Unit 1: Attachment Flashcards
(110 cards)
1
Q
What are the CG and infant interactions :
A
interactional synchrony
reciprocity
2
Q
What is reciprocity ?
A
a description of how two people interact - CG + I interaction is reciprocal as both respond to eachothers signals and each elicits a response from the other
‘alert phase’ - children signal they are ready for interaction parents usually pick up on this 2/3 of time depending on skill of mother and external factors such as stress - from 3 months increasingly frequent
both has active involvement and can take an active role in initiating interactions
3
Q
What is interactional synchrony ?
A
CG and baby reflect actions and emotions of the other in a synchronised way
Meltzoff and Moore (1977) observe IS at 2 weeks old
important for the development of cg-i attachments
4
Q
Support for CG and I interactions :
A
+ research usually filmed in a lab - aspects that may distract a baby can be controlled and film can be analysed later by other observers increasing the inter-rater reliability - also babies are unaware they are being observed - covert observation
5
Q
Criticsims for CG and I interaction research :
A
- hard to interpret a babies behaviour e.g we don’t know if a hand twitch is random or triggered by something the cg has done meaning we cannot be certain the behaviours observed have a special meaning
- Feldman (2012) states these only give names to patterns of observation and may not be useful in understanding child behaviour as it doesn’t tell us the purpose of the behaviour and we cannot be certain it is important for development
+ however isabella (1989) found it predicted goof attachment
6
Q
Who created the stages of attachment ?
A
Schaffer and Emerson (1964)
7
Q
What are Schaffer and Emersons stages of attachment ?
A
1) asocial stage
2) indiscriminate attachment
3) specific attachment
4) multiple attachments
8
Q
How long does the asocial stage last?
A
first few weeks
9
Q
What do babies display in the asocial stage ?
A
a preference for the company of familiar people and are more easily comforted by familiar people
10
Q
When is the indiscriminate attachment phase ?
A
2-7 months
11
Q
What do babies start to display in the indiscriminate attachment phase:
A
- more obvious social behaviours
- a clear preference for being with humans than objects - particularly familiar ones
- do not usually show separation or stranger anxiety
12
Q
When does specific attachments happen ?
A
around 7 months
13
Q
What do babies display in the specific attachment phase ?
A
stranger and separation anxiety
14
Q
By the specific attachment phase what has a baby formed ?
A
primary attachment figure - mother in 65% of cases
15
Q
When do multiple attachments take place in a child ?
A
to the majority within a year - 29% a month after specific attachment is formed
16
Q
Support for Schaffer and Emersons stages of attachment :
A
+ Practical application in day care - use of daycare can be planned using schaffer and emersons research as children in specific attachment stage may struggle while those in the multiple attachment stage will be able to adapt
17
Q
Criticisms for the stages of attachment :
A
- psychologists who work is cultural contexts where multiple cg are the norm believe that babies form multiple attachments from the outset (Ijzendoorn 1993) - collectivist cultures as families work together to child rear
- in asocial stage babies are pretty much immobile it is therefore very difficult to make any judgements about them based on observations as there isn’t much observable behaviour - does not mean feelings or cognitions aren’t highly sociable but the evidence cannot be relied on
18
Q
What % did Schaffer and Emerson find had attached to their father by 18 months ?
A
75%
shown by separation anxiety
19
Q
What did Grossman (2002) carry out?
A
a longitudinal study looking at both parents behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens
20
Q
What did Grossman (2002) find ?
A
quality of infant attachment to their mothers but not fathers was related to children’s attachments in adolescence suggesting that father attachment was less important
21
Q
What suggests fathers have a different role in attachment ?
A
the quality of fathers’ play with infants was related to the quality of adolenscence attachment
22
Q
Research into fathers being the primary caregiver ?
