Attachment Flashcards
Brief outline of Caregiver-Infant interactions?
- Early age, babies have meaningful interactions with their carers.
- It’s believed these interactions have important functions for the child’s social development, in particular for the development of caregiver-infant attachment.
Intro - What is reciprocity?
- From birth, babies and mothers spend a lot of time in intense and pleasurable interaction.
- Babies have periodic ‘alert phases’ and signal for interaction.
- 2 thirds of the time, mothers pick up on this and respond.
- From 3 months, this interaction becomes increasingly frequent, close attention to each other’s verbal signals and facial expressions.
- Reciprocal interactions are when each person responds to the other and elicits a response.
Intro - Traditional view and how it’s changed?
Traditional view has seen the baby take a passive role, however it seems that the baby takes an active role. Both mother and baby can initiate interaction as a ‘dance’.
Intro - A03 (Validity)?
- Advantage - high internal validity, especially when compared to observational research with subjects aware they’re being observed. E.g. Babies don’t change behaviour due to knowing they’re under observation.
- Additionally, observations well-controlled , with both mother and infant filmed from multiple angles.
- Advantage as it ensures detailed recordings on behaviour can be later analysed.
KEY STUDY - Schaffer and Emerson - Method?
7 points
1) 60 babies, 31 male and 29 female.
2) All from Glasgow
3) Majority from skilled working-class families.
4) Babies and mothers visited at home every month for the first year, then again at 18 months.
5) Mothers asked questions about the kind of protests their babies showed in 7 everyday separations e.g.adult leaving room (separation anxiety).
6) Designed to measure infant’s attachment.
7) Also assessed stranger anxiety.
KEY STUDY - Schaffer and Emerson - A03, Advantage (external validity)? (4 points)
1) Advantage - Carried out in families own homes. 2) Most observation done by parents during ordinary activities and later reported.
3) Behaviour of babies unlikely to be affected by researcher presence.
4) Excellent chance of natural behaviours, high external validity.
KEY STUDY - Schaffer and Emerson - A03, Strength (longitudinal)? (3 points)
1) Strength - carried out longitudinally, meaning same children could be used.
2) Advantage over quicker cross-sectional design, which would have observed different children, as there’s no confounding individual differences between PPTs.
3) Suggests findings are valid as there’s no individual differences.
KEY STUDY - Schaffer and Emerson - A03, Advantage/limitation (sample size/social class)?
(4 points)
1) Advantage, large sample size of 60 babies means large volume of data
2) However, all families from the same district and social class in the same city over 50 years ago.
3) Limitation as it’s difficult to generalise findings, as child-rearing varies from one culture to another and one historical period to another.
4) Results don’t generalise well to other social and historical contexts.
Stages of Attachment - 4 stages of attachment development?
1 - Asocial stage
2 - Indiscriminate attachment
3 - Specific attachment
4 - Multiple attachments
Stages of Attachment - Outline the Asocial stage
4 points
Asocial stage (first few weeks)
1) Not really an asocial stage as the baby is recognising and forming bonds with its carers.
2) However, behaviour to non-human objects quite similar.
3) Show preference for familiar adults, those adults find it easier to calm them.
4) Happier in presence of other humans.
Stages of Attachment - Outline the Indiscriminate attachment stage (5 points)
Indiscriminate attachment stage
1) 2-7 months babies display more observable social behaviour.
2) Show preference for people rather than objects.
3) Recognise and prefer familiar adults.
4) Usually accept comfort from any adult, and don’t usually show separation anxiety or stranger anxiety.
5) Attachment indiscriminate, not different towards anyone.
Stages of Attachment - Outline the Specific attachment stage (3 points)
Specific attachment stage
1) From 7 months, begin to show stranger anxiety and separation anxiety (biological mother in 65% of cases).
2) Formed a specific attachment with adult, who is termed the primary attachment figure.
3) Primary attachment figure the adult who offers the most interaction and has the most skill responding to babies signals.
Stages of Attachment - Outline the Multiple attachments stage (4 points)
Multiple attachments stage
1) Shortly after formation of specific attachment, attachment behaviour usually extends to multiple adults (with whom they regularly spend time).
2) Called secondary attachments.
3) In Schaffer and Emerson’s study, 29% had secondary attachments within a month of forming primary attachment.
4) Formed by the age of 1.
