attachment Flashcards

Question

what does it mean by sexual imprinting

Answer 1

whoever they imprinted on they will later show courtship behaviours to them

Answer 2

suggests that there is a critical time period for imprinting to happen and primary attachments to be made. this early attachment helps predict future bonds -suggests humans have a critical time period of 0-5 years for developing an attachment -if attachment is not made the child will suffer from irreversible developmental consequences such as reduced intelligence and increased aggression (evolutionary theory)

Answer 3

+ seebach found computer users displayed ‘baby duck syndrome’ where they were attached to their first computer model and rejected others X imprinting behaviour is not representing of most bird species, let alone humans. -mammals work in a two way process: both mother and baby get attached

Answer 4

the research shows importance of bonding between mother and baby -monkeys who were not shows affection or could not cuddle with the cloth mother had trouble gaining weight leading to researches believing that affection has a large impact on a child’s development

Answer 5

16 monkeys were observed with 2 wired monkeys in a cage. 1 was wrapped in a soft cloth and the other was plain wire. -both dispensed milk in one condition and in another only the wire one did

Answer 6

monkeys went to the cloth mother especially when there were loud mechanical noises. -they did not matter is the cloth mother dispensed milk or not they just wanted contact comfort

Answer 7

+important practical applications : HOWE research helped social workers and health car professionals detect when bonding has been successful so they can intervene + humans and monkeys are similar: GREEN states that on a biological level at least, all mammals have the same brain structure as humans. enables psychologists to study attachment behaviour in ways that could not have been possible in humans X despite theoretical and practical applications, the research caused monkeys high distress and consequences later= unethical

Answer 8

showed that primary attachment is more likely to be made with the mother than the father, fathers are typically a secondary attachment figure fathers have a different role in attachment; -more to do with okay and stimulating -less to do with nurturing -fathers when needed will take on the role of the mother

Answer 9

babies first become attached to their mothers by 7 months old -3% of the time, the father was the primary caregiver -27% where they had a joint attachment with the mother -by 18 months old, 75% of babies had formed an attachment with their fathers

Answer 10

did a longitudinal study looking at babies to adolescence -quality of attachment to mothers were related to attachment in adolescence, showing mothers attachment is more important -quality of fathers play with babies was related to the quality of adolescence attachments

Answer 11

filmed 4 month old babies face to face with their primary caregiver mothers, secondary: fathers, and primary: fathers. -smiling, imitation and holding babies are all part of the reciprocity and international synchrony -fathers can therefore be emotional focused primary attachment figures

Answer 12

+can offer advice to parents, mothers don’t have to be the primary caregiver and take time off work X if fathers have a distinct role, why aren’t children without fathers different to those with them + but to single mothers or lesbian mothers, just take on the extra role and adapt to compensate X different researchers want to answer different questions

Answer 13

learning by association -unconditioned means not learnt (pavlovs dog study)

Answer 14

learning by reinforcement dollard and miller- suggested that a hungry infant feels uncomfortable and this creates a drive to reduce the discomfort - when fed the discomfort is reduced and positive reinforcement occurs - food is a primary reinforcer as it satisfies hunger - person who supplies the food is the secondary reinforcer and a source of pleasure in his/her own right

Answer 15

X contradicted by animal studies: harlows research saw the monkeys wanting milk over comfort + attachment through food as a main factor to attachment may be limited but the concept of conditioning may still apply (attached to the mother because of the food supply) X research support is based on animals so cannot be generalised to humans

Answer 16

he proposed a theory that attachment is an innate system that gives us a survival advantage he observed and interviewed children and their families who were separated in the aftermath of WW2, often conducted in hospitals or institutions.

Answer 17

the more constant the child’s care is, the better quality of attachment

Answer 18

the safest amount of separation is zero

Answer 19

the infant can use the adult as a secure base when exploring, which is important for development. -he proposed that the babies instinctive behaviours act as social releasers eliciting parenting behaviours, resulting in the infant being looked after well and so prompting survival

Answer 20

children who’ll find it harder to form a relationship or a bond, past the age of two if it hasn’t already been formed by then

Answer 21

it is a model for future relationships, and it affects the persons ability to parent -children from functional families tend to have similar families

Answer 22

+ the theory has real life application in hospitals: bowlby did his research in hospital on ww2 families + brazelton et al: observed babies and their mothers during interactions and found that international synchrony existed. in addition to this he found that when the mother was asked to ignore the baby, the baby would release social releasers and the baby would become distressed and eventually curl up lying motionless X monotropy is a socially sensitive idea as it has major implications for the lifestyle choices mothers make when their children are young: why do mothers have to be the primary caregivers? X schaffer and emerson found that children ad able to form multiple attachments: mother is typically primary caregiver, whilst father is typically secondary caregiver