A
Tiffany Fields (1978) filmed 4 month year old babies in face to face interactions with pcg mothers and fathers and scg fathers
found behaviours like smiling and imitating are most important in building attachment then the gender of the parent
23
Q
Evaluations of attachment figures :
A
+ the fact that fathers tend not to become the pcg may be a result of traditional gender roles
- however it could be a result of female hormones (oestrogen) creating higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically pre-disposed to be the paf
- socially sensitive as it suggests that children may be disadvantaged by particular child rearing practices – for example mothers who return to work restricting interactional synchrony could be taken to suggests mothers shouldn’t return to work so soon
- Grossman found that fathers as saf’s had an important role in child development however other studies have found that children growing up in a single or same-sex parent familt do not develop any differently - suggests fathers role as a saf is not important
24
Q
What was Schaffer and Emersons aim :
A
to investigate the formation of early attachment - in particular the age in which they developed, their emotional intensity and to whom they were directed
25
Schaffer and Emerson's (1964) findings :
between 25 and 32 weeks about 50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adult ( specific attachment )
by 40 weeks 80% of babies had specific attachment and almost 30% displayed multiple attachments
25
Schaffer and Emerson's (1964) method :
- 60 babies from Glasgow - majority from skilled working class families
- babies and mothers were visited at home every month for the first year and then once at 18 months
- researchers asked mothers questions about the kind of protest their babies showed in seven everyday separations ( e.g separation or stranger anxiety )
25
Supports of Schaffer and Emerson's study :
+ was carried out in families homes and most of observations ( apart from stranger anxiety ) was done by parents during ordinary activities and reported to researchers later - therefore behaviour of babies was unlikely to be affected by the presence of observers - good external validity
+ longitudinal designs have better internal validity that cross-sectional designs because they do not have confounding variable of individual differences between p/pants ( participant variables )
26
Lorenz's imprinting procedure :
experiment in which he randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs -- half hatched in natural environment with mother - half in an incubator where first moving thing they saw was Lorenz
26
Limitations of Schaffer and Emersons study :
- same size of 60 was good considering amount of data collected on each p/pant however the fact that all the families involved were from the same district and social class in the same city 50 years ago is a limitation - child rearing practices vary from cultures and time periods - therefore these results do not necessarily generalise well to other social and historical contexts
26
Lorenz findings :
incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere while the control group followed the mother - even when the groups were mixed
27
Who invented the critical period ?
Lorenz
27
What did Lorenz go onto additionally investigate ?
the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences
he observed that birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans
28
What did Lorenz call his phenomena?
imprinting
29
Criticisms of Lorenz's imprinting research :
- there is a problem with generalisability as mammalian attachment is different from birds - for example mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young then birds - means it is not appropriate to generalise any of Lorenz's ideas to humans
- Guiton et al (1966) found that chickens who imprinted on yellow washing up gloves came to realised they prefered mating with other chickens - impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed
30
What did Harlow observe ?
that newborns kept alone in a bare cage usually died but they usually survived if giveb something soft like a cloth to cuddle
31
Harlow's (1958) procedure :
tested the idea that soft objects serve some of the function of a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire models. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother in another condition the milk was dispensed by a cloth-covered mother
32
Harlow's (1958) findings :
rhesus monkeys cuddled soft object in preference to wired
sought comfort from cloth mother regardless of which one dispensed milk- showed 'contact comfort' was of more importance to the monkeys then food when it came to attachment behaviour
33
Maternally deprived monkeys as adults :
- severe consequences
- wire mother monkeys most dysfunction but cloth mother ones also did not develop normal social behaviour
- more aggressive, less sociable + bred less often than other monkeys
- some neglected or attacked their young ( even killing them in some cases )
34
What did Harlow suggest was the critical period for normal development ?
mother figure had to be introduced to a monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form -- after this point damage done by deprivation was irreversable
35
Limitation of Harlow's research :
- monkeys suffered greatly - they were considered to be similar enough to generalise the findings to humans so presumably their suffering was human-like - Harlow was aware of suffering calling wire mothers 'iron maidens' after the medieval torture device
36
Support of Harlow's research :
+ showed us the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear
+ it has helped social workers understand risk factors in child negelect and abuse and so intervene to prevent it - also for understanding importance of proper attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild
37
Criticism of Harlow's research :
- monkeys suffered greatly - they were also similar enough to humans to be able to generalise findings so we can assume their suffering to be human like - Harlow was also aware of suffering as he referred to the wire mother as the 'iron maidens' a medieval torture device
38
Who proposed that cg - i attachment can be explained by learning theory ?
