Influence Of Early Attachment

Question 1

Internal working model

Answer 1

Early attachments provides a blueprint for future attachments. Infant learns about relationships from experience, forms a schema from early attachment.

Question 2

Good attachment

Answer 2

• more likely to have secure, loving relationships (secure attachment)

Question 3

Bad attachment

Answer 3

• the child brings bad experience to a later relationship, they may struggle to even make relationships (insecure resistant or avoidant).

Question 4

Childhood: link to bullying

Answer 4

Securely attached babies go on to make quality friends (less likely to be involved in bullying) Insecure-avoidant are likely to be bullied
Insecure-resistant are likely to be bullies

Question 5

Adulthood: link to parenthood and romantic relationships

Answer 5

Blueprint for parenting styles and future romantic relationships. The majority of mothers have the same attachment type as their mothers.

Question 6

Procedure: love quiz

Answer 6

• love quiz to assess attachments type, pick 1 of 3 options, assessing current and past attachments.
• 620 responses were analysed, 205 men and 415 women.

Question 7

Findings and conclusions

Answer 7

• 56% secure
• 25% insecure avoidant
• 19% insecure resistant

Question 8

+ strong research support (ao3)

Answer 8

• many studies show a link between infant attachment type and later development.
• disorganised attachment was most predictive e.g of later mental disorder.
• This means that insecure attachment appears to convey a disadvantage for children’s development.

Question 9

— not all evidence supports the link (ao3)

Answer 9

For example the Regensburg longitudinal study (Becker-Stoll et al. 2008) found no evidence of continuity of attachment type from age 1 to 16 years.
This means that it is not clear how strongly attachment influences later development.

Question 10

— confounding variables (ao3)

Answer 10

These affect studies that do follow up assessments e.g parenting style and personality may affect both attachment and later development, so we can never be entirely sure that it is infant attachment and not some other factor that is influencing later developments

Question 11

— validity issues with retrospective data (ao3)

Answer 11

Looking back into childhood attachments, increased chance of lies due to social desirability and displacement of blame which lowers validity and increases inaccuracies.