Attachment Flashcards
(51 cards)
What is Attachment?
A strong emotional bond between two people that serves as a basis for emotional development.
What is Caregiver Infant Interactions?
From early, babies have meaningful social interactions with their caregivers that can effect social development.
What is Reciprocity?
When a behaviour is matched during interaction, babies have alert phases that signal interaction.
What is Interactional Synchrony?
Mirroring actions of another personal, mother and infants emotions and actions mirror each other.
What is the issue with Caregiver Infant Interactions?
Hard to know what’s exactly going on, GRATIER; found patterns however extremely difficult to be certain what is taking place; low validity.
What is Parent Infant Interaction?
Traditional parent infant care.
What is the study of the role of the father?
Found quality of father play did have an influence, so mothers and fathers both have an important role to play, one of nurturing and one of stimulation.
What was SCHAFFERS study for the Stages of Attachment?
Investigated age of which attachments formed/developed and emotional intensity.
How did SCHAFFER carry out the study?
Studied 60 infants, were visited every month for a year, asked questions to measure infants attachment.
What did SCHAFFER find?
50% infants showed separation anxiety towards a carer (usually mum) and showed a specific attachment to an individual that was most INTERACTIVE and SENSITIVE to the infant.
What were pros and cons about SCHAFFERS study?
PROS;
• High external validity - studied in natural environment.
• High internal validity - longitudinal, less inv. differences
CONS;
• Low external validity - all in Glasgow, can’t generalize.
What are the Stages of Attachment?
1; ASOCIAL (FIRST FEW WEEKS) -
• babies don’t discriminate between adults
2. INDISCRIMINATE (2-7 MONTHS)
• Prefer familiar adults; stranger & separation anxiety
3. SPECIFIC (7 MONTHS)
• Form attachment with person who interacts most, separation anxiety when not with this person.
4. MULTIPLE (AFTER 7 MONTHS)
• Forms secondary attachment.
What are Cons about the Stages of Attachment?
• Ethnocentric - based just on individualistic cultures not in collectivists.
What are the two Animal Studies of Attachment?
Lorenz’ Geese & Harlow’s Monkeys.
What was Lorenz’s Study?
Attachment is innate and helps us survive.
He studied IMPRINTING - geese imprint on first moving object. 2 Conditions:
• First thing geese saw was Lorenz
• First thing geese saw was mother.
What did Lorenz find?
Geese who saw Lorenz first imprinted on him and found critical period for geese was just a few hours.
What is Sexual Imprinting?
Animals that imprinted on humans would mate their mating displays on humans.
What was wrong with Lorenz’s study?
• Can’t generalize findings as he only studied geese which have diff. formations of attachment.
What was Harlow’s Study?
Put monkeys in cage with 2 conditions; he wanted to find out if they would be drawn to food or comfort.
• ‘Wire-mesh mother’
• ‘Cloth covered mother’
What did Harlow find?
Monkeys preferred ‘cloth covered mother’ and found CONTACT COMFORT is most important in attachment formation, early infant interaction is crucial for development and the critical period for monkeys was 90 days.
What is the Learning Theory for explaining attachment?
Attachments are developed through classical & operant conditioning.
What is Classical Conditioning?
Learning through association
How does Classical Conditioning work?
E.G. baby forms an attachment between mother (neutral stimulus) and feeling of pleasure of being fed (unconditioned stimulus). They associate mother with the pleasure and mother becomes pleasure stimulus.
What is Operant Conditioning?
Learning how to behave based on consequences.
