Lecture 2: Temperament and Attachment Style Flashcards
(33 cards)
1
Q
What is emotional attachment, as defined by Bowlby? [5]
A
- The strong affectional ties we feel for key people in our lives.
- Defined by mutual affection and desire for physical proximity.
- Reciprocal relationships lead to synchrony: ability for the mother to be able to meet the infant’s actions or emotions, and sometimes mirror them.
- Sensitive period for emotional attachment: first 3 years of life.
- Recent literature shows that it’s not just the first 3 years that defines attachment; experiences later on can influence this too.
2
Q
classical theories of emotional attachment [4]
A
- Classical theories: “I love you because you feed me.”
- Freud: oral stimulation through breastfeeding; infers biologically mother cares;
- Erikson: trust vs. mistrust forms through feeding when the infant is hungry;
- Sears: mother is a secondary reinforcer, reducing the drive for hunger every time she feeds him.
3
Q
Harlow & Zimmerman (1959) [4]
(hint: attachment, monkeys)
A
- Baby monkeys given an option of a wire mother that fed them vs. cloth mother that didn’t.
- How long would they spend on each mother?
- Babies spent 17-18 hours a day on the cloth mother, even though it didn’t give them food.
- Comfort is more important than feeding as an inducer of attachment.
4
Q
alternative theory of emotional attachment [6]
A
- Alternative theory: “I was born to love you, you were made to love me.”
- Attachment’s purpose is to promote survival; mother provides care to infant so that it survives.
- e.g. Babies have a genetic profile that make them look and act adorable so that we’ll want to take care of them.
- e.g. Imprinting in geese.
- Bowlby: attachment behaviour system; human beings are biologically prepared to form close attachments.
- However, unless there’s learning of how to respond appropriately to one another (baby and mother), secure emotional bonds won’t develop.
5
Q
Robertson & Bowlby (1952) [8]
(hint: phases of separation)
A
- Observed 3-year-olds who were kept in the hospital for various time frames.
- Noted that there are different phases depending on how long they’ve been away from their mother.
-
Protest phase: happens within the first few hours; distressed, crying.
- Reunited: punishes through silence or slight pushing, then settles shortly.
-
Phase of despair: a day to three days; longer separation, apathetic, withdrawn.
- Reunited: clingy behaviour.
-
Detachment phase: after three days; independent behaviour, more curious, willing to explore (only demonstrated by some children).
- Reunited: distanced from mother and didn’t go back to mother, perhaps untrusting—the point of no return, difficult to undo.
6
Q
Schaffer & Emerson (1964) [4]
(hint: 4-stage model of attachment)
A
- Proposed a four-stage model of attachment to immediate family members.
7
Q
the strange situation experiment [13]
A
- Created by Mary Ainsworth.
- Experiment which tests whether the mother serves as a secure base for the infant or a safe haven for the infant.
- Secure base: infants need to rely on mother to feel comfortable about exploring the world.
- Safe haven: infants need to know that they can return to the mother for comfort when afraid.
- Eight stages, each measuring different behaviours:
- Experiment takes mother and baby to playroom, then leaves.
- Mother allows baby to explore and play; mother as secure base.
- Stranger enters room and is silent, then talks to mother; stranger anxiety.
- Mother leaves and stranger interacts with baby; stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, soothed by stranger.
- Mother returns and freets baby, stranger leaves, mother leaves again; reuinion behaviours.
- Baby is alone; separation anxiety.
- Stranger enters and interacts with baby; separation anxiety, soothed by stranger.
- Mother enters and greets baby; reunion behaviours.
8
Q
Ainsworth’s attachment styles [5]
A
- Produced from the results of the strange situation experiment.
- Intrestingly, 5-10% of children weren’t able to be categorized.
9
Q
Main & Solomon (1990) [7]
(hint: insecure-disorganized attachment)
A
- Tried to account for the 5-10% of children uncategorized by strange situation experiment.
