Stages of Attachment

Question 1

Who proposed the stages of attachment?

Answer 1

Schaffer and Emerson

Question 2

What are the 4 stages in order?

Answer 2

1. Asocial stage (6-8 weeks)
2. Indiscriminate attachment (2-6 months)
3. Discriminate attachment (7 months)
   4.Multiple attachments (10 months+)

Question 3

Give a description of the Asocial stage.

Answer 3

Towards the end of this stage, infants are starting to show a greater preference for social stimuli.

Question 4

Give a description of the indiscriminate attachment stage.

Answer 4

Infants are just as easily comforted by a stranger as they are by someone biologically related.
They do not display stranger or separation anxiety.

Question 5

Give a description of the discriminate attachment stage.

Answer 5

Infants are beginning to become more bothered about who they are with.
They start to develop primary attachments to their primary caregiver.

Question 6

Give a description of the multiple attachments stage.

Answer 6

Infants develop a wider circle of multiple attachments.
There are called secondary attachments and infants show anxiety in these relationships.

Question 7

What was Schaffer and Emerson’s aim?

Answer 7

To investigate the formation of early attachments and to identify the distinct changes.

Question 8

What was the sample that Schaffer and Emerson used?

Answer 8

-31 boys, 29 girls and their mums.
-Working class
-White
-Tenement flats of Glasgow.

Question 9

What was the procedure of Schaffer and Emerson’s research?

Answer 9

They conducted a longitudinal study, every month, S+E visited mums and babies (for 12 months) then again after 18 months.

Question 10

What did Schaffer and Emerson find?

Answer 10

-First attachment was formed between 6 and 8 months.

-By 18 months, 65% of infants had developed a primary attachment to the mother and only 3% to the father.

-By 18 months, 31% had formed multiple attachments.

Question 11

Evaluate Schaffer and Emerson’s research.

Answer 11

+High ecological validity.
The study was carried out in families own homes, during ordinary activities.

-Only relates to the sample used.
Biased sample (glasgow, working class etc), child-rearing practices range from different cultures.

-Further evidence shows that babies significantly prefer looking at human faces more than anything else and being with humans.
Schaffer and Emerson’s Asocial stage lasts for way too long. The new research lowers the validity of the old research.