Attachment Flashcards
What is the secure attachment style?
Caregiver - responds appropriately, promptly, consistently.
Child - Protests at caregiver’s departure, is comforted on return and returns to exploration.
What is attachment?
Attachment theory is concerned with the quality and type of emotional attachment between a child and parent. Insecure or anxious attachment leads to anxiety and emotional insecurity in children.
What is the insecure avoidant attachment style?
Caregiver - Little or no response to distressed child, Discourages crying and encourages independence.
Child - Little or no stress on departure, little or no response to carer’s return. Quality of play usually low.
What is insecure ambivalent style of attachment?
Caregiver - Inconsistency between appropriate and neglectful responses.
Child - sad on carer’s departure but warms to stranger. On carer’s return is ambivalent, angry and reluctant to engage with caregiver or return to play.
What is the insecure disorganised style of attachment?
Caregiver - frightening behaviours, intrusive vs withdrawn. Negative. Role confusion, affective errors and maltreatment.
Child - Stereotypies on return such as freezing, rocking. Lack of coherent coping strategy (eg. but approaching with back turned).
What is the critical period?
Between 6 months and 2-3 years.
What is robustness of development?
Means that attachment will develop in even less than ideal situations.
Explain how experience is essential in attachment.
When a child is born they have no preference for their own parents over strangers, they are attracted to anyone who treats them kindly.
Preferences for particular people develop over time.
What is monotropy?
Most children have more than one attachment figure but there is a strong bias for attachment to become directed towards one particular person
What does it mean that social interactions are a cause of attachment?
Feeding and relief of pain do not cause an infant to attach. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive, and who remain consistent over time
What is the internal working model?
Early experiences with caregivers gradually give rise to a system of thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviours about the self and others
What are the consequences of disrupted attachment?
Significant separation from a familiar caregiver, frequent changes of caregiver or pathological caregiving can disrupt attachment resulting in psychopathology at some point in later life
What does secure attachment lead to?
Children develop a sense of self, who they are and what they can expect from the world.
This generalises to their other relationships.
Draws heavily on information processing perspectives.
What is reactive attachment disorder?
Complex psychiatric illness.
Markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts.
Begins before 5 years and associated with grossly pathological care.
What are the two subtypes of reactive attachment disorder?
- Inhibited - persistent failure to initiate and respond to most social interactions
- Disinhibited -indiscriminate sociability or lack of selectivity in choosing attachment figures