-
insecure-disorganized attachment: A combination of insecure-resistant and insecure-avoidant characteristics.
- When reunited: contradictory behaviours, rapid shifts between resistance and avoidance, fearful of mother.
- Suggested this was because the kids were afraid of the mom and didn’t know whether or not they could trust the mom.
- Applies to 80% of maltreated infants; parents may be abusive, neglectful, frightening.
- Since parents can’t be frightening the whole time, they’re caring sometimes, which leads to inconsistent parenting and thus a lack of knowing whether to trust or distrust.
- Often have trauma of their own or attachment problems.
10
Q
What kind of parenting influences attachment? [6]
A
- Sensitive, responsive, insightful parenting → secure attachment.
- Sensitive parents influence children to become more empathetic and have higher EQ.
- Parents who can perspective-take and read into a child’s thoughts even though they can’t vocalize them.
- Impatient and rejecting parenting → avoidant attachment.
- Intrusive and overstimulating parenting → avoidant attachment.
- Inconsistent parenting → resistant attachment.
11
Q
What kind of temperament influences attachment? [2]
A
- Jerome Kagan: Proposed that the strange situation procedure measures difference in temperament, not attachment style.
12
Q
Kochanska (1998): integrative theory [7]
A
- Suggests that there’s a temperament-parenting interaction that determines how the infant will form an attachment.
- sensitivity: How parents are able to tailor their caregiving to an infant’s temperament.
- Amount of maternal sensitivity → level of secure attachment.
- secure attachment: When there’s a good fit between the mother’s sensitivity and an infant’s temperament.
- But sensitivity didn’t determine the specific type of insecurity. If maternal sensitivity was low:
- Fearful children → resistant attachment.
- Fearless children → avoidant attachment.
13
Q
long term effects of secure attachment [6]
A
- Securely attached kids have:
- Better developmental outcomes,
- Better problem solving abilities,
- More symbolic play,
- More positive and fewer negative emotions,
- Better social skills and perhaps are more popular.
14
Q
long term effects of insecure attachment [5]
A
- Insecurely attached kids generally:
- Have worse developmental outcomes,
- Are more socially withdrawn which can lead to peer rejection,
- Are less interested in learning,
- Show more socially deviant behaviours.
15
Q
internal working models [7]
A
- Cognitive representation of you and others, used to interpret events and form expectations about relationships.
- Your attachment style can inform your internal working models and schemas of self and relationships, whether they’re positive or negative.
- People with positive internal working models of self and others:
- Have secure primary attachments;
- Have the self-confidence to approach and master new challenges;
- Are able to establish secure, mutual-trust relationships.
16
Q
What else impacts infants’ attachment? [4]
A
- Attachment in family and community contexts at large;
- Relationship between mother and father (discord);
- Lower socioeconomic status;
- Social support in the community.
17
Q
attachment across time [7]
A
- The attachment style you develop tends to be stable.
- Mediating influence of environment (Waters, 2000); if your environment stays the same, then your attachment style will stay the same.
- Dynamic interaction effect: attachment x perception of/reaction to your attachment → changes in your long-term attachment security.
- However, you can go from insecure attachment to secure attachment; earned secure.
- Influenced by someone close to them like a teacher, or a therapist.
- Or by changes in parenting behaviours or family situation.
- Adversity can also cause people to move from secure to insecure; sometimes may also cause people to go from insecure to secure.
18
Q
Adult Attachment Interview [6]
A
- Scoring based on qualitative responses to questions about early family life, parents, childhood, support systems, etc.
- Results in four different classifications:
- Secure–Autonomous; Importance of attachment, coherent history, no idealization.
- Insecure–Dismissing; Deny attachment importance, difficulty in recall, idealize parents/experiences, rejection.
- Insecure–Preoccupied; Incoherent, anger or passivity, preoccupied with past.
