test 5 Flashcards
(7 cards)
Discuss how Lorenz and Harlow used animal research to investigate attachment (16)
Paragraph 1: A01
- Lorenz’s procedure: studied imprinting within goslings
- Split a batch of goose eggs into 2 groups, one hatched with mother and one hatched with Lorenz.
- Observed their behaviour afterwards to see who they followed.
- Tested the idea of the critical period by exposing some goslings to him after a longer amount of time from hatching.
- Also studied adult behaviour.
- Harlow’s procedure:
- Separated infant monkey from their real mothers and placed them in a cage with both a wire mother and a cloth mother.
- Wire mother provided food but the cloth mother did not.
- Observed which mother the infants preferred and how much time they spend with them.
- Exposed them to stressful situations.
- Observed them later in life.
**Paragraph 2: A03 **
- One strength of animal studies is that they agree with Bowlby’s idea of monotropy and the critical period.
- The results of Lorenz’s study show that the goslings also had a critical period when they would have to form an attachment, even though this was 7 hours. The goslings would also imprint on the first person they saw.
- This shows evidence for a critical period and a monotropic attachment in goslings which can be translated to human behaviour.
- Therefore Lorenz and Harlow’s studies are useful in representing theories of attachment as they are generalizable to humans.
Paragraph 3: A03
- One limitation of animal studies is that findings may be subjective and up to interpretation.
- It is very difficult to interpret animal behaviour due to them being a different species (could be anthropomorphised)
- Therefore people may interpret findings of animal studies in different ways and draw conflicting conclusions about human behaviour.
- This would therefore limit the credibility of Lorenz and Harlow’s animal studies as a way of investigating attachment.
Paragraph 4: A03
- A further ethical issue surrounding Harlow and Lorenz’s animal studies is that they are unethical.
- These studies involved animals suffering maternal deprivation and lifelong affects as a result.
- This caused severe psychological harm to the animals which many people would argue is unethical and very immoral.
- Therefore Lorenz and Harlow’s research is an unfair way to carry out research on attachment.
(could add counter point saying it would be more unethical to do this on humans, and therefore it is justifiable to do it on animals instead)
Discuss what research using the Strange Situation may show about attachment.
Paragraph 1: A01
- The findings from Ainsworth’s study on attachment showed 60-75% of babies to be securely attached, followed by 20-25% being insecure-avoidant, and then 3% being classified as resistant.
Paragraph 2: A03
- One conclusion that can be drawn from the SSP research is that attachment type can be linked to how responsive a caregiver is to the infant.
- Sensitive caregiver = secure attachment, inconsistent caregiver= resistant attachment , emotionally unavailable caregiver = avoidant attachment.
- This could link to Bowlby’s monotropic theory - showing importance of the emotional availability of the single caregiver
- Shows that the SSP has been important for our understanding of attachment.
Paragraph 3:A03
- A problem with the findings and the conclusions drawn from the SSP is that they do not cover the full range of attachment types.
- Some babies were also found to display what was known as ‘disorganised attachment’
- This was characterised by a lack of consistent patterns of social behaviour such as showing strong attachment at one moment, then avoiding the caregiver the next- a mix of insecure and resistant attachment types.
- This shows that conclusions drawn from research using the SSP may not be valid ways of showing us about attachment as they do not account for all variations which infants may have and this could mislead people.
Paragraph 4: A03
- There is a broad range of other evidence from the SSP. One example is the Van Ijzendoorn and kroonenberg meta-analysis on attachment patterns between and within cultures, which was measured using the SSP.
- The findings from this found secure attachment to always be the most common. The proportions of insecure attachments varied, with more children being avoidant than resistant in western cultures, and more resistant than avoidant in non-western cultures.
- The study shows that the SSP is mostly effective at telling us about attachment, due its consistent identification of secure attachment as the most common.
- However, this meta-analysis has a cultural bias in primarily including WEIRD cultures, and therefore having limited evidence for the eastern world.
