Stages of Attachment

Question 1

Outline Schaffer’s procedure of research into the stages of attachment in 1964

Answer 1

• 60 infants from skilled working-class families in Glasgow studied
• Infants and mothers visited at home every month for the first year and again at 18 months
• Researchers asked mothers questions about protests infant showed when mother left room to measure separation anxiety
• Also assessed infant’s stranger anxiety by recording responses to unfamiliar adults
• Found attachment develops in stages

Question 2

What is stage 1 of attachment?

Answer 2

• Pre-attachment stage (Birth to 2 months)
• Infant displays similar behaviour to both objects and humans
• Over time, begin to prefer humans to objects
• Learns to distinguish humans to objects (no strong preference about who cares for them)

Question 3

What is stage 2 of attachment?

Answer 3

• Indiscriminate-attachment (2-7 months)
• Infants begin to recognise and prefer familiar adults
• Accepts comfort from any adult
• Do not usually show separation and stranger anxiety

Question 4

What is stage 3 of attachment?

Answer 4

• Discriminate-attachment (7 months onwards)
• Start to display stranger and separation anxiety when separated from one particular adult (biological mother 65% of cases)
• Formed attachment to primary caregiver
• Not necessarily person who spends most time with infant, but person who interacts and responds to infant’s social releasers (smiling, crying) with most skill

Question 5

What is stage 4 of attachment?

Answer 5

• Multiple Attachments stage (9 months onwards)
• Has multiple attachments to adults they regularly spend time with (grandparents)
• Secondary attachments
• 29% had secondary attachments within month of forming discriminate attachment with primary caregiver
• Some attachments may be stronger than others and have different functions (for play or comfort)

Question 6

What is the strength of stages of attachment?

Answer 6

• Studied infant’s attachments in their natural environments
• Carried out research in families own homes
• Observations carried out by parents during activities (reported to researchers)
• Behaviour of infants were more likely to be natural (whether they displayed separation anxiety) compared to whether they were brought into lab experiments and an artificial environment
• Adds ecological validity of Shaffer and Emerson’s research into stages of attachment

Question 7

What is one limitation of stages of attachment?

Answer 7

• Difficult to apply stages of attachment to today’s society
• Shaffer and Emerson’s research done in 1960s
• Parental care of children changed since then
• More women now go work, infants exposed to other caregivers at early age (more likely to develop multiple attachments earlier)
• Questions temporal validity (how valid it is in relation to progression of time) of stages of attachment

Question 8

What is another limitation of stages of attachment?

Answer 8

• May not be generalisable across populations
• Stages of attachment created on bias sample in Glasgow
• Parenting practices may differ in other social groups (not representative of those)
• Upper class rely on nanny, infants develop multiple attachments at earlier stage than infants in working class who are more likely to be looked after by one primary caregiver
• Individualist cultures (specific attachment formed first with single caregiver)
• Collectivist cultures (multiple attachments formed earlier due to family working together to look after infant)
• Questions generalisability of stages of attachment to all infants

Question 9

What is the final limitation of stages of attachment?

Answer 9

• Younger infants require element of subjective interpretation
• Babies are pretty much immobile and has poor coordination so inferences has to be made on their attachment (whether they formed and who with)
• Limitation as it’s very difficult to make judgements about their attachments based on observations of their behaviour
• May have incorrectly concluded that infants do not develop discriminate attachments until around 7 months due to being more immobile before and unable to express their attachment to same degree
• Questions validity of assumptions made by Shaffer and Emerson regarding early stages of attachment