Stages of Attachment - A03 (Limited behaviour)?
3 points
Methodological problem
1) Babies have poor co-ordination and are pretty much immobile in first few weeks.
2) Difficult to make judgements based on observations of limited behaviour.
3) Therefore, we can’t be confident that child’s feelings and cognitions aren’t highly social, as we’re limited in methods to assess such sociability.
Stages of Attachment - A03 (Conflicting evidence)?
4 points
Limitation
1) Conflicting evidence on when multiple attachments develop.
2) Bowlby indicates most babies form attachment to specific carer before being capable of developing multiple attachments.
3) However, other psychologists, particularly those who work in cultural contexts where multiple caregivers are the norm, believe babies form multiple attachments from the onset. (Van Ijzendoorn et al, 1993)
4) Makes it difficult to argue Schaffer’s stages are universal across all cultures, questioning its cross-cultural validity.
Stages of Attachment - A03 (How multiple attachment is assessed)?
(4 points)
Problem
1) Problem with how multiple attachment is assessed.
2) Schaffer suggests valid measure of true attachment figure is if the baby becomes distressed when an individual leaves the room.
3) However, Bowlby (1969) pointed out the distressed response children have when a playmate leaves the room, but this does not signify attachment.
4) Doesn’t leave us with a way to distinguish between behaviour towards secondary attachment figures and playmates.
Attachment figures - What are the 3 aspects?
1) Parent-infant attachment
2) The role of the father
3) Fathers as primary carers
Attachment figures - Parent-infant attachment outline?
4 points
1) Traditionally thought in terms of mother-infant attachment.
2) Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found majority of babies became attached to mother first, after 7 months, and within a few weeks/months formed secondary attachments.
3) 75% of infants formed an attachment with the father by 18 months
4) Determined by infant protest when father walked away.
Attachment figures - The role of the Father outline?
4 points
1) Grossman (2002) - longitudinal study on parents’ behaviour and its relationship with the quality of children’s attachment into their teens.
2) Quality of infant attachment with mothers, not fathers, related to attachment into adolescence.
3) Suggests father is less important.
4) However, the quality of father’s play related to attachment into adolescence, suggesting the father has a different role in attachment (more to do with play and stimulation than nurturing)
Attachment figures - Fathers as primary carers outline?
5 points
1) Evidence to suggests when fathers take role of main care-giver they adopt behaviours more typical of mothers.
2) Field (1978) filmed 4 month old babies in face to face interaction with primary care giver mothers, secondary care givers fathers and primary care giver fathers.
3) Primary care giver fathers, like mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding the infant than secondary care giver fathers.
4) Seems that fathers can be the more nurturing attachment figure.
5) The key to the attachment relationship in the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent.
Attachment figures - A03 (role of the father)?
4 points
Problem
1) Different researchers interested in different research questions comparisons have created confusion on the distinct role the father plays in the attachment process.
2) Some psychologists interested in role of fathers as secondary attachment figures, others interested in role as primary attachment figure.
3) Former sees fathers as having different role from mothers, the latter sees fathers as being capable of taking ‘maternal’ role.
4) Role of father remains unclear.
Attachment figures - A03 (single and same sex parent families)?
(3 points)
Problem
1) Role and importance of father as secondary attachment figure unclear
2) Grossman’s findings suggest secondary role of father important in child development, however other studies have found children in single and same sex parent families don’t develop differently.
3) Therefore, the role of the father and its importance remains unclear.
Attachment figures - A03 (Traditional gender roles?)
2 points
Problem
1) It’s unclear whether Fathers tend not to become the primary attachment figure as they are simply following traditional gender roles.
2) However, it could be that female hormones (e.g. oestrogen) create higher levels of nurturing, meaning women are biologically pre-disposed to be the primary attachment figure.
Name the two animal studies of attachment…
1) Lorenz’s goose experiment
2) Harlow’s monkey study
Animal Studies of Attachment - Lorenz, outline the A01
5 points
1) Randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs, half hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment, half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
2) Incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere, whereas the control group followed their mother.
3) Even after marking the two different groups and mixing them up, they immediately divided themselves to follow their different ‘mothers’.
4) This became known as imprinting, where bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see.
5) Lorenz identified a critical period, depending on the species of bird, that can be as brief as a few hours. (If imprinting doe not occur in this time, the chicks did not attach to a Mother figure)
Animal Studies of Attachment - Lorenz, 2 key features of imprinting?
