Attachment Flashcards
(26 cards)
Caregiver-Infant Interactions
Caregiver-Infant Interactions -Reciprocity
-Reciprocity - Responding to the action of another with a similar action, where the actions of one partner elicit a response from the other partner, the interaction is rhythmic
Caregiver Infant Interactions
-Interactional Synchrony
-When two people interact they tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and body movements
-Meltzoff & Moore (1977) - found infants as young as two-three weeks old imitated specific facial and hand gestures
Caregiver Infant Interactions - Counter -Pseudo-imitation
-Piaget(1962) - believed that true imitation only developed towards the end of the first year, and anything before this was a kind of ‘response training’ - the infant is repeating a behaviour that was rewarded
-E.g. Infant observes caregiver sticking tongue out - infant also sticks tongue out - caregiver smiles(a reward) - infant encouraged to repeat behaviour next time.
Development of Attachment
Development of Attachment
-Stage 1: Asocial Stage
-Age Period = Birth - 2 months
-Infants produce similar responses to both animate and inanimate objects
Development of Attachment
-Stage 2: Indiscriminate Stage
-Age Period = 2 months
-Infants prefer human company to inanimate objects
-Most distinctive feature of this stage is general sociability
Development of Attachment
-Stage 3: Specific Attachment
-Age Period = 7 months
-Infants begin to show a distinct protest when separated from one particular person (separation anxiety)
-Infants show especial joy at reunion with that one person
-Infants have formed a specific attachment to that one person (Primary Attachment Figure)
-Infants begin to show signs of stranger anxiety when separated from that primary attachment figure
Development of Attachment
-Stage 4: Multiple Attachments
-Age Period = Very soon after the infant has formed the specific attachment
Animal Studies - Lorenz
-Procedure
-Key Study: Lorenz (1935)
-Procedure - Lorenz took a clutch of goslings eggs and divided them into two groups, one left with their natural mother, one placed in an incubator where the first moving thing they saw was Lorenz, as a result they became attached to him
-Lorenz marked the two groups and placed them together with both the natural mother and Lorenz present.
Animal Studies - Lorenz
-Findings
Findings - The goslings immediately divided themselves up, with one group following the natural mother and the other following Lorenz, with Lorenz’s group showing no recognition of the natural mother.
-Lorenz further stated the importance of a time period for imprinting called the critical period, in which the imprinting process is limited to.
Animal Studies - Harlow
Key Study: Harlow (1959)
-Procedure - Harlow created two wire mothers each with a different head, one wired mother was wrapped in soft cloth. The ppts were 8 infant monkeys who were studied for a period of 165 days, for four of the monkeys the milk bottle was on the cloth covered mother, whilst the four other monkeys’ bottle was on the plain wired mother.
-During the time, measurements were made of the amount of time each monkey spent with each mother.
Findings - All eight monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth covered mother whether or not the mother had the milk bottle, monkeys who fed from the wire mother only spent time with that mother for the milk then went back to the cloth covered mother immediately.
- These findings suggest infants do not develop an attachment to the person who feeds them but to the person offering contact comfort
Learning Theory
-Proposed by Bandura
- Learning theory proposes all behaviour is learned rather than inborn, children are blank states, tabula rasas.
- Classical conditioning
- BC - Food is UCS, Pleasure from infant is UCR, mother is NS and the infant has no response.
- During C - NS(mother) and UCS(food) paired
- AC - NS(mother) is now CS, pleasure is CR.
-Operant conditioning- Learning through reinforcement.
-Classical conditioning - Learning through association, a neutral stimulus is consistently paired with an unconditioned stimulus so it eventually takes on the properties of this stimulus and is able to produce a conditioned response.
Explanations of Attachment: Bowlby’s Theory Monotropy
-Babies have an innate drive to become attached, it is biological, he placed importance on the critical period of 3 to 6 months, infants who cannot produce an attachment in this time have difficulty forming attachments later on in life.
