Attachment Flashcards
(44 cards)
What is reciprocity?
A description of how two people interact. Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both infant and mother respond to each other’s signals and each elicits a response from the other.
What is interactional synchrony?
Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated way.
When do children become attached to their fathers?
By 18 months
What is the father’s role?
Father’s offer play rather than comfort, seems to contribute to children’s attachment.
What is the first stage of attachment?
Asocial stage (the first few week)
What is the asocial stage?
The baby is recognising and forming bonds with its cares. However, the baby’s behaviour towards non-human objects and humans is quite similar. Babies show some preference for familiar adults in that those individuals find it easier to calm them. Babies are also happier when in the presence of other humans.
What is the second stage of attachment?
Indiscriminate attachment (2-7 months)
What is indiscriminate attachment?
Babies show a preference for people rather than inanimate objects and prefer familiar adults.
At this stage they usually accept cuddles and comfort from any adult, and they do not usually show separation anxiety or stranger anxiety.
What is the third stage of attachment?
Specific attachment (around 7 months)
What is specific attachment?
Babies start to display anxiety towards strangers and become anxious when separated from one particular parent.
The adult is termed the primary attachment figure.
What is the fourth stage of attachment?
Multiple attachments (by 1 years old)
What is multiple attachments?
Shortly after babies start to show attachment behaviour to one adult they usually extend this attachment behaviour to multiple attachments with other adults who they regularly spend time with.
These attachments are called secondary attachment
What was the method for Schaffer and Emersons study?
- 60 babies: 31 male, 29 female.
- All were from Glasgow
- Majority were from skilled working-class families
- the babies and their mothers were visited at home every month for the first year and again at 18 months. The researcher asked the mothers questions about the kind of protest their babies showed in seven everyday separations.
- This was designed to measure the infant’s attachment
- The researchers also assessed stranger anxiety
What were the findings for Schaffer and Emersons study?
- Between 25-32 weeks 50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adult.
- Attachment tended to be to the caregiver who was most interactive and sensitive to infants signals and facial expressions, not necessarily who the baby spent the most time with.
- By 40 weeks 80% of babies had a specific attachment and almost 30% showed multiple attachments.
What was Lorenz procedure?
Lorenz set up a classic experiment in which he randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment. The other half were hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
What was the findings of Lorenzs research?
The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed the mother. When the groups were mixed up the control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz.
What is imprinting?
Bird species that are mobile form birth attach to follow the first moving object they see.
Lorenz identified a critical period in which this needs to take place.
Depending on the species this can be as brief as a couple hours.
If imprinting does not occur within that time chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.
What was Lorenz’s research into sexual imprinting?
Lorenz observed that birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour to humans.
In a case study Lorenz described a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of the zoo, where the first moving objects the peacock saw were giant tortoises. As an adult this bird would only direct courtship behaviours towards giant tortoises.
What was Harlow’s procedure?
Harlow tested the idea that a soft object serves some function as a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother, whereas in the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother.
What were the finding’s of Harlows research?
It was found that the baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one, and sought comfort from the soft one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that contact comfort was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
What happened to the maternally deprived monkeys as adults?
The monkeys reared with wire mothers only wer the most dysfunctional, even those reared with a soft yo as a substitute did not develop normal social behaviour. They were the more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and they bred less often than is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at mating. As mothers some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases.
What is classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning involved learning to associate two stimuli together so we begin to respond to one the same way we respond to the other.
What is operant conditioning?
Operant conditioning involves learning to repeat behaviour, or not, depending on its consequences. The behaviour in reinforced.
What does monotropic mean?
A term sometimes used to describe Bowlbys’ theory. The mono means ‘one’ and indicated that one particular attachment to our primary caregiver is different from all others and of central importance to the child’s development.