1) Critical period - Imprinting only possible a few hours after hatching.
2) Irreversible - The bird will remain imprinted to same creature for entire lifetime.
Why is the use of ‘critical period’ criticised?
Imprinting is less likely to occur outside this time frame, however it is still possible, just not as easily. Suggested that ‘sensitive period’ would more accurately describe this time period
Animal Studies of Attachment - Lorenz - A03 (Generalising)
4 points
Problem
1) Problem generalising findings on birds to human behaviour, as it seems mammalian attachment system is different to that of birds.
2) Means conclusive findings of Lorenz can’t be generalised, meaning low ecological validity.
3) For example, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young and are able to form attachments at any time.
4) Means it is not appropriate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas to humans.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Lorenz - A03 (Guiton - chicken mating)?
(3 points)
Problem
1) Researchers have questioned Lorenz’s conclusions, e.g. that imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour.
2) Guiton et al (1966) - Found that chickens imprinted on washing up gloves would try to mate with them as adults, but with experience eventually learned to prefer other chickens.
3) Suggests influence of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - Aim?
Harlow called his research project ‘The Orgins of Love’. He sought to demonstrate that mother love/comfort was not based on the feeding bond between mother and infant, as predicted by learning theory.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - Procedure? (7 points)
1) Studied 8 new-born rhesus monkeys for 165 days.
2) Separated from mother at birth and reared in cages in isolation until they were 8 months old.
3) 2 surrogate mothers placed in each cage, 1 made of wire and the other made of a wooden block covered with cloth.
4) Harlow attempted to show that attachment develops as a result of ‘tactile comfort’, suggesting an innate need to touch and cling to something for emotional comfort.
5) The mothers had a heating element attached to provide warmth, and an attachment to hold a feeding bottle to supply milk.
6) Each baby placed in the cage with both surrogate mothers, 4 had the bottle attached to the wire mother and the other 4 had the bottle attached to the cloth mother.
7) Harlow measured the amount of time the babies spent clinging to each mother and the amount of time they would cry for when either mother was removed.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - Findings/conclusion?
Found clear preference for the cloth mother. When the feeding bottle was attached to the wire mother, the infant monkeys would visit the wire monkey, feed, and then return to the cloth monkey immediately.
According to learning theory, the young monkeys should have become attached to the lactating mother who offered reduction of the hunger drive.
However, the monkeys spent the most time with the cloth mother and would cling to it., especially when frightened.
On average, they spent 18 hours a day cuddling with the cloth mother and 2 hours with the wire mother.
This shows that contact comfort is more important to the baby monkeys than the food, undermining the learning theory explanation of attachment.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - Maternally deprived monkeys as adults?
Harlow also followed the monkeys that had been deprived of a real mother into adulthood to see if this early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
Severe consequences were found, with the monkeys reared with a wire monkey the most dysfunctional, however monkeys reared with the cloth mother didn’t develop normal social behaviour. They were aggressive and less sociable that other monkeys, and bred less often than is typical. As mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - Maternally deprived monkeys as adults, Conclusion?
Harlow concluded there was a critical period for this behaviour. A mother had to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time, attachment was impossible and the damage of early deprivation became irreversible.
Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - A03 (ethical concerns)? (6 points)
1) Unnecessarily cruel, raising serious ethical concerns.
2) Example, clear that monkeys in this study suffered emotional harm from being raised in isolation.
3) Evident when placed with a normal monkey, they sat huddled in a corner in a state of persistent fear and depression.
4) Also, created state of anxiety in females that had implications once they became parents.
5) They became so neurotic that they smashed their infant’s face into the floor and rubbed it back and forth.
6) Suggests Harlow’s study was ethically inappropriate and alternative methods should have been used, despite the importance of the findings.
Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - A03 (Benefits outweigh costs)?
(4 points)
1) Some argue the benefits of Harlow’s research outweigh the costs, the costs being the rights of the monkeys to avoid pain and suffering.
2) Harlow showed attachment doesn’t develop as a result of being fed but by contact comfort, which has practical benefits when combined with Bowlby’s theory of monotropy, which was inspired by Harlow’s research.
3) Has led to improvements in emotional care in hospitals, children’s homes and day care centres.
4) These real world benefits offer external validity to Harlow’s research.