Dollard and Miller (1950)
39
What does the learner theory explanation of attachment emphasise ?
the importance of a cg as a provider of food - children learn to love who ever feeds them
40
What does a learning theorist see as infant love towards the mother ?
when the mother becomes a conditioned stimulus associated with the unconditioned stimulus and response of food being pleasure - the child then shows a conditioned response to the mother of pleasure
41
How is operant reinforcement a two-way process ?
when the baby is reinforced for crying , the cg recieves negative reinforcement as the crying stops - escaping from something pleasant is reinforcing -- this mutual reinforcement strengthens an attachment
42
As well as conditioning what does learning theory also draw on ?
the concept of drive reduction
43
What can be seen as a primary drive ?
hunger
44
sears et al (1957) :
cgs provide food so the primary drive becomes generalised to them -- attachment is therefore a secondary drive learned by an association between the cg and the satisfaction of the primary drive
45
Criticisms of the learning theory explanation of attachment :
- a range of animal research shows that young animals don't necessarily attach to or imprint on those who feed them ( Lorenz's geese imprinted before they were fed and Harlow's monkeys attached to the cloth mother over the wire one that dispensed food ) -- clear that attachment does not develop as a result of feeding so the same must be true for humans
- research with human infants also shows that feeding does not appear to be an important factor in humans ----- in Schaffer and Emerson's study many of babies developed a primary attachment to their biological mother even tho other carers did most of the feeding --- problem for LT as it shows that feeding is not the key element to attachment and so there is no unconditioned stimulus or primary drive involved
46
Support for the learning theory explanation for attachment :
+ as a whole not a good explanation as it focuses on the feeding aspect - but it is still credible that association between the primary caregiver and the provision of comfort and social interaction is part of what builds the attachment
47
Whose work did Bowlby look at ?
Lorenz and Harlow
48
What did Bowlby propose ?
an evolutionary explanation : attachment was an innate system that gave a survival advantage
49
Why was Bowlby's theory described as monotropic ?
as it placed great emphasis on a childs attachment to a particular care giver - which he believed to be more important than others
50
What were the two principles Bowlby put forward to clarify his ideas ?
- the Law of continuity
- the law of accumulated separation
51
What did Bowlby's law of continuity state ?
the more constant and predictable a child's care the better the quality of their attachment
52
What did Bowlby's law of accumulated separation state ?
the effects of every separation from the mother add up ' safest dose is therefore a zero dose'
53
What are social releasers according to Bowlby ?
innate behaviours that babies are born with such as smiling or gripping that encourage attention from adults
54
According to Bowlby what is the purpose of social releasers ?
to activate the adult attachment system
55
What did Bowlby state was the critical period ?
around 2 years
56
What did Bowlby view the critical period as ?
more of a sensitive period
57
What happens if a child doesn't form an attachment in the critical or sensitive period ?
they will find it much harder to form one later
57
What is an internal working model ?
when a child forms a mental representation of their relationship with their pcgs
58
What does the internal working model serve as a model for ?
what relationships are like
59
What does the internal working model have an effect on ?
the nature of the child's future relationships
and their ability to be a parent themselves - explains why children from functional families tend to have similar families themselves
59
Criticisms for Bowlby's monotropic theory :
- a different tradition of child development emphasises the role of temperament in the development of social behaviours -- childs genetically influenced personality -- temperament researchers often accuse Bowlby of over-emphasising the importance of a child's early experiences and quality of attachment
- controversial - has major lifestyle implications for the choices mothers make when their children are young - law of accumulated separation - places a burden on mothers setting them up to take the blame for anything that goes wrong for the rest of the childs life - it also pushes mothers into a particular lifestyle choice --- not Bowlby's intention he saw it as boosting their status but still
60
Support for Bowlby's monotropic theory :
+ Bailey et al (2007) found that mothers who reported to have poor attachments to their own parents in interviews were much more likely to have children classified as poor according to the observations --- supports the internal working model
61
Who developed the Strange Situation ?
Ainsworth (1969)
61
What was the aim of the Strange situation ?
to be able to observe key attachment behaviours as a means of assessing the quality of a childs attachment to their cg
62
What kind of observation is the Strange Situation ?
controlled observation procedure
63
Where does the Strange Situation take place ?
a laboratory with a two-way mirror through which psychologists can observe behaviour
64
In the Strange Situation what behaviours were used to judge attachment :
- proximity seeking
- exploration and secure-base behaviour
- stranger anxiety
- separation anxiety
- response to reunion
65
How long do the episodes in the Strange Situation procedure last ?
