Describe and evaluate research into caregiver-infant interactions
AO1
• Reciprocity- description of how two people interact. Interaction flows both ways between adult and infant, the adult attends sensitively to the infant’s communications
• Social releases- how one signals and the other responds
• Interactional synchrony- adults and babies respond to sustain communication, infant mimics adult’s behaviour
• Meltzoff and Moore, beginnings of interactional synchrony on infants as young as 2 weeks, adults displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three gestures, association between the baby’s and the adult’s expressions or gestures was found
AO3
• + Still face experiment, Tronick- mother interacts with the baby and then turns away and has a still face, baby becomes distressed due to lack of response. Mother interacts with the baby when it becomes distressed, child begins to look away and loses attachment
• - Subjective data- can be misinterpreted as the baby may have been crying because it was hungry
• + Isabella et al- higher levels of synchrony is associated with better quality of mother and infant attachment
• - Koepke failed to replicate Meltzoff and Moore’s study, giving it a low reliability
AO1
• Role of father, Grossman- longitudinal study about relationship of both parents with the baby, father’s role was for play and stimulation
AO3
• - MacCullum and Golombole found children growing up in single parent or same-sex families didn’t develop differently to other children, suggesting father’s role as secondary attachment isn’t important
• - Inconsistent findings as different researchers are interested in different research questions: Studies looking at the father as secondary attachment- father has a different role from mother, Studies looking at the father as primary attachment- father can take on maternal role
Describe and evaluate Schaffer’s stages of attachment
AO1
• Asocial- baby’s behaviour towards humans and inanimate objects is similar, first few weeks
• Indiscriminate- preference for people over inanimate objects, little preference between people, 2-7 months
• Specific- anxiety when separated from a particular person who offers most interaction and response, 7 months
• Multiple- attachment extends to multiple other adults, 29% of babies within a month of specific, almost all babies by 1 year old
• Schaffer and Emerson- 60 working class Glasgow families visited every month for a year and then at 18 months, asked questions measuring separation and anxiety.
• 50% of babies showed separation anxiety between 25 and 32 weeks, 80% showed specific attachment by 40 weeks, 30% showed multiple attachment, matching stages of attachment
AO3
• - 60 is a small sample number, low population validity, all working class from the same area
• + Good ecological validity as they were in their own homes
• - Social desirability bias, parents may change answers to seem better
• - Van Ijzendoorn believes babies form multiple attachments as their first stage. Collectivist cultures such as Fiji share responsibility of raising children so the baby had more opportunity to develop multiple attachments
• - Bowlby says that babies form one main attachment before they are able to develop more attachments
Describe and evaluate animal studies of attachment
AO1-Lorenz
• Imprinting- when a baby recognises another object/person as its parent
• Goose eggs were split into two different groups, half were hatched with their mother, half with Lorenz
• Incubator group followed Lorenz, the other group followed the mother, even when the groups were mixed
• Critical period is the time after birth that the animal needs to make an attachment within
AO3
• - Low generalisability, animal findings cannot be applied to humans
• + Approaches argument (will learn later), behaviourism, all learn and behave in the same way
AO1
• Harlow reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire mothers, one made of cloth and one that dispenses milk
• Babies cuddled the soft object for 23 hours and food for 1 hour, and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened. Comfort was more important that food
AO3
• - Monkeys were less than 90 days old when taken from their mothers, should have been immediately reunited with them
• - Harlow called the wire monkeys “Iron Maidens” after medieval torture devices
• + Could encourage social workers to focus on comfort and look at the critical period
Describe and evaluate learning theory as an explanation of attachment
AO1
• Classical conditioning- involves learning to associate two stimuli together so that we begin to respond to one in the same way as the other
Unconditioned stimulus Unconditioned response Food
Neutral stimulus No response Mother
Unconditioned and neutral stimuli Unconditioned response Food and mother
Conditioned stimulus Conditioned response Mother
• Operant conditioning- food satisfies a child’s hunger and makes them feel comfortable again (drive reduction)
• Food is a primary reinforce, mother is a secondary reinforce, therefore an attachment to a mother becomes a source of reward
AO3
• - Problem with generalisability from findings of animals to humans (Pavlov’s dog)
• + Behaviouralist psychologist (Pavlov), dog salivating is the same as human attachment, both learning processes
• - Harlow rejects this, due to more time spent with comfort than with food
• - Schaffer and Emerson say more time spent with the child makes attachment
• + Has more face validity than Bowlby’s theory of monotropic attachment, stimuli make more sense
Describe and evaluate Bowlby’s monotropic theory of attachment
AO1
• Monotropy- babies have one main attachment figure (primary attachment figure), usually the mother
• Social releases- babies are born with innate behaviours which draw attention, called social releases, such as crying
• Critical period- time in which a baby must make an attachment or they won’t, Bowlby said 2 years, others say 5 years
• Continuity hypothesis- attachment with no separations leads to a better quality of attachment
AO3
• - Schaffer and Emerson’s study, multiple attachments
• - Temporal validity, mothers may not necessarily be the main attachment in modern day
• + Tronick supported social releases
AO1
• Internal working model- babies learn how to have relationships based on their first monotropic relationship
AO3
• + Bailey assessed 99 mothers with one year old babies on quality of attachment to their own mothers using standard interview procedure, and observed attachment of the babies to the mother. They found poor attachment in both relationships if one was poor
• - Child’s temperament may have more of an effect on later social behaviour, rather than their attachments
Describe and evaluate the Strange Situation
AO1
• Aspects measured were: proximity seeking (stay close to caregiver), secure base (happy to explore), stranger anxiety (scared), separation anxiety (sad when caregiver leaves) response to union (wants to go back to caregiver)
1. Child and parent enter an unfamiliar playroom