Answer 23

100 middle class american infants were left in 8 different situations to assess and measure the quality of attachment. children were classed on one of three attachments based on their responses to the 8 situations

Answer 24

1. mother and child enter the playroom 2. child is encouraged to play/ explore 3. stranger enters and attempts to interact with 4. mother leaves while stranger is present 5. mother enters and stranger leaves 6. mother leaves 7. stranger enters 8. mother returns and interacts with child

Answer 25

type A- insecure avoidant type B- secure type C- insecure resistant

Answer 26

-did not orientate towards mother when exploring - unconcerned when mother leaves - unconcerned about stranger and don’t have a preference between stranger and mother

Answer 27

-explore unfamiliar environment but goes back to mother at regular intervals - move closer to mother when stranger is presented, is weary - easily calmed and is enthusiastic upon return

Answer 28

-cries more and explores less -avoids stranger, showing fear - intense distress when mother leaves - resists comfort upon return

Answer 29

60-75% secure 20-25% insecure avoidant 3% insecure resistant

Answer 30

suggests that a mothers behaviour toward their infant predicts their attachment type

Answer 31

X children may have had attachments to someone else (father, auntie…) + been found to have good reliability, this means it achieves constant results. for example a study in germany supports it as it found 78% of children were classified in the same way at 1 and 6 years old. X high artificial setting and therefore meaning it lacks ecological validity

Answer 32

a society that values the individual over the group (e.g USA)

Answer 33

a cultural pattern that emphasises the needs and foals of the group as a whole over the needs and desires of each individual (e.g china)

Answer 34

a meta-analysis which looks at 32 studies where the strange situation was used - the studies were conducted in 8 different countries, 15 of the studies were in the USA - studies contained results for over 1990 children

Answer 35

- great britain had the most secure children (75%) - germany had the most insecure avoidant children (35%) - israel had the most insecure resistant (29%) - china had the lowest secure children (50%) - japan had the lowest insecure avoidant chilldren (5%) - great britain had the lowest insecure resistant (3%)

Answer 36

had 76 one year olds using the same strange situation - 50% were secure, 36% were insecure avoidant this is a lower rate of secure attchment than has been found in other studies - could be due to mothers working longer hours and use professional day care

Answer 37

strange situation was used to assess 87 babies -insecure and secure proportions were similar to most countries -most were secure, more I-R than I-A (only 1 baby) -korea and japan have quite a similar child upbringing styles so could explain why the distribution of attachment was so similar to Japan

Answer 38

secure attachment was the norm across a range of cultures (innate supporting bowlbys theory) -some variation linked to cultural practices

Answer 39

+ found similarities in other countries X however could media show a way of how parents and babies are meant to behave and this overrides traditional cultural differences X strange situation was created and tested in USA: means it may be culturally biased as it will reflect the norms and values of american culture

Answer 40

the emotional and intellectual consequences of separation between a child and their mother or mother substitute

Answer 41

continuous care from a mother is essential for normal psychological development, and that prolonged separation from this adult causes serious damage to emotional and intellectual development

Answer 42

separation- when the child is not in the presence of the primary caregiver, brief separations and especially when the child is with a substitute caregiver, do not have significant impact on the child’s development deprivation- bend the child is deprived of either theirs primary caregiver as a whole or their emotional care which leads to developmental issues with the child

Answer 43

if an attachment is disrupted or not formed with a mother figure in the first 30 months of life then it is too late and the child with possibly never form any attachment at all. bowlby believed psychological damage was inevitable past this point, and he also claimed there was a risk up to the age of 5

Answer 44

-intellectual development, abnormally low IQ and low cognitive functions -delayed emotional development, bowlby claimed children who had maternal deprivation could not experience guilt of serious emotions (known as affectionless psychopathy) -delayed social development, behaviour is often delinquent and outside of social norms

Answer 45

study examined the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation PROCEDURE- sample consisted of 44 criminal teenagers accused of steeling. all ‘thieves’ were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy. their families were also interviewed in order to establish whether the ‘thieves’ had prolonged early separations from their mothers. a control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed you people, was set up to see how often maternal deprivation/separation occurred in children who were not thieves FINDINGS- bowlby found that 14/44 thieves could be describes as affectionless psychopaths. of this 14, 12 had experience prolonged separation from their mothers in the first two years of their lives. in contrast only 5 of the remaining 30 thieves had experienced long separations. it was concluded that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy

Answer 46

WEAKNESS: poor evidence-bolwby studied children orphaned during WW2 for evidence for maternal deprivation. these are flawed as evidence as war-orphans were traumatised and had poor after care therefore these factors may have been the causes of development difficulties rather than separation. also, the design of the 44 thieves study had flaws as Bolwby himself carried out the assessments which means bias could have been present WEAKNESS: failure to distinguish between deprivation and privation-Rutter (1981) claimed that Bowlby muddled two concepts together. rutter drew a distinction between deprivation ,which really means the loss of the primary attachment figure after attachment has developed whereas privation is the failure to form any attachment in the first place. rutter suggested that the long term damage Bolwby associated with deprivation is actually the result of privation

Answer 47

a term for the effects of living in an institutional setting. in such places there is often very little emotional care provided.