3 minutes per
66
What are the 7 episodes in the Strange Situation procedure :
1) child encouraged to explore
2) a stranger comes in and tries to interact with the child
3) caregiver leaves the child and stranger together
4) caregiver returns and stranger leaves
5) caregiver leaves child alone
6) stranger returns
7) caregiver returns and is reunited with child
67
Ainsworths (1978) findings :
she found that there were distinct patterns in the way that infants behaved - she identified 3 main types of attachment :
- secure
- insecure-resistant
- insecure- avoidant
68
Supports for Ainsworth's Strange Situation :
+ attachment type as defined is strongly predictive of later developments -- insecure - resistant associated with worst outcomes ( bullying ) - evidence of its validity because it can explain subsequent consequences
+ good inter-rater reliability - different observers would generally agree on what type to classify with 94% of time according to Bick et al (2012) - this could be due to controlled conditions or behavioural categories
69
Criticisms for Ainsworth's Strange Situation :
- Main and Soloman (1986) point out that not all children fall within the categories - disorganised attachment ( display a mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours
- does not mean same outside of Western Europe and America for 2 reasons. First cultural differences in a childs experience may make them respond differently to SS. Second cg from different cultures behave differently in ss
70
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) procedure :
located 32 studies of attachment where SS had been used to investigate proportions of infants with different attachment types - 32 conducted in 8 countries, 15 in the USA. Overall the studies used 1,990 children - data was meta analysed
71
Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg's findings :
- in all countries secure was most common
- insecure- resistant least common type
- insecure avoidant attachments most common in Germany
- variations of results between studies within the same country were 150% greater than those between countries --- USA one study found 46% secure while another found 90%
this supports Bowbly's idea that attachment in innate and universal
72
Criticisms of studies of cultural variations :
- comparison was between countries not cultures as there are many different cultures in a country
- might not measure attachment - Kagan ( 1986) suggested attachment type is more related to temperment - not assessing attachment but measuring anxiety
73
Support for studies of cultural variations :
- very large sample of almost 2000 in Ijzendoorn's -- strength because large samples increase internal validity by reducing the impact of anomalous research cause by bad methodology or unusual p/pants
74
When was Bowlby's theory of maternal deprivation developed ?
1951
75
When did Bowlby state the critical period was ?
30 months
76
Deprivations effects on intellectual development according to Bowlby :
- delayed intellectual development - characterised by abnormally low IQ
77
Deprivations effects on emotional development according to Bowlby :
- affectionless psychopathy
78
What did Bowlby's 44 Thieves study examine ?
the link between affectionless psychopathy and maternal deprivation
79
Bowlby's 44 Thieves procedure ?
- consisted of 44 criminals accused of stealing - they were interviewed for signs of affectionless psychopathy
- families also interviewed to established whether the 'theives' had prolonged separation from their mothers
- control group of non-criminal but emotionally disturbed young people - to see how often it occured in children who were not thieves
80
Bowlby's (1944) findings :
- 14 out of 44 thieves could be described as affectionless psychopaths - out of this 14 12 had experienced prolonged separation from mothers in the first 2 years of their lives
- only 5 of remaining 30 thieves experienced separation
- control group 2 out of 44 had experiences separation
81
What did Bowlby's 44 thieves study conclude ?
that prolonged early separation/deprivation caused affectionless psychopathy
82
Criticisms of Bowlby's 44 thieves study :
- Koluchová (1976) reported case of twin Czech boys who were isolated from the age of 18 months until they were 7 - subsequently they were looked after by two loving adults and appeared to fully recover - Bowlby's critical period may just be a sensitive period
- Rutter (1981) states Bowlby muddled the two concepts of privation and deprivation - he claimed that the severe long term damage is actually more likely to do with privation
- he drew on a number of poor sources for maternal deprivation - such as war-orphans who were tramautised therefore this could be the reason for later developmental issues not separation -- also his 44 thieves study has major design flaws such as bias as he carried out the assessment knowing what he hoped he would find
83
Context of the Romanian orphans study ?
the President of Romania required Romanian women to have five children but parents could not afford this so many ended up in huge orphanages in very poor conditions -- after the rebellion in 1989 many were adopted some by British parents
84
Rutters ERA study procedure :
2011
Rutter followed a group of 165 Romanian orphans adopted in Britian to test to what extent good care could make up for poor early experiences in institution
- physical, cognitive and emotional development was assessed at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15
- group of 52 British children adopted around same time as control group
85
What does ERA stand for ?