2. Child encouraged to explore
3. Stranger comes in and tries to interact with the child
4. Caregiver leaves child and stranger together
5. Caregiver returns and stranger leaves
6. Caregiver leaves child alone
7. Stranger returns
8. Caregiver returns and is reunited with the child
Secure: 60-75%, Moderate separation anxiety Moderate stranger anxiety, Accept comfort upon reunion
Insecure-avoidant: 20-25%, Little separation anxiety, Little stranger anxiety, Little contact and no emotion upon reunion
Insecure-resistant: 3%, Huge separation anxiety, Huge stranger anxiety, Resist comfort upon reunion
AO3
• - Main and Solomon found some children fell into disorganised attachment, a mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours, strange situation didn’t cover all types
• - Observational design- overt, non-participant, experimenter bias
• + High inter-rater reliability, Bick found that 94% of observers agreed on attachment classification
• - Attachment is created through mother’s reaction to the baby, and temperament of the child, which is a confounding variable (Ainsworth’s belief)
• - Takahashi- Japanese babies are rarely separated from mothers so anxiety was high, attachment depends on culture and upbringing, test needs to be changed as results can’t be applied to all cultures
Describe and evaluate research into cultural variations in attachment
AO1- Van Ijzendorn and Kroonenberg
• Located 32 studies of attachment and strange situation in 8 different countries, 15 from the USA
• Highest secure- Britain, 75%. Highest avoidant- Germany, 35%. Highest resistant- Israel, 28%
• Interesting finding was that variation within countries was 150% greater than between countries
AO3
• + Large sample, more generalisability due to higher population validity, reduces anomalous results effect
• - Attachment measured between countries, not cultures, comparisons have little meaning as there are subcultures within countries
• - Imposed etic- within meta-analysis they used the American designed strange situation which can’t be applied to all cultures. In Germany, a lack of pleasure on reunion is classed as independence rather than avoidance, procedures need to be adapted
• + Jin et al- used strange situation to assess attachment in Korea, overall proportions were similar of insecure and secure, but more were resistant and only one was avoidant, showing there are cultural differences
• + Temporal validity- Jin was in 2012, very recent
• + Takahashi- cultural differences
Describe and evaluate Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation
AO1
• All children need continuous care from their mother to have “normal development”, disruption to relationship leads to abnormal development (damage to the child’s emotional and intellectual development)
• Critical period- time in which a baby must make an attachment or they won’t, Bowlby said 2 years, others say 5 years
• 44 criminal teenagers accused of stealing were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathology, families were interviewed to look for prolonged early separation. A control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people was used as well
• 14 of the 44 could be affectionless psychopaths, and 12 of these had experienced prolonged separation, so prolonged early separation caused affectionless psychopathy
AO3
• - Experimenter bias, Bowlby investigated his own theory, conclusion is dubious, questions in interviews may have been biased
• - Confounding variables- orphaned children in WW2 were studied, other factors such as emotional harm from the war
• - Lewis replicated it on a scale of 500 people and found separation wasn’t a cause of criminality of difficulty in forming close relationships, Bowlby lacks reliability
• - Koluchova- twin boys deprived of maternal care for 7 years and the looked after by two loving parents, fully recovered with normal social and intellectual developments as they made attachments with each other
• + Goldfarb followed 30 orphaned children aged 12, 6 fostered by the age of 4 months (before critical period). Foster group’s IQ was 96, orphanage group’s IQ was 68
Describe and evaluate research into institutionalisation
AO1- Rutter’s Romanian orphans
• Institutionalisation- a care facility
• 165 orphans adopted in Britain, physical, cognitive and emotional development was tested at ages 4, 6, 11, and 15, and compared to 52 British children
• IQ when adopted before 6 months was 102, from 6 months to 2 years was 86, after two years was 77
• Attachment type is adopted after 6 months was disinhibited attachment (no distinction between strangers and people that they know)
AO3
• + Extraneous variables weren’t as prevalent as many other studies focused on orphans who had experienced a loss or trauma, so the effect of the institution may have mixed with the trauma, but Rutter’s has high internal validity
• - Romanian orphanage was lacking in intellectual stimulation and had a poor standard of care, not like modern orphanages so lacks generalisability
• + Can help develop modern orphanages, emotional- key worker for set of children, intellectual- stimulation, toys and learning
• + Bucharest early intervention project- 95 children who had spent most of their lives in institutions had attachment measured using strange situation, 44% had disinhibited attachment, agrees with Rutter about attachment type
• - Bucharest participants were randomly allocated to institutional care or fostering, Rutter’s weren’t, so more sociable children may have been adopted first, leading to confounding variables
Describe and evaluate research into the influence of attachment on childhood and adult relationships
AO1
• Internal working model- babies learn how to have relationships based on their first monotropic relationship
• Analysed 620 love quiz responses printed in an American newspaper, first section assessed current/most important relationship, second assessed general important relationships
• 56% secure, 25% avoidant, 19 % resistant, secure attachments are more likely to have good and longer lasting relationships, avoidant may have jealousy and fear of intimacy, resistant may be clingy and needy
• Peer relationships- bullying: secure isn’t involved due to security in their relationships, avoidant is the victim as they don’t know how to make relationships, resistant is the bully, may be jealous of someone else’s relationship
AO3
• - Most studies of attachment use an interview to assess what attachment type you have as a child, causing social desirability bias to make your relationships seem better
• - Zimmerman found little similarity in infant attachment type and adolescent attachment type, meaning future attachment isn’t necessarily the same, creating different relationships
• - Association not causation, child’s temperament may be a contributing factor
• + Baliey’s study
• - Internal working models are unconscious, but self-report techniques rely on conscious awareness, so people’s evidence of relationships isn’t necessarily accurate