- Unresolved; Trauma of loss or abuse, not reconciled, difficult to code because interviewees haven’t fully internalized what happened.
19
Q
attachment across generations [3]
A
- Parents tend to recreate relationships with children based on their internal working models of their own relationships with own parents.
- Maternal attachment (prenatal) predicts attachment with infant after birth.
- Suboptimal maternal-fetal attachment predicts poor developmental outcomes.
20
Q
Benoit & Parker (1994) [11]
(hint: intergenerational attachment)
A
- Tested intergenerational attachment transmission with mothers and grandmothers.
- Mother given adult attachment interview (AAI) during pregnancy (T1) and when the child was 11 months old (T2).
- Child given strange situation test at 12 months old.
- Grandmother also given AAI.
- Overlap with attachment styles between all 3 generations.
- Grandmother + Mother T1 = overlap in 75% of cases.
- Mother T1 + Child = 81%
- Mother T2 + Child = 82%
- Across all 3 generations= 80%
- Mothers’ attachment styles didn’t change between the two time points.
- Tells us that attachment styles are stable throughout time, and there’s some continuity between generations/across time.
21
Q
effects of social deprivation [5]
A
- Social deprivation can have irreversible impact.
- Studies on Romanian children who were institutionalized had considerably lower IQs and cognitive functioning, as well as deficiencies in a number of other areas.
- Recall Robertson & Bowlby’s (1952) study on separation phases.
- Research suggests, if children are adopted after 3 (vs. before age 1), children see a lot of cognitive and social challenges (e.g. IQ, social skills, performance in school, aggression, etc.).
- Additionally, emotional deprivation can create an over-dependency on adults because they never figured out how to react to the world in an appropriate way.
22
Q
temperament [4]
A
- Individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation.
- Subset of personality; present early in life, earliest individual difference in personality.
- Not the same thing as personality.
- Because it’s present so early in life and can even be present in non-human animals, it can be said to be biological.
23
Q
New York Longitudinal Study [8]
A
- Interviewed parents about 3 to 6 month old infants’ reactions in everyday situations.
- Researchers rated 9 qualities of temperament, categorized infants and then followed them throughout life.
- Activity level, rythmicity, intial reactions, adaptability, sensory sensitivity, intensity of emotion, mood, distractibility, persistence.
- Based on these qualities, participants were placed into 3 categories:
- Easy (40%): friendly, happy, adaptable.
- Slow-to-warm-up (15%): withdraw first, approach with repeated contact.
- Difficult (10%): upset by new situations, withdraw, slow to adapt to changes, negative mood.
- The rest was mixed and uncategorizable! You can’t really fit people so neatly into these temperament styles—there are going to be a lot of factors and nuances.
24
Q
Bates (1980; 1983): criticisms of the New York Longitudinal Study [8]
A
- Are difficult kids bad? Who are they difficult for?
- Age effects? Children may grow up to be less difficult.
- But perhaps as moms get better at dealing with their kids, they’ll perceive their kids as less difficult.
- The difficult label is negative, which means that people might treat them as such.
- Inconsistent measurement of what is “difficult”; lots of external validity.
- Cultural differences?
- Difficulty can even sometimes lead to positive outcomes; kids who withdraw from novel situations tend to be more conscientious.
- Different aspects of temperament; you can be different people in different situations, and being difficult in some situations doesn’t make you a difficult person.
25
**Rothbart (1981)**: criticisms of the New York Longitudinal Study's categories [2]
* Questioned basis of the 9 categories; lack of consistency in contexts/responses in categories.
* Suggested temperament dimensions, rather than categories: 1) negative affectivity, 2) surgency, and 3) effortful control.
26
**negative affectivity** [9]
* Extent of child’s shyness and emotional excitability.
* Develops around 2 months of age.
* Marked by fear, anger, and frustration on a consistent basis.
