory:

  1. Opposing animal studies
  2. Opposing human studies
  3. Ignores other factors
  4. Some conditioning elements are involved
• Peels - Bowlby's Monotropic theory:

  1. Weakness - economic implications - mothers should stay at home and not go out to work

  • Economic implications
• Peels - Bowlby's Monotropic theory:

  2) Weakness - different theory - Dollard and Millers cupboard love theory (attachment learnt vs innate)

  • decreases explanatory power
• Peels - Bowlby's Monotropic theory:

  3) Strength - supporting study - Brazelton et al (1975) if babies social releasers are ignored then baby gets distressed.

  • provides empirical evidence
• Peels - Bowlby's Monotropic theory:

  4) Strength - Real life application - in therapy helps a person understand why they have poor relationships as adults

  • gains explanatory power
• Remembering the PEELs - Bowlby's Monotropic theory:

  1. Economic implications
  2. Different theory
  3. Supporting study
  4. Real life application
• When did Dollard and Miller study take place?

  1950
• Dollard and Miller (1950) - Cupboard Love Theory:

  A learned behaviour acquired through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning.

  All behaviour is learned rather than an innate biological behaviour
• Classical Conditioning - Learning Theory

  Before Conditioning:

  • Food is an Unconditioned Stimulus as baby feels content from receiving it (Unconditioned Response)
  • Mum is Neutral Stimulus that baby has no response too
• Classical Conditioning - Learning Theory:

  During conditioning:

  • Mother and milk are associated and the baby still has an Unconditioned response
• Classical Conditioning - Learning Theory

  After conditioning:

  • Mother becomes conditioned stimulus and the content baby becomes the conditioned response
• Operant conditioning - Learning theory:

  States that learning occurs through consequences of behaviour and positive reinforcement

  
  

  E.G. Crying leads to a response from the caregivers of feeding which positively reinforces the baby
• Operant Conditioning - Learning Theory:

  Crying for comfort is a two-way process as the caregiver gets negative reinforcement when they feed the baby as they no longer need to listen to babies scream
• Bowlby's Theory is monotropic as he placed great emphasis on a child's attachment to one particular caregiver and that attachment was different and more important than all other attachments
• Law of Continuity - The more constant and predictable a child's care the better the quality of their attachment
• The Law of accumulation separation - All separation adds up but the best thing for a baby is 0 separation
• Social releasers are innate behaviours which encourage caregiving and activate social interaction
• Social releasers - Smiling, cooing and gripping
• Bowlby proposed that attachments can be formed after the critical period but they are harder to form and this is called the sensitive period
• Internal working model - A child forms a mental representation of their relationship with their primary attachment figure who serves as a model for what relationships are like
• According to internal working model, a loving reliable caregiver will form an expectation that all future relationships will be like that