Attachment Alevel Psychology Flashcards
Reciprocity definition
Behaviour is mimicked by baby during an interaction (EX smiling back)
Feldman (2007) Reciprocity
Reciprocity can be seen since 3 months. Supported by Meltzoff + Moore (1997) babys as young as 12 days showed signs of reciprocity
Interactional synchrony
How parent’s speech and infant behaviour becoms synchronised. Feldman (2007) It sevres as a critical role in development and outcomes for a child.
Isabella and Belsky (1991)
Caregivers with secure attachment would have more signs of synchrony compared to those with insecure relationships.
Stages of attachment was made by…
Schaffer and Emerson
Stages of attachment (4)
Asocial stage (first few weeks)
Indiscriminate stage (6 weeks to 7 months)
Discriminate stage (7-9 months)
Multiple attachment (10 months onward)
Animal studies of attachment: Harlow
Used baby monkeys to study attachment. He wanted to see if they valued food or comfort and warmth more (plain wire monkey with food, other monkey in cloth with no food) and then measured how long the baby monkeys stayed with each mother.
Harlow animal study findings
Findings concluded that they only went for food when needed and stayed with cloth mother for comfort for the remaining time.) This can be seen as unethical due to not being necessary. The monkeys also suffered emotional harm, fear and depression. Later caused the monkey’s to be harmful parents.
Animal studies of attachment: Lorenz
Helped with imprinting theories. He divided up gosling eggs and half of them when hatched saw him as their first moving object. The time when first hatched (he believed) was the critical period which was when they would imprint on the first moving object. 12–17-hour critical period after hatching. Imprinting and attachment was then thought to be an innate feature in animals.
Learning theory of attachment
Classical conditioning = Mother can be associated with food as they are consistently there each time a baby is fed in the first few months. This is a neutral stimuli.
Once the neutral stimuli which in this context is the mother present while the child is eating is consistently associated with an unconditioned stimulus and will eventually produce the same response.
The mother then becomes a learned conditioned stimulus and produces a conditioned response. This then results in the mother once seen by the infant gives the child a sense of pleasure which is a conditioned response.
LT of attachment EVAL
Strength:
Scientific and realistic
Weakness:
Reductionist, Harlow did research on humans, how can this be generalised?
Bowlby’s monotropic theory of attachment
Attachment is important for survival, this was done through natural selection. Infants are biologically programmed with innate behaviours to make sure attachment occurs in a critical period (the period of time where an infant makes an attachment.)
MONOTROPY - one primary attachment (mother usually)
Attachment definition (psychology)
Attachment = deep and enduring emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness to each other.
Ainsworth’s strange situation (1970) method
Assessed quality of attachment. 8 stages.
AInsworth’s strange situation stages (8)
1 - Enter playroom
2 - child is encouraged to explore
3 - stranger enters and tries to interact with baby
4 - mother leaves, stranger stays
5 - mother comes back, stranger leaves
6 - mother leaves
7 - stranger returns
8 - mother returns and interacts with child
