Attachment Flashcards

Question

Classical conditioning explanation of attachment

Answer 1

Food- UCS Pleasure- UCR Mother - NS Mother present when baby receives food, baby associates mother with food Mother -CS Pleasure -CR

Answer 2

Positive reinforcement: Baby understands mother’s presence brings a reward of food. Negative reinforcement: Baby realises that being with mother takes away negative feeling of hunger.

Answer 3

Strength: Behaviourist principles applied in this theory have long backed up controlled research like Pavlov or skinner. Therefore the assumptions made have valid support. Weakness: Harlow’s monkey study counters this theory saying we need comfort more than food Weakness: Reductionist, most parents would say their relationship with their child is far more complex than just feeding them.

Answer 4

1. Evolutionary explanation for attachment, arguing infants have an innate drive to stay in close proximity to and form a bond with their mother called monotropy, its vital to their survival. 2. Babies use signals (social releases) to attract caregivers attention and mothers are biologically programmed to instinctively find these behaviours cute or distressing. 3. Infants should use their mother as a safe base to explore their environment 4. Infants should display stranger anxiety. 5. Strong monotropic attachment should for in the first 30 months after birth (critical period) 6. Lack of monotropic results in permanant negative social etc consequences 7. Monotropic attachment forms a schema called an internal working model. Blueprint for future relationships

Answer 5

1. Bailey et al: 99 mothers remake the strange situation, found mothers attachment to their babies was the same as their own attachment to their mothers shows early child influence 2. Cultural variation, collectivist cultures 3. IWM is very deterministic ignores the free will and through therapy etc u can change it

Answer 6

1. Proximity to mother 2. Exploration/safe base 3. Stranger anxiety 4. Seperation anxiety 5. Reunion response 6. Sensitive responsiveness

Answer 7

Infants explore freely, not using their mother as a secure base. Low stranger anxiety and separation anxiety Mothers show low sensitive responsiveness

Answer 8

Mother- safe base Moderate stranger anxiety Show seperation anxiety Mother shows sensitive responsiveness

Answer 9

Infants are clingy have high stranger/seperation anxiety When caregivers return, infants display mixed emotions both craving and rejecting consoling. Mothers are inconsistent with sensitive responsiveness

Answer 10

Procedure: structured lab observation of mother and infants. 8 stages, mother leaves room, stranger enters etc. behaviours indicating attachment strength were recorded. Findings: 66% secure Research suggests secure attachment develops due to consistent sensitive responsiveness. Evidence for 2 attachment types seemed to correlate with the level of sensitive responsiveness shown by the mother

Answer 11

Weakness: Low ecological validity Weakness: not culturally generalisable Strength: Mcarthy found adults with secure romantic/platonic relationships were securely attached as children Strength: standardised procedure, clear behavioural categories, replicable and reliable

Answer 12

Conducted large meta analysis of 2000 infants in 32 studies from 8 countries whod done the strange situation. Found in general secure was the most common in all countries. Avoidant more common in individualist western cultures and resistant more in collectivist cultures. Germany most insecure avoidant and japan most insecure resistant Suggests secure is globally preferred and may have biological basis. Culture variations: German families encourage independent avoidant behaviour while Japanese mothers spend more time with infants in general so this is why their children may display more resistant reactions- but this is normal.

Answer 13

Strength: As the dominant attachment style was secure for all countries studied, this may be evidence for Bowlby’s theory that there is a biological, instinctive drive to parent in a way that produces secure attachments. Strength: metal analysis includes a large sample, unusual results have small effect on the overall results increases confidence

Answer 14

If the child’s monotropic attachment is disrupted during the critical period due to prolonged seperation from the mother this deprivation has negative and irreversible consequences

Answer 15

Delinquency: behaviour is often outside acceptable norms, such as committing petty crime. Affectionless psychopathy: children are unable to show caring behaviour to others or empathy for others feelings, little guilt Low IQ Continuity hypothesis: deprivation affects the infants internal working model leading to unsuccessful relationships.

Answer 16

44 child thieves and control group assessed for affection less psychopathy and maternal deprivation Found 14 thieves had affectionless psychopathy 12 maternal deprivation

Answer 17

Weakness: correlational research, deprivation & delinquency could be linked to a third factor like poverty or criminal relatives Weakness: Monotropy exaggerates the role of mother (alpha bias) underestimates role of father in socialisation Strength: Work on attachment has led to significant positive changes to child welfare, visiting time for mothers in hospitals, maternity leave

Answer 18

Privation: Total lack of care, no abilitiy to form an attachment bond Deprivation: Not recieveing suitable emotional care from a primary attachment figure due to frequent or extended absences of the caregiver

Answer 19

Conducted a longitudinal study on 165 Romanian orphans who lacked physical and emotional care from staff, many malnourished and abused. They were adopted by British families. Procedure: groups adopted under 6 months, 6 months - 2 yeas and older than 2. Each group assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 & 15

Answer 20

At age 6 overly friendly behaviour to strangers (disinhibited attachment) more common in children adopted after 2 years old. At 11, children adopted after 6 months showed delayed physical, emotional and intellectual development. Children adopted after 2 years had an average IQ of 77. In a small number of cases, quasi autism was found at the 15 years follow up.

Answer 21

Strength: Practical application to the research, changed policies around adoptions and care in orphanages Strength: Hopeful findings, study shows developmental harm may not be permanent and that there is a sensitive period where even though damage may be severe, later care can aid and address the issues.

Answer 22

Suggests our future relationships will follow a pattern based on their IWM.

Answer 23

That theyre a continuation of their infant attachment style Secure children will be more socially capable than insecure types.

Answer 24

Assessed childhood attachment type and ppts adult relationship styles. Found 56% secure looked for a balance between closeness and independence. Correlational between adult and child attachment types.

Answer 25

Weakness: attachment research is correlational, cannot establish cause and effect relationships between early childhood attachment & later adult relationship styles there may be another variable like poverty. Bailey et al: secure attachment in childhood with their mother so secure with their children.

Attachment Flashcards

(49 cards)