Attachment 👩‍🍼

Question 1

What is attachment?

Answer 1

the positive emotional bond that develops between a child and a particular individual.

Question 2

Reciprocity

Answer 2

when things are exchanged between people for mutual benefit. Shared communication.

Question 3

Alert phases

Answer 3

Babies have periodic ‘ alert phases’ and signal that they are ready for interaction. Mothers typically pick up on and respond to infant alertness around two-thirds of the time (Feldman and Eidelman 2007).

Question 4

active involvement

Answer 4

both the babies and parents appear to take turns, both have active roles.
Brazelton described this interaction as a dance

Question 5

interactional synchrony

Answer 5

caregiver and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated way.

Question 6

Isabella et al

Answer 6

Observed 30 babies and their mothers and found that higher levels of interactional synchrony were associated with better quality attachment

Question 7

Meltzoff and Moore

Answer 7

Infants as young as two weeks old were able to imitate specific facial and hand gestures by a caregiver model

Question 8

Evaluations of caregiver-infant interactions

Answer 8

strength -

lab studies, distractions are controlled, infants won’t care about cameras so reactions are natural

weakness -

difficult to interpret babies behaviours.

weakness -

assuming developmental importance, Isabella’s findings haven’t always been replicated.

Question 9

Schaffer’s stages of attachment

Answer 9

Asocial = babies behave similarly towards humans and objects

indiscriminate = babies have the same reactions to anyone

specific = behave positively towards a single attachment, separation anxiety

multiple = baby forms multiple attachments

Question 10

Schaffer and Emerson

Answer 10

Carried out a study on families in Glasgow where they visited babies and their mothers every month for 12 months and once at 18 months and from their observations they developed a 4-stage model of attachment formation, such as indiscriminate and discriminate attachments. at 25 - 32 weeks 50% of babies showed separation anxiety.

Question 11

evaluations of Schaffer and Emersons research

Answer 11

strength -

external validity, ordinary activities resulted in natural behaviours

weakness -

poor evidence for the asocial stage as young babies are uncoordinated so we can’t know what their expressions mean

strength -

real life applications, daycares and parents now have more knowledge on when the best time to put a baby into day-care is

weakness -

generalisably, this study was only on working class families in Glasgow , different times or cultures aren’t considered (Van IJzendoorn)

Question 12

attachment - role of the father

Answer 12

in attachment, the father is anyone who takes on the main male role, not just biological. They have been found to have a different but important role.

Question 13

Schaffer and Emerson - role of the father

Answer 13

a study that found that majority of babies form attachments with their mothers at around 7 months and only 3% of these cases was the father the primary attachment figure

Question 14

Klaus Grossmann et al. (2002)

Answer 14

longitudinal study, looked at babies up until they were teens, looked at both parents behaviours and relationships to the quality of their babies later attachments to others.

Attachments to mothers made the biggest impacts, but the fathers interactions were also important, they just have different roles.

Question 15

Tiffany Field

Answer 15

filmed 4 month old interactions with primary caregiver mothers, primary caregiver fathers and secondary caregiver fathers. Both primary caregivers done the same actions- smiling etc. This shows that responsiveness is important not gender

Question 16

evaluations to studies of the role of the father

Answer 16

strength -

real world applications, parents often agonise over who should stay at home but this research shows it doesn’t just have to be the mother

weakness -

complicated questions, all of the studies look at different things and don’t fully answer the complex question of the role of the father

weakness -

conflicting evidence, McCallum and Golombok found that those brought up without a father turn out normal

weakness -

observer bias, stereotypical images of fathers and their roles, assumptions based on these stereotypes.

Question 17

Lorenz’s geese procedure

Answer 17

-randomly divided goose eggs into either a group hatched with their mother in a natural environment and a group hatched with Lorenz in an incubator.
-goslings imprinted on who they first saw, he identified a critical period which the first strong attachment must occur

Question 18

evaluations of Lorenz’s procedure

Answer 18

weakness- difficult to generalise findings from birds to humans
weakness- Guiton et al observed that chickens tried to mate with gloves but eventually moved on to chickens, showing that imprinting isn’t permanent

Question 19

Harlow’s procedure

Answer 19

-16 baby monkeys separated from their mothers and put with a wire mother or a cloth mother, not dispensing milk.
-monkeys preferred the cloth mother for comfort and protection showing that comforts more important than food in attachment.
-monkeys deprived from mothers showed aggression, autistic and antisocial behaviour

