Attachment Flashcards
What is interactional synchrony?
When two people mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and bodily movements. This includes imitating emotions as well as behaviour.
What is reciprocity?
Responding to the action of another with an action, where the actions of one partner elicit a response from the other partner.
The responses are not necessarily similar as in interactional synchrony.
What is the difference between interactional synchrony and reciprocity?
IS is two people being in tune, while reciprocity is turn taking.
What are the strengths of Meltzoff and Moore’s caregiver-infant interactions study?
- Infants made little response to inanimate objects which were intended to simulate tongue/mouth movements, which suggests that they were initially making a specific social response to other humans
- It provides an explanation for how infants begin to acquire an understanding of what other people are thinking and feeling, and thus are able to conduct relationships
What are the weaknesses of Meltzoff and Moore’s caregiver-infant interactions study?
- Infants’ mouths are in fairly constant motion, so it is difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours
- There is variation between infants; a more securely attached child may show greater interactional synchrony
What did Meltzoff and Moore believe about the infants’ behavioural responses?
That they are innate
What are the stages of attachment?
- Indiscriminate attachment
- The beginnings of attachment
- Discriminate attachment
- Multiple attachments
Who came up with the stages of attachment, and what research did they conduct?
Schaffer and Emerson conducted a longitudinal study of 60 babies from Glasgow.
The children were studied in their homes monthly for the first 18 months of their lives
Who discovered the theory of sensitive responsiveness? What is it?
Schaffer and Emerson discovered that attachments were most likely to form with carers who were sensitive to the baby’s signals, rather than the person they spent the most time with
Describe the first stage of attachment
Indiscriminate attachment
Birth - 2 months old
Infants react to any animate or inanimate objects. IS and reciprocity are key interactions to change that.
Describe the second stage of attachment
The beginnings of attachment
Around 4 months
Infants become more social and prefer human company to inanimate objects. They can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people, but they do not yet show stranger anxiety.
Describe the third stage of attachment
Discriminate attachment
By 7 months
Infants show preference for a main figure they are attached to, experience separation anxiety with them and joy at reunion.
Describe the fourth stage of attachment
Multiple attachments
By 18 months
Infants develop a wider circle of secondary attachments eg. father, siblings. Infants also display separation anxiety in these relationships.
What are the weaknesses of Schaffer and Emerson’s attachment study?
- The stages suggest that development is rather inflexible, so a child would be classed as abnormal if they did not follow the pattern. However, infants have individual differences and in some cultures multiple attachments may come first
- The sample was biased; it was from a working-class population in the 1960s. Parental care has changed considerably since then, so you could not apply the same rules. If this study was conducted today, the findings might be different
Are fathers necessary? Why are they usually the secondary attachment figure?
They are often the secondary attachment figures because the female hormone oestrogen underlies caring behaviour, so women are generally more inclined to form a strong bond with a child.
However, research has consistently highlighted that fathers are often more playful and good at providing challenging situations for their children, which gives them a different role. Also, it may be that a lack of sensitivity from fathers fosters problem-solving and makes greater cognitive demands on children.
What did Lorenz research and what did it show?
Lorenz studied imprinting in goslings.
He took some eggs and divided them into 2 groups; one remained with their mother, and the other in an incubator next to him.
He found that the goslings took no notice of their natural mother and imprinted on him, and that there was a critical period of 2 days; if they did not see a moving object in this time, they would not imprint.
He noted that the effects of imprinting were irreversible and long lasting.
What did Harlow research and what did it show?
Harlow studied 8 infant monkeys; for 4, the milk bottle was on the wire mum, and for 4, it was on the cloth mum.
He found that all 8 monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth mum whether or not the milk bottle was on it.
These findings suggest that infants do not develop an attachment to the person who feeds them but to the person offering comfort.
What were the long-lasting effects of Harlow’s study?
the motherless monkeys developed abnormally, both socially and sexually. they could not interact with other monkeys or show normal mating behaviour/cradle their own babies.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Lorenz’s research?
+ there is research support for imprinting; Guiton demonstrated that leghorn chicks exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding them during their first few weeks became imprinted on the gloves
- it is now understood that imprinting is not so irreversible- it is a more ‘plastic and forgiving mechanism’. Guiton also found that it is fairly reversible.
What are the weaknesses of Harlow’s research?
- There was a confounding variable; the two heads of the mums were different, so the infant monkeys may have preferred the cloth mum because it had a more attractive head. This means the research lacks internal validity
- You cannot generalise animal behaviour to human behaviour
- Morally/ethically wrong; there was long lasting harmful effects on the monkeys
What does learning theory suggest? What does this contrast with?
That attachment is based on provision of food alone.
This contrasts with Bowlby’s later theory of attachment; he suggested that it was formed more due to the provision of emotional security.
What is classical conditioning? Who studied it?
Where a carer feeds a baby enough times for the infant to come to associate the pleasure that feeding brings with the carer. Food goes from an unconditioned stimulus to a conditioned stimulus, and the pleasure is a conditioned response.
Pavlov
What is operant conditioning? Who studied it?
Infants feel a drive to reduce the discomfort felt when hungry, so they feel pleasure when fed (negative reinforcement). Hence, the food becomes a primary reinforcer because it supplies the reward.
Attachment occurs because the child seeks the person who can supply the reward.
Skinner