-Bowlby proposed that attachment is determined by sensitivity.
-He further placed importance on social releasers, behaviours such as smiling or having a baby face which elicit caregiving.
Monotropy - Bowlby proposed that infants have one special emotional bond, with their primary attachment figure, which is usually the biological mother.
-Monotropy is important as it places importance of infants having one special relationship which acts as a mental representation for future relationships called an internal working model.
- This model gives the child insight into the caregiver’s behaviour as well as acts as a template for future relationships.
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation(1979)
-Procedure
-Procedure - Consists of 8 episodes, each designed to highlight certain behaviours, in these episodes the caregiver and stranger alternately stay with the infant or leave, allowing observation of infant response to:
-seperation from the caregiver(seperation anxiety)
-Reunion with the caregiver(reunion behaviour)
-Response to a stranger(Stranger anxiety)
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation
-Findings
-Findings - Ainsworth found three main patterns of behaviours in the observed infants:
-Secure Attachment: Strong attachment between infant and caregiver, comfortable with social interactions and intimacy
-Insecure Avoidant Attachment: Infants who tend to avoid social interaction and intimacy
-Insecure Resistant Attachment: Infants who both seek and reject intimacy and social interaction.
Cultural Variations
-Key Study - Van IJzendoorn (1988)
-Aims: Investigating to see whether there would be evidence that inter-cultural differences did exist, i.e. differences between different countries and cultures.
-Findings: Differences were small, secure attachment was the most common in every country, then insecure-avoidant, then insecure-resistant.
-E.g. West Germany had the most common avoidants, Great Britain had the most common secures, Israel had the most common resistant’s.
Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Theory
-Proposed that prolonged emotional deprivation would have long-term consequences in terms of emotional development.
BMDT - Procedures & Findings
-Key Study: 44 Juvenile Thieves
-Procedure: Bowlby studied 88 emotionally maladjusted children, half(44) had been caught stealing.
- Bowlby suggested that the thieves were affectionless psychopaths - who lacked normal signs of affection or shame, and that such characteristics allowed them to be thieves.
-Findings - The individuals Bowlby named affectionless psychopaths had experienced frequent early separations from their mothers(Above 80%).
-Leading Bowlby to state the importance of a warm-intimate, loving, continuous relationship as well as food and shelter.
Critical Period
-0-2.5 years old.
-A biologoically determined period of time during which certain characteristics can develop.
-Prolonged Seperation will only have an emotional disturbance effect if it occurs after this time period. the age of two and a half years.
Romanian Orphan Studies: Effects of Institutionalisation
-Procedure
-Key Study: Rutter(2010)
-Procedure: Studied 165 Romanian children who spent their early lives in Romanian institutions and thus suffered from the effects of institutionalisation.
-Of this group, 111 were adopted before the age of two, and the further 54 before the age of four.
-The adoptees were all tested at regular intervals to assess their physical, social and cognitive development, progress was compared to a control group of 52 British children adopted before the age of 6 months
Romanian Orphan Studies: Effects of Institutionalisation
-Findings
-At time of adoption, Romanian Orphans lagged behind their British counterparts on all measures; physical, cognitive and social.
-They were smaller, weighed less and were classified as mentally retarded. By four, some Romanian orphans had caught up to their British counterparts.
-Follow-ups confirmed that significant deficits remained in orphans adopted after 6 months and showed disinhibited attachments and had problems with peer relationships, suggesting long term consequences may only be severe when children do not form attachments.
Influence of Early Attachment
-Internal Working Model
-An infant learns about a relationship from experience, the infant learns how relationships work.
-It is operable as it is used to predict the behaviour of other people in the future.
Influence of Early Attachment - Key Study: Hazan & Shaver
-Procedure
-The Psychologists placed a Love Quiz in a newspaper, which asked questions about current attachment experiences, attachment history, attitude towards love etc.
-They analysed 600 responses from both men and women.