Answer 48

PROCEDURE- rutter et al (2011) conducted a longitudinal study on 165 Romanian orphans adopted by British parents children were split into 4 groups; group 1: 58 children under the age of 6 months group 2: 59 children between the ages of 6 and 24 months group 3: 48 children over 48 months group 4: 52 British adoptees who were the control group each group was assessed at the ages of 4, 6, 11 and 15 at the start of the observations, over half of the Romanian children were suffering from severe malnutrition and a low IQ, showing delayed intellectual development, compared to the control group FINDINGS- all children showed signs of delayed intellectual development. the mean IQ of those adopted before the age of 6 months was 102. compared with 86 for those adopted between six months and two years. and 77 for those adopted after 2 years, these differences remained at age 16. those children adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment.

Answer 49

attention seeking, clinginess, and social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards all adults, both familiar and unfamiliar

Answer 50

Zeanah et al assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutional care. they were compared to a control group of 50 children who had never lived in an institution. attachment type was measure using strange situation. FINDINGS- 74% of control group came out as securely attached, however only 19% of the institutional group were securely attached with 65% being classed with disorganised attachment. description of disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of institutionalised children as opposed to 20% of control group.

Answer 51

-disinhibited attachment, they are equally friendly and affectionate to people they know or strangers they had just met. rutter has explained disinhibited attachment as an adaption to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period for attachment formation. -very poor intellectual development (mental R) in rutters study most children showed signs of this, however most of those adopted before 6 months old caught up with the control group by age four. therefore intellectual development can be recovered provided adoption takes place before 6 months.

Answer 52

WEAKNESS: there is a current lack of adult data on adult development. the latest data only looks at children in their early to mid-20s. therefore we do not know the long term effects of institutionalisation e.g. early adopted children who appear to have no issues now may grow to have emotional problems when they are older. the long term effects are unclear WEAKNESS: romanian orphanages were not typical, this study could lack external validity as the quality of care was so poor in Romanian orphanages that it cannot be compared to others. this means the harmful effects seen in the studies of Romanian orphans may represent the effects of poor institutional care rather than institutional care in general.

Answer 53

STRENGTH: real life application, due to research on institutions and the negative effects they have, policy changes were made to benefit children; for example, children's homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead now have one or two 'key workers' who play a central role in their emotional care. this shows that research has been immensely valuable in practical terms

Answer 54

the mental representations we all carry with us of our attachment to our primary caregiver. they are important in affecting our future relationships because they carry our perceptions of what relationships are like

Answer 55

securely attached infants tend to go on to form the best quality childhood friendships, whereas insecurely attached infants later have friendship difficulties. Myron-wilson and Smith assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from london -secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying -insecure avoidant children were most likely to be the victims -insecure resistant children were most likely to be bullies

Answer 56

Hazan and Shaver: -designed a study to test the internal working model -placed a ‘love quiz’ in a newspaper -it asked about attachment history and current attachment experiences to determine childhood attachment types -it also asked about attitudes to love -620 responses, 205 men, 415 women Findings: the self report of attachment history found that the prevalence of attachment types were similar to those in infancy -56% secure -25% avoidant -19% resistant – there was a positive correlation between attachment type and love experiences. -securely attached adults described their love experiences as happy and trusting and their relationships were more enduring -securely attached individuals had a positive internal working model

Answer 57

people tend to base their parenting style on their internal working model so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family. bailey et al studied mother-baby attachment using the strange situation and mother-own-mother had been assessed using an adult attachment interview. the majority of woman had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mothers

Answer 58

WEAKNESS: overly determinist- Hazan and Shaver’s research suggest that very early experiences have a fixed effect on later adult relationships. this is not always the case some adults have loving relationships despite not being securely attached.

Answer 59

STRENGTH: understanding why a child or adult may be struggling due to their attachment type allows those working with them p, to support them better. therefore, the internal working model can be used in everyday life to help those who’s attachment was never formed or was unhealthy. allowing them to progress in later life

attachment Flashcards

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