Question 20

evaluations to harlow’s study

Answer 20

strength- theoretical value, profound effect on psychologists understanding of human-infant attachment, real life application

strength-Howe found it important to help social workers understanding in child neglect

weakness- ethical issues, they were put in ‘pits of despair’

Question 21

Dollard and miller

Answer 21

cupboard love, infants learn to love who feeds them

Question 22

three main factors to cupboard love

Answer 22

classical conditioning, operant conditioning and secondary drive

Question 23

evaluations to the learning theory

Answer 23

weakness- counter evidence from animal studies. Harlows monkeys went to cloth mother without being fed by them. Lorenzes geese imprinted before being fed.
weakness- counter evidence from human research. Schaffer and Emerson being attached to mothers despite being fed by Nannie’s
weakness- other factors influence attachment, Isabella et al said reciprocity and international synchrony are important
strength- Hay and Vespa suggest that parents tech kids to love them by modelling attachment behaviour, it’s not just food

Question 24

Bowlbys theory of attachment

Answer 24

rejected learning theory because infants don’t automatically like whoever feeds them. proposed the evolutionary explanation that attachment is innate and designed to increase survival. form of biological approach

Question 25

bowlbys theory

Answer 25

children typically form one strong attachment within the critical period (first two years) more time spent with attachment makes it stronger, less time spent causes issues. law of continuity, the more constant and predictable the childcare, the better the attachment. law of accumulated separation l, the effects add up everytime they're separated.

Question 26

monotropic attachment

Answer 26

one distinct primary attachment

Question 27

social releasers

Answer 27

innate cute behaviours infants use

Question 28

internal working model

Answer 28

the future template for all subsequent attachments in life

Question 29

hazan and shaver

Answer 29

the love quiz, questionnaire to assess people's attachment, correlated data with assessments of parental attachments.

Question 30

evaluations of evolutionary theory

Answer 30

Strength- research support 'the love quiz' found a positive correlation between early attachment and later adult relationships. Bailey et al found in his research on 99 mothers that those with poor attachment to their parents are more likely to have poorly attached children strength- Brazelton et al observed mothers and babies and found international synchrony. mothers were told to ignore them and babies showed distress weakness- Schaffer and Emerson found that 27% of babies attached to mothers and fathers at the same time

Question 31

Mary Ainsworth

Answer 31

student of bowlby who agreed with the need for secure attachment and developed the "strange situation " which aimed to create categories that were distinct and measurable

Question 32

procedure of strange situation

Answer 32

1. child explores 2. stranger interacts 3. mum leaves 4. mum returns and stranger leaves 5. mum leaves 6. stranger returns 7. mum returns each lasted 3 minutes

Question 33

findings of a strange situation

Answer 33

- insecure avoidant attachment, low anxiety, weak attachment and high exploration (22%) - secure attachment, moderate anxiety, high exploration and needs reassurance (66%) - insecure resistant, high anxiety, low exploration and weak reunion (12%)

Question 34

evaluations of a strange situation

Answer 34

strength- McCormick et al found that securely attached infants were more likely to succeed showing this procedure has valuable information strength- reliability, 94% of observers agreed, inter-observer reliability weakness- main and soloman found a forth type, insecure disorganised attachment and Van Ijzendoorn found that 15% had this type weakness- lack of ecological validity, controlled unnatural setting could cause unreliable behaviours

Question 35

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg

Answer 35

meta analysis on 32 studies of 1990 kids in a strange situation, 8 countries. secure attachment most common 75% in Britain 50% in china. insecure resistant 3% in Britain and 30% in Israel, variations within countries, avoidant most popular I. Germany

Question 36

simonella et al

Answer 36

study in Italy of the strange situation, 76 infants, 50% secure, 30% avoidant. change due to women working

Question 37

Jin et al

Answer 37

study in Korea of strange situation on 87 infants, secure most common only one child was avoidant

Question 38

evaluations of cultural variations on strange situation

Answer 38

strength- large sample size, increases internal validity reduces anomalies weakness- samples represent countries not cultures, Ijzendoorn and Sagi found urban and rural Japan had different results weakness- cultural bias imposed etic different attachment types could be seen differently

