Attachment

Question 1

What is reciprocity?

Answer 1

Where the caregiver and the infant respond to each others signals and elicit a response from each other.

Question 2

What are ‘Alert Phases’?

Answer 2

Where the infant signal they want to interact with you.
Eg: they make eye contact
mothers pick up on their baby’s alertness 2/3 of the time and this may be due to stress.

Question 3

What is active involvement?

Answer 3

Where both the baby and the caregiver can initiate interactions.
Previously it was portrayed that babies have a passive role.

Question 4

What is interactional synchrony?

Answer 4

Whereby the infant and the caregiver interact in such a way that they mirror each other.
‘Temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour.
-begins as young as 2 weeks old.

Question 5

What is the procedure of Meltzoff and Moore’s procedure?

Answer 5

Observed beginning of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks old.
-Adults displayed one of three behaviours
-babies response were filmed and labelled

Question 6

Evaluate Meltzoff and Moore’s study. (strengths)

Answer 6

• filmed the study therefore inter-rater reliability because more than one researcher can record data
  -babies do not know they are being recorded so their behaviour does not change
  -lab experiment so anything that may distract the baby wad controlled

Question 7

Evaluate Meltzoff and Moore’s study. (limitations)

Answer 7

-hard to interpret a baby’s behaviour
-babies lack coordination- we cannot determine whether their action was triggered by the caregivers action or if it was purely random

Question 8

Name the four stages of attachment.

Answer 8

asocial
indiscriminate
specific
multiple

Question 9

Describe the asocial stage of attachment.

Answer 9

They show similar behaviour to both inanimate objects and humans.
0-6 weeks

Question 10

Describe the indiscriminate attachment.

Answer 10

clear preference for humans rather than inanimate objects/prefer familiar people
2-7 months

Question 11

Describe specific attachment.

Answer 11

separation anxiety
primary attachment figure is usually mother 65% of the time
-approx 7 months

Question 12

Describe multiple attachments.

Answer 12

secondary attachments- make attachments they regularly spend time with
-schaffer and emerson observed that

Question 13

What is imprinting?

Answer 13

Learning occurring at a particular age or at a particular life stage

Question 14

How did Schaffer and Emerson’s conduct their research?

Answer 14

-observational study
-involved 60 babies (31 boys and 29 girls)
-researchers asked mothers what kind of protest the babies showed in 7 everyday separations.

Question 15

Outline the findings of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?

Answer 15

Identified 4 distinct stages

Question 16

Explain the role of the father.

Answer 16

The father does not need to be biological, they can just be the closest caregiver.
only 3% of the cases that Schaffer and Emerson studied became the first sole object of attachment.
-By 18 months, 75% of the babies formed an attachment with their father & babies protested when their father walked away.

Question 17

Explain the research and findings conducted into the role of the fathers.

Answer 17

Grossman conducted a longitudinal study where babies attachements were studied until they were teens
-Quality of a baby’s attachment to their mother but not their father was in relation to attachments in adolescence.
-suggests that attachment to fathers is less important but they play an important role for play and stimulation

Question 18

Give a piece of evidence for fathers acting as primary caregivers.

Answer 18

Tiffany Field- filmed 4 month old babies having face to face interactions with their primary caregiver fathers and he found there was reciprocity and interactional synchrony.

Question 19

Explain Lorenz’s procedure and findings.

Answer 19

-conducted a classic experiment
- half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose and half were hatched in an incubator and the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
- Incubator group followed Lorenz and those hatched in the presence of the mother followed the mother
-happens even when they’re mixed up.
-Imprinting only happens during the critical period which is a few hours after the hatching or birth.

Question 20

What procedure was conducted during sexual imprinting and what was found?

Answer 20

Case study was conducted and first moving object peacock saw was a giant tortoise so as an adult they would only show direct courtship towards giant tortoises.

Question 21

What was the procedure and findings to show the importance of contact comfort?

Answer 21

Procedure:
-reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’
-One condition milk was dispensed by plain wired mother
-one condition was dispensed by a cloth-covered mother.
FINDINGS:
-baby monkeys preferred cloth covered monkeys and sought comfort from them.

Question 22

What is the procedure and findings of the strange situation?

Answer 22

Mary Ainsworth: controlled observation to measure security of attachment
-lab with 2-way mirror
-8 episodes lasting 3 minutes each

Question 23

Evaluate the strange situation.

Answer 23

-good inter-rater reliability-(explain): Bick et al SS observers agreed on 94% of babies therefore no subjectivity
-may be culture bound: cultural differences so children may respond differently, for example this does not work in Japan as mothers are rarely away from children and this model was adopted in the UK and US.
-Kagan: argues that it is genetically influenced; anxiety levels can explain variations in attachment behaviour sp SS may not be measuring attachment.

Question 24

What is secure attachment?

Answer 24

70% children explore freely but go back to caregiver regularly
-moderate stranger/separation anxiety
-require comfort at reunion

Question 25

What is insecure resistant attachment?

Answer 25

15% seek greater proximity
-huge separation/stranger anxiety
-resists comfort at reunion

Question 26

What is insecure avoidant attachment?

Answer 26

15% explore freely
-do not seek proximity
-no reaction when caregiver leaves/returns

Question 27

What are the 4 key components to the learning theory as an explanation of attachment?

Answer 27

-classical conditioning
-operant conditioning
-primary drive
-secondary drive

Question 28

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 28

Learning through association
-association learned between mother and food so the baby will feel pleasure
-caregiver begins as the neutral stimulus and becomes the conditioned stimulus over time and produces a conditioned response which is pleasure.

Question 29

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 29

Learning through consequence
Reinforcement:positive/negative

Question 30

What is a primary drive?

Answer 30

innate biological motivator

Question 31

What is a secondary drive?

Answer 31

attachment

Question 32

Evaluate the learning theory as an explanation of attachment.

Answer 32

-Limitation- animal studies show young animals do not necessarily imprint to those who feed them. Eg: Lorenz’s geese imprinted before they were fed.
Limitation- feeding does not seem to be an important factor to humans; babies formed primary attachment to their biological mother whilst other carers did most the feeding so no unconditioned stimulus or primary drive involved.

Question 33

Explain Bowlby’s theory.

Answer 33

Bowlby’s monotropic theory states that an infant will form a special attachment to 1 caregiver.
2 principles to clarify this:
-law of continuity-more constant and predictable a child’s care is the better quality attachment
-law of accumulated separation- effects of every separation from the primary caregiver add up.