Influence of Early Attachment on Later Relationship

Question 1

Define Childhood Relationships.

Answer 1

Affiliations with other people in childhood including friends and classmates and with adults such as teachers

Question 2

Define Adult Relationships.

Answer 2

The relationships the child goes on to have later in life as an adult including friendships and working relationships but most critically relationships with romantic partners and persons own children

Question 3

Define Internal Working Model (IWM).

Answer 3

Our mental representations of the world which affects our future relationships as it carries our perception of what relationships are like

Question 4

What is the concept of the IWM similar to?

Answer 4

A schema

Question 5

What is a schema?

Answer 5

A mental representation of how things should be

Question 6

What does this IWM act as a template for?

Answer 6

For future childhood and adult relationships

Question 7

How does an infant learn about relationships?

Answer 7

From experience-the infant learns what relationships are and how partners in a relationship behave towards eachother

Question 8

What is the IWM template used to predict?

Answer 8

Behaviour of other people in the future which will powerfully affect the nature of an infants future relationship

Question 9

What will a baby assume if there first relationship is a loving relationship?

Answer 9

That this is how relationships are meant to be

Question 10

What will a baby seek from these loving relationships?

Answer 10

Functional relationships and behave functionally within them e.g. being too uninvolved or emotionally close

Question 11

What will happen is a child has a bad experience in their first attachment/relationship?

Answer 11

They will bring these experiences into later relationships

Question 12

What does this mean if they bring these bad experiences into future relationships?

Answer 12

Could struggle to form relationships in the first place or they may not behave appropriately within relationships- IA or IR behaviour

Question 13

What is the attachment type associated with?

Answer 13

The quality of peer relationships in childhood.
-SA:tend to go on to form the best quality childhood friendships whereas insecurely attached babies later have friendship difficulties

Question 14

What type of behaviour can be predicted by attachment type?

Answer 14

Bullying behaviour

Question 15

What did Myron-Wilson and Smith assess?

Answer 15

The attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11

Question 16

What did Myron-Wilson and Smith find?

Answer 16

-Secure attached children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying
-IA children were the most likely to be victims and IR children were most likely to be the bullies

Question 17

What is it that affects two major adult experiences?

Answer 17

Internal Working Models

Question 18

What are the two adult experiences that IWMs affect?

Answer 18

-Romantic Relationships
-Parental Relationships

Question 19

What did Hazan and Shaver study?

Answer 19

Association between attachment and adult relationships

Question 20

What was Hazan and Shaver’s procedure?

Answer 20

-Analysed 620 replies to a ‘love quiz’ in an American newspaper which had 3 sections
1-assessed respondents current or most important relationship
2-assessed general love experiences
3-assessed attachment type by having to choose their feelings

Question 21

What did Hazan and Shaver find?

Answer 21

-56% classified as secure meaning they were most likely to have long-lasting romantic relationships
-25% as avoidant meaning most likely to reveal jealousy and fear of intimacy
-19% resistant

Question 22

What did the findings of Hazan and Shaver suggest?

Answer 22

That patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic relationships

Question 23

What correlation was found between attachment type and love experiences?

Answer 23

Positive

Question 24

What did McCarthy study into and what was her study?

Answer 24

Relationships in adulthood continued with 40 adult women who had been assessed when they were babies their early attachment type

Question 25

What was her procedure?

Answer 25

-Assessed Secure babies had the best adult friendships and romantic relationships

Question 26

What were babies like that were assessed as Secure and Insecure Resistant?

Answer 26

SA-the best adult friendships and romantic relationships
IR-problems maintaining friendships whilst those classed as IA struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships

Question 27

What do IWMs also affect?

Answer 27

A child’s ability to parent their own children as they tend to base their own parenting style on their IWM so attachment type tends to be passed on through generations

Question 28

What did Bailey et al consider the attachment of?

Answer 28

99 mothers and their babies and to their own mothers and to their own mothers
-mother-baby attachment was assessed using the strange situation interview

Question 29

What was found out about Bailey et al’s ‘study’?

Answer 29

Majority of women had the same classification both to their babies and their own mothers

Question 30

What is a strength of the research into attachment and later relationships?

Answer 30

Research has supporting evidence

Question 31

Explain the supporting evidence for this research.

Answer 31

-Reviews of evidence that link attachment to later development have concluded that early attachment consistently predicts later attachment, well-being and attachment to own children

Question 32

The strength of the relationship between Early Attachment type and later development is dependent on what?

Answer 32

The attachment type and aspect of later development

Question 33

What does this research support mean for the evidence?

Answer 33

Being a securely attached baby has advantages for future development while disorganised attachment appears to disadvantage children

Question 34

What is a limitation of the research into attachment and later relationships?

Answer 34

Most studies rely on retrospective classification

Question 35

Explain why it is an issue for studies to be reliant on retrospectives.

Answer 35

As studies are not longitudinal so they ask people questions about their attachment and relationships.
-Create 2 validity problems
-1:Is reliant on honesty
-2:Hard to tell if early or adult attachment is being assessed

Question 36

What does this limitation therefore mean for the studies?

Answer 36

The measures of early attachment used in most studies may be confounded by other factors making them meaningless

Question 37

What is a further limitation of the research into attachment and later relationships?

Answer 37

The influence of early attachment on later development in the existence of confounding variables

Question 38

Explain how confounding variables limit studies results.

Answer 38

Some studies do assess attachment in infancy meaning that the assessment of early attachment is valid but they may still have validity problems as associations between attachment quality and later development may be affected by confounding variables

Question 39

What does this mean for studies into the influence of early attachment on later relationships?

Answer 39

That we can never be sure that it is entirely early attachment and not some other factors which is influencing development