Harlow’s Monkey Study (1958) - A03 (NHA to Humans)?
4 points
1) Problem with generalisation from NHA to Humans
2) Some of the apparent genetic similarities across species are still problematic i.e. they are less sophisticated.
3) Toates (2012) - Argues that a small difference in DNA (1.2% difference) can make a huge difference, such as the size of the human brain being 3x that of a chimpanzee.
4) Therefore, we can’t assume the same behavioural characteristics are shared between human babies and Harlow’s macaques.
Brief outline of the ‘Learning Theory Explanation of Attachment’?
Based upon the idea that attachments are learnt through conditioning and reinforcement. The concept that attachments may be based on instincts or some special relationship between a mother and child are considered false or inconsequential.
Name the 2 types of conditioning involved in the Learning Theory…
1) Classical conditioning
2) Operant conditioning
What is Classical conditioning? (5 points)
1) Suggests attachment takes place though association.
2) Unconditioned stimulus of food produces unconditioned response of pleasure.
3) Person who feeds the child (neutral stimulus) becomes associated with the UCS (food), producing the UCR (pleasure).
4) Repetition of this process means the association remains with that person, even when they have no food.
5) They’ve been conditioned to respond to this person with pleasure.
What is Operant conditioning? (4 points)
1) Dollard and Miller (1959) proposed that attachment between PCG and child is die to a drive reduction approach.
2) This means the drive to reduce discomfort stemming from lack of food, as the provision of food reduces this state and is therefore rewarding.
3) As the PCG provides this pleasure, they become associated with with reducing discomfort and becomes the secondary reinforce.
4) Attachment then takes place as the child seeks the same pleasure response.
Learning Theory Explanation of Attachment - A03 (Harlow monkey study) ? (3 points)
1) Weakness - emphasis on the role of food
2) Contradicting evidence from Harlow (1959), found from monkey study that when distressed they would seek comfort and security from cloth monkey rather than wire monkey that could supply food.
3) Findings contradict learning explanation.
Learning Theory Explanation of Attachment - A03 (reductionist)? (4 points)
1) Problem - reductionist
2) Issue as it reduces complexities of attachment process to overly simple ideas, such as stimulus response approach, and then uses it as a building block to explain complex behaviour.
3) Kagan - supports criticism, highlights important role personality can play in how a PCG responds to the needs of the child. Some children are ‘difficult’, making attachment process challenging for PCG.
4) Challenges simplistic + reductionist nature of learning explanation of attachment.
Learning Theory Explanation of Attachment - A03 (Schaffer and Emerson, 1964 - support/criticism)?
(4 points)
1) Support from Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - Supported role of reinforcement and assertion as explanations of attachment after observing 60 babies and finding most created attachment to person that was most responsive with highest frequency of interactions.
2) Supports role for reinforcement and association processes.
3) However - Contradictory evidence, fewer than 1/2 the infants formed attachment to person that fed or changed them. Most formed attachment to biological mother, even though other carers did most of the feeding.
4) Supports the innateness of attachment rather than learning processes like drive reduction.
Bowlby’s Theory of Monotropy - Brief outline?
Evolutionary theory means that the behaviour shown by the infant and the primary care-giver reflect our innate drive for survival and reproduction.
What are the 3 components of Bowlby’s Theory of Monotropy?
1) Monotropy
2) The Critical Period and Social Releasers
3) Internal Working Model
What is monotropy?
The child has one caregiver i.e primary (PCG) - referred to as monotropy.
Components of Monotropy? (7 points)
1) Bowlby placed emphasis on a child’s attachment to 1 particular care giver, and that this attachment is different and more important.
2) Suggested ‘mother’ most likely to take this role, but it didn’t need to be the biological mother.
3) 2 principles
A) - Law of continuity stated that the more constant and predictable a child’s care, the better the quality of their attachment.
B) - Law of accumulated separation stated that the effects of every separation from monotropy figure add up, therefore zero separation is ideal for secure attachments.
4) Attachments act as secure base where child can explore the world and return when feeling threatened. Develops cognitive skills + independence of child.
5) Bowlby believed sensitive repetitiveness was the key e.g. baby becomes most attached with person who responds most sensitively to the child’s social releases. They become PCG.
6) Secondary CG’s help the child develop social skills.
7) Monotropy characterised by a hierarchy of relationships with PCG at top.