English and Romanian Adoptee
86
Rutter's (2011) ERA findings ?
- when first arrived adoptees showed signs of delayed intellectual development and majority severely undernourished
- at 11 it was clear there rates of recovery depended on when they were adopted
- mean IQ of those adopted before 6 months was 102
- mean IQ was 86 for those adopted between 6 months and a year
- mean IQ 77 for those adopted after 2 years - differences remained at 16 years old
- those adopted after 6 months showed signs of disinhibited attachment - in contrast to those adopted before who rarely displayed this
87
What are the symptoms of disinhibited attachment ?
- attention seeking
- clinginess
- social behaviour directed indiscriminately towards adults known and unknown
88
Who created the Bucharest Early Intervention project ?
Zeanah et al (2005)
89
Zeanah's Bucharest Early Intervention project procedure :
- assessed attachment in 95 children aged 12-31 months who spent most of their life in intitutionalised care
- compared to control group of 50 kids who never lived in an institution .
- attachment type measured using SS
- carers asked to look out for behaviour that may show a disinhibited attachment
90
Zeanah's Bucharest Early Intervention project findings :
- 74% of control group were securely attached
- 19% of institutionalised group were securely attached and 65% had a disorganised attachment
- the description of a disinhibited attachment applied to 44% of I children while only 20% of controls
91
Odd behaviour of people who are disinhibitely attached ?
they are equally friendly towards people they do not know well or strangers
92
How does Rutter (2006) explain disinhibited attachment ?
an adaption to living with multiple caregivers during the sensitive period - as in poor quality institutions a child may have 50 careers none of whom they see enough to form a secure attachment
93
Criticisms of Romanian Orphan studies :
- methodological issue of ERA was that the children weren't randomly assigned to conditions and researchers didn't interfere with adoption process -- those adopted first may have been most sociable - confounding variable -- whereas in the Bucharest EIP romanian orphans were randomly allocated to institutional care of fostering - methodologically better but raises ethical issues
- to soon to say whether children suffered short or long term effects - it may be children who spent longer in institutions may still catch up or equally that early adopted/fostered children may experience emotional problems as adults
94
Support for Romanian orphan studies :
+ enhaunced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation - led to improvement in how children are cared for in institutions e.g orphanages and children's homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead ensure a much smaller number of people
95
What is attachment type also associated with ?
the quality of peer relationships in childhood
96
Kerns (1994)
securely attached go onto form best quality childhood friendships while insecurely attached infants later have friendship difficulties
97
Myron-Wilson and Smiths (1998) procedure and findings :
- assessed attachment type and bullying involvement using standard questionnaires in 196 children aged 7-11 from London
- secure - unlikely to be involved in bullying
- insecure- avoidant - most likely to be victims
- resistant - most likely to be bullies
98
McCarthys (1999) findings :
40 adult women assessed as infants
- adults assessed as insecure-resistant had particular problems maintaining friends whilst insecure-avoidant struggled with intimacy in romantic relationships
99
Hazen and Shavers (1987) procedure:
- 620 answers to a 'love quiz' printed in an American local newspaper
- quiz had 3 sections: assessed current or most important relationship, general love experiences, attachment type
100
Hazen and Shavers (1987) findings :
56% identified as securely attached, 25% insecure-avoidant and 19% insecure-resistant
those who were secure were more likely to have good and longer lasting romantic experiences
avoidant responses revealed jealousy and fear of intimacy
suggest patterns of attachment behaviour are reflected in romantic relationships
101
Criticisms of the influence of early attachment on later relationships :
- people such as Bowlby exaggerated the significance of this influence. Clarke and Clarke ( 1998) describe the influence of infant attachment on later relationships as probabilistic - people are not doomed to have bad relationships just because they had attachment problems they just have greater risk of problems
- Zimmerman (2000) assessed infant attachment type and adolescent attachment to parents - there was little relationship between the quality of infant and adolescent attachment
- the validity of questionnaires and interviews is limited because they depend on respondents being honest and having realistic views of their own relationships - also retrospective nature means it probably lacks validity as it relies on accurate recollections
102