Question 39

Takahashis study

Answer 39

60 Japanese infants, 68% secure, 32% resistant and 0 avoidant. infants got too distressed being left alone since Japanese infants spend 100% of their time with their mothers, more rude to not greet strangers. strange situation doesn't work everywhere

Question 40

deprivation and separation

Answer 40

deprivation= a loss of emotional care from a prolonged separation from primary caregiver separation= infant not being in the presence of caregiver

Question 41

maternal deprivation effects on intellectual development

Answer 41

Bowlby believed that maternal deprivation in critical period would result in an abnormally low IQ. Goldfarb studied this, out of 30 orphans, half remained in institution and half were fostered by 4 months, children in institution had lower IQ ( 68) compared to 96

Question 42

maternal deprivation effect on emotional development

Answer 42

could result in affectionless psychopathy, no guilt or empathy, more likely to be a criminal

Question 43

44 thieves study

Answer 43

procedure: 44 thieves were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy. families also interviewed to see if there was separation. control group of non criminal but emotionally disturbed teens findings: 14/44 thieves were affectionless psychopaths, 12/14 had separation, 5/ 30 that weren't psychopaths had separation, only 2 out of control group had separation

Question 44

evaluations to bowlbys maternal deprivation theory

Answer 44

weakness- flawed evidence, researcher bias, Goldfarbs research unreliable due to results possibly being due to trauma not deprivation weakness- limited explanation, Rutter found 2 types of negative early experience, deprivation and privation. separated before attachment or after weakness- sensitive periods, Koluchova studied 2 twins, attached then mum died, raised by caring foster parents and development was normal, given to absent dad and abusive step mum, they were found to have physical and mental development issues but once adopted by carers it was fixed strength- research support, Levy et al found separating rats from mothers had an effect on social development, Gao et al showed that poor quality maternal care was associated with psychopathy in adults

Question 45

Kerns

Answer 45

securely attached babies tend to go on to form higher quality relationships

Question 46

Myron-Wilson and Smith

Answer 46

assessed attachment type and bullying in kids, 196 children aged 7-11, secure= uninvolved, avoidant =victims and resistant were bullies

Question 47

McCarthy

Answer 47

40 women, attachment type in infancy. secure= positive relationships avoidant=struggled intimacy resistant= problems maintaining relationships

Question 48

Hazan and Shaver

Answer 48

620 replies to the love quiz to 3 sections, current, most important relationship and general love experiences and chose which statement worked best with them. secure=56%, avoidant=25%, resistant=19%

Question 49

Bailey et al

Answer 49

99 mothers and babies and their own mothers in a strange situation, majority had the same attachment type as their babies and mothers

Question 50

evaluations of influence of early attachments

Answer 50

strength- research support, Fearon and Roisman agreed that early attachment type predicts future relationships weakness- methodology, not longitudinal and desirability bias weakness- reductionism

Question 51

Institutionalisation

Answer 51

an institution refers to a place such as a prison, hospital or orphanage where people live for a long, continuous period of time. Institutionalisation is a term for the effects of living in one of the such places where there is often very little emotional care.

Question 52

Rutter et al

Answer 52

165 Romanian orphans adopted by UK families to investigate if good care could make up for poor childhood experiences. At ages 4,6,11,15,22 and 25, they had mental and physical tests. Control group of 52 British adopted orphans. Arrived in the UK half had poor intellectual ability. Mean IQ of those adopted before 6 months was 102, between 6 months and 2 years it was 86, and those after was 77.

Question 53

Disinhibited attachment

Answer 53

Attention seeking behaviour and clinginess

Question 54

Zeanah et al

Answer 54

Attachment was assessed in 95 Romanian children aged 12-31 months who had spent most of their lives in institutionalised care. - They were compared to a control group of 50 children who had never spent time in an institution. - The children were assessed using The Strange Situation. In addition to this, carers were also asked about unusual social behaviour (measure of disinhibited attachment). Only 19% of institutionalised group had secure compared to 74% in control group. 44% compared to less than 20% had disinhibited attachment

Question 55

Evaluations of Romanian orphan studies

Answer 55

Strength- real world application, Rutters experiment showed the effects of institutionalised care and how to prevent the worst of it Weakness- lack of adult data, can’t see if data changes for a long time Strength- fewer confounding variables, the orphans in these studies were often “handed over” by loving parents which reduces the trauma