- Which suggests the research using the SSP cannot give us a full understanding of attachment globally, even thought it provides a credible insight into attachment in other cultures, and therefore may be less valid.
Outline Lorenz’s and Harlow’s animal studies of attachment. Discuss what these studies might tell us about human attachment.
Paragraph 1: A01
- Harlow: separated monkeys from their mothers and placed them in a cage with a wire mother with food, and a cloth mother. monkeys spent more time with the cloth mother in order to seek contact comfort, instead of going with the wire mother to get food.
- The monkeys showed emotional and social disturbance, and could not interact well with others when integrated into social settings. They would neglect their own offspring if they had any.
- Lorenz: Split a batch of gosling eggs and had one half hatch with their mother and the other half hatch seeing himself first. found that goslings who saw him first imprinted on him and followed him, and the mother group did the same with their mother.
- Also found that imprinting only occurred in the critical period of 12-17 hours after the birth.
- Found long term affects as goslings which imprinted on Lorenz showed mating preferences to humans, suggesting imprinting is permanent as they goslings were attracted to the first thing they saw.
Paragraph 2: A03
- A conclusion drawn from Lorenz’s study is that attachment in animals will occur rapidly and during a critical period, within 17 hours after hatching.
- A conclusion drawn from Harlow’s study is the importance of contact comfort in attachment.
- Lorenz’s study agrees with Bowlby’s idea of the critical period in human attachment, and Harlow’s study agrees with Bowlby’s lied of the internal working model and the implications of early neglect.
- This shows us that research using animal studies has given us an insight into understanding our attachment as it has built upon existing theories.
Paragraph 3: A03
- However a methodological limitation of Lorenz and Harlow’s animal studies is that there is problems of generalizing animal studies to humans.
- Of the 2 studies, Harlow’s study is the most relevant due to the fact that monkeys are mammalian and have similar genetic material to humans.
- However animal cognitive processing still works differently to that of humans and so the findings may not always be applicable to what cases would be like for us.
- Which suggests animal studies are limited in telling us about human attachment.
Paragraph 4: A03
- The findings from animal studies of attachment can be further supported by evidence such as Schaffer and Emerson’s longitudinal study of babies in Glasgow for the first 18 months of their life.
- Findings showed that babies had better attachment when their mother was responsive, rather than the idea of her providing food.
- This supports the findings of Harlow’s study and the importance of contact comfort.
- Therefore shows that animal studies are a reliable way of telling us about human attachment.
Outline and evaluate the behavioural approach to treating phobias.
Paragraph 1: A01
- There are 2 behavioural ways of treating phobias ; systematic desensitization and flooding. Both are based on eliminating the negative reinforcement cycle of phobias, and stop avoidance in patients.
- Systematic desensitization works by exposing the patient gradually to phobic stimuli at increasing levels, working their way up an anxiety hierarchy.
- They are taught relaxation techniques or the stimuli may be paired with something relaxing, to try trigger relaxation as anxiety and relaxation cannot happen together.
- Flooding works by exposing the patient to the highest possible anxiety triggering situation straight away.
- There are very few session as anxiety drops rapidly during each exposure.
Paragraph 2: A03 effectiveness
- Effectiveness of systematic desensitization: smith and glass.
- Did a meta-analysis of clinical trials, found that the average person who did SD did better than 82% of those that did not.
- Other research also found SD being affective for 80% of people, so this suggests the evidence is strong.
- This means there are large benefits for a large number of patients who try SD.
- And therefore show that SD is a very effective treatment for phobias.
Paragraph 3: A03 effectiveness
- Effectiveness of flooding: 2 reviews on clinical trials compared the effectiveness of flooding to SD.
- Barlow: showed flooding and SD to be similarly effective; Choy: showed flooding was slightly more effective than SD.
- Both of these reviews suggest flooding is also very effective in treating phobias as it was similar to SD, which proved very effective.
- However, it is unclear if it is more effective than SD or not.