* Kids high in negative affectivity:
* Are slower to approach;
* Show distress in response to expectations being blocked;
* Withdraw from new, intense stimuli (shyness);
* Anger—cope by externalizing, blaming outside factors;
* Fear—cope by internalizing, blaming self.
27
**surgency** [5]
* Tendency for positivity, impulsiveness, sensation-seeking.
* Similar to extraversion.
* Develops around 2-3 months
* Babies: smiling, laughter.
* Older children: externalizing issues (but not internalizing); e.g. dealing with peer pressure and getting into delinquency.
28
**effortful control** [3]
* Involves inhibiting a dominant response to perform a subdominant response, which builds inhibitory control.
* Concentrated development around 2-7 years old.
* Those high in effortful control have higher focus, controlled attention, suppression of response, planning, and self-control.
29
**Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss (1972)** [9]
## Footnote
(hint: marshmallow study)
* Study 1: Kids were either given a toy, told to think about something fun (e.g. singing, playing, fun thoughts), or no distraction.
* Told to ring a bell once they felt like they couldn’t wait anymore.
* Mean waiting time for no distraction was less than 1 min, toy distraction was 9 mins, and 12 mins for thinking fun thoughts.
* Shows that the cognitive tool of thinking fun thoughts is able to aid them in suppressing their thoughts about the marshmallow.
* Study 2: Same as Study 1 but told to think about something fun, about the rewards they would get if they waited, or nothing. Were able to look at the marshmallow while waiting.
* Thinking fun still produced the longest waiting times, but thinking rewards had slightly longer waiting times.
* Study 3: Same as Study 2 but the marshmallow wasn’t present.
* No ideation and thinking fun produced almost the same amount of waiting time.
* Demonstrates that something about effortful control is related to having a cognitive capacity to inhibit undesirable behaviour.
30
**Moffitt et al. (2011)** [9]
## Footnote
(hint: longitudinal, self-control)
* Measured self-control in the first 10 years of life and found that there’s a correlation between behavioural control and longitudinal outcomes.
* Followed 1000 people from birth onwards.
* Found a gradient effect of childhood self-control for health (mental & physical), single parenting vs. married parenting, externalizing vs. internalizing problems, and criminality.
* Negatively related to physical health, substance dependance, and financial struggles in adulthood.
* Positively related to SES, financial planfulness, and income.
* Adolescent (12-16) mistakes are important; smoking, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and leaving school were correlated with lower rates of self-control.
* What’s the impact of intelligence or SES on self-control?
* The researchers only controlled for these two independent predictors, but there are probably many influencing factors.
* Also measured siblings’ self-control of same families; less self-control siblings had poorer outcomes, despite being from the same family.
31
**difficult temperaments** [4]
* Generally, individuals with difficult temperaments will have difficulty adapting to environmental demands.
* Perhaps influenced by adverse reactions from other people?
* Temperament interacts with environment.
* **vulnerability hypothesis** (based on the stress-diathesis model): Some individuals, due to some innate characteristics, are more vulnerable to negative experiences and their adverse effects; others are more resilient.
32
**differential susceptibility**: dandelion vs. orchid kids [4]
* Two different types of kids: dandelions vs. orchids, i.e. resilient vs. susceptible to stresses in environments.
* Dandelion children were more resilient in times of adversity because they would maintain stability, making them evolutionarily adaptive.
* Orchid children are adaptive because during times of flourishing they would be more likely to be adventurous.
33
**Does temperament remain stable through time?** [6]
* Temperament may translate into characteristics later in life, but the results aren’t as consistent.
* Perhaps negative affect → neuroticism and effortful control → conscientiousness.
* But change possible; literally just growing up (20-40 y.o.) → increases in agreeableness, consciousness, and openness, and decreases in neuroticism.
* Effortful control has major shifts from 2.5-4 yo and adolescence.
* Neural pruning of underused synaptic links, myelination.
* Maturation of PFC (higher order processing, etc.).