Paragraph 4: A03 appropriateness
- However, the effectiveness of each type of therapy can be affected by how appropriate it is for the patient.
- For certain phobias such as social phobias, they are more general
- This means there is less obvious behavior to target and it is hard to set up repeated events in a safe environment, particularly for flooding where the patient may drop out and this would cause negative reinforcement.
- It may be more appropriate to use cognitive therapies to treat cognitive symptoms.
- So whilst effective for what they can treat, behavioral therapies may not be applicable in all situations.
Discuss the cognitive approach to treating depression.
Paragraph 1: A01
- There are two cognitive therapies for depression: Beck’s CBT and Ellis’ REBT. The aim of them to is to modify the negative schema and irrational thoughts that patients may experience, and ultimately, alleviate the depression.
- Beck’s CBT involves 3 processes: identifying negative beliefs in the triad- the self, world and future; challenging those beliefs thought rational arguments and providing evidence to the patient; then set homework with the ‘patient as scientist’ and tell them to record events and try new things to challenge their negative beliefs.
- Ellis’ REBT is a more complex process using the ABCDE method. The patient identifies the Activating event, their Beliefs about the event, and the consequences they feel of that. This aims for the patient to see how their belief affects their emotion. The therapist then disputes the irrational beliefs through empirical or logical arguments. This leads to the efbeliefs.
- 3 irrational beliefs: ‘musturbation’/perfectionism, ‘i-cant-stand-it-itis’/catastrophizing and utopianism.
Paragraph 2: A03 effectiveness
- A study showing just how effective CBT is in treating depression is Cujiper’s meta-analysis of clinical trials of CBT.
- The effect size was 0.71 which is large-moderate, and 75% in the treatment group did better than the control.
- This shows that CBT leads to a substantial reduction in therapies
- Suggesting that it is very effective in the treatment of depression.
Paragraph 3: A03 effectiveness
- A second study showing the effectiveness of CBT is march’s trial on CBT in comparison to drugs.
- The study recorded the amount of patients which showed ‘significant improvement’ after their therapy or drugs.
- They found 81% of people improved with CBT only, which alone proves it very effective. Drugs were also found to benefit the same number of patients as CBT.
- However the combination of drugs and CBT found improvement for 86% of patients
- shows that a combination of treatments may prove slightly more effective than CBT alone, but only for a small amount of people.
Paragraph 4: appropriateness
- since the effectiveness for treatments such as CBT and drugs are the same it is important to consider effectiveness for patients who want to undergo therapy for depression.
- CBT involves a high level of effort and organization in order to attend scheduled weekly sessions.
- It could be difficult for patients who have families/children/jobs which they must attend to to fit it into their daily life without it becoming disruptive, or even for patients to make the effort of coming if their depression is severe.
- In this situation, drugs may serve as an appropriate alternative to a cognitive therapy.
- Which shows how cognitive treatments for depression, whilst effective, are not always the most suitable methods for treatment.
Discuss the Strange Situation as a way of assessing type of attachment
Paragraph 1: A01
- The SSP is an Observation in a controlled environment.
- Series of 3-minute episodes – mother and baby; stranger enters; mother l leaves; mother returns etc.
- Results were gathered by Recording of child’s response in the different stages e.g., proximity-seeking, accepting comfort from stranger, response to being re-united.
- Analysis of observations leads to measuring infant’s type of attachment as either securely attached, insecure-avoidant or insecure-resistant.
Paragraph 2: A03
-One strength of the SSP is that Strange Situation research can be replicated (high level of control, standardised procedure) and has been carried out successfully in many different cultures.
Paragraph 3: A03
-One limitation of the SSP is that Variables measured did not take consideration of factors such as temperament and wider family influences. Means that may be confounding variables affecting the results about infant attachment.
Paragraph 4: A03
-One issue surrounding the research is its Cultural relativity - the same method may not be appropriate for all cultures because of differences in child-rearing practices (e.g., van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg found percentages are different in other cultures e.g., more insecure-avoidant in Germany)
