Attachment

Critical period

A window of time in which e.g behaviour develops. After the critical period has passed the behaviour will not develop.

Bowlby's - Critical period

Babies have an innate drive to attach and Bowlby belived this occured during the first 2-3 years of the child's life. Infants that do not form attachments during that time have difficulties forming attachments later on. Whehter an infant attaches depends on the sensitivity of the PCG.

Bowlby's maternal deprivation theory

Bowlby argued that the first 2.5 years of a child's life is crucial in forming attachments. If the primary caregiver is separated for an extended period of time this may lead to psychological damage to the child. Brief separations do not have any long-lasting effects but if the absence of the primary caregiver is extended for a long period of time without substitute care, damage is inevitable.

Bowlby's study of 44 juvenile thieves

Bowlby studied 88 children, all of them were emotionally maladjusted. 44 of the children were thieves and the other 44 were used as a control group. Bowlby found that 14 of the thieves showed little signs of affection and shame out of a group he called affectionless psychopaths. Bowlby found that 12 out of the 14 (86%)children experienced frequent early separation from their mothers, in comparison to just 17% of the other thieves. These findings suggest that early childhood separations are linked to affectionless psychopathy.

Explnation for attachment - Bowlby's evolutionary theory

Bowlby suggests that attachment is an innate process that serves an important evolutionary function - an infant who is less attached is less well protected.

Interactional synchrony

Mirroring actions

Caregiver-infant interactions: Reciprocity

From the age of 1-month interaction between parent and child becomes increasingly reciprocal.

Imprinting

Imprinting is an innate readiness to develop a strong bond with the mother, which takes place is a specific time frame in development, i.e during the critical period

Operant conditioning - learning by reinforcement(reward)

1. When hungry, the human infant feels uncomfortable and goes into a drive state

Maternal deprivation - Effects on development

Intellectual: Bowlby believed that if children were deprived of maternal care for too long during the critical period they would suffer mental retardation. For example, a psychologists found lower IQs in children who had remained in institutions as opposed to those who were fostered and thus had a higher standard of emotional care.

Takahashi - Japan study

Japanese children show similar patterns of attachment to the Israeli children but for different reasons. Japanese children are very rarely left by their mothers. So, the distress they show when she leaves is probably more due to shock than it is to insecure attachment.

Grossman and Grossman - German study

The study highlights a high percentage of avoidant behaviour, typical of independent children. This is not surprising given that Grossman says that German parents seek independent infants, who do not make demands on parents but obey their commands. These experiences may lead young children to show less anxiety about separation and be classed as avoidant.

Dollars and Miller beliefs

They believe infants attach my using both operant and classical conditioning.

Strange situations - Results

Three types of attachment:

Caregiver-infant interactions: Interactional synchrony

Two people are synchronised when they carry out the same action simultaneously. For mother and infant its when they mirror each other's action. Interactional synchrony is important in the development of an attachment between mother and infant.

Stages of attachment strengths

✅One strength is that the study was carried out in the families' own homes. The observations of the babies were unlikely to be affected by the presence of the observer as babies do not care or know that they are being observed. Therefore, the behaviour of the babies is natural and is more likely to reflect their natural behaviour which increases ecological validity.

Attchment type on adult and childhood relationships strengths

✅One strength is that there is research support. Longitudinal studies do not suffer from validity issues e.g questionnaires, for example, a psychologist assessed infant attachment at one year and found that participants who were securely attached as infants were rated higher social confidence as children, closer to their friends at age 16 and ere more expressive and emotionally attached to their romantic partners in early adulthood. Therefore, this supports the view that attachment types do predict relationships in adult life even when retrospective data is used.

Reciprocity

One person responds to the other.

Sensitive Responsiveness

Other argue that fathers can demonstrate sensitive responsiveness - where they respond to the needs of their children.

Fathers are GOOD secondary caregivers

Other research argues that males are not caregivers and that they provide a playmate role.

Relationship in adulthood as a parent

People tend to base their parenting style on their IWM so attachment type tends to be passed through generations. Bailey considered the attachment of 99 mothers to their babies and to their own mothers. The majority of women had the same attachment classification both to their babies and their own mother.

Stages of developing of attachment

1. Asocial stage(first few weeks) - Baby's behaviour towards inanimate objects and humans is quite similar.

Classical conditioning - learning by association

1. Food is an unconditioned stimulus that produces an unconditioned response(pleasure)

Bowlby's - Internal working model

The IWM is a template for future relationships that is based on the infant's primary attachment, which creates consistency between early emotional experiences and later relationships. The infants build up a model of themselves as lovable and a model of the parent figure as trustworthy.

Disinhibited attachment

The child doesn't seem to prefer his or her parents over other people, even seeking strangers. The child seeks comfort and attention from anyone.

Fathers are POOR primary caregivers

Traditionally, fathers played a minor role in a child's upbringing. Historically fathers would go to work and provide for the family while the mother took care of the child. however, this has changed in recent years.

Privation

When an attachment never forms.

Multiple attachment

Whilst it is not disputed that most children form multiple attachments, what is disputed is the importance of these different attachment figures. John Bowlby believed that children had one prime attachment and that although children had attachments to other people, those were of minor importance compared to the main attachment. HOWEVER, Rutter proposed a model of multiple attachments that saw all attachments as of equal importance, with all these attachments helping the formations of the child's internal working model.

Multiple attachment weaknesses

❌A weakness is the difficulty in measuring the strength of multiple attachments. An infant may get distressed when an individual leaves the room, but this does not necessary means that the individual is an attachment figure. Bowlby pointed out that children have playmates as well as attachment figures. This is a problem for Schaffer and Emerson's stages because their observation does not leave us a way to distinguish between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figure and behaviour shown towards playmates. Therefore we cannot be certain of the results found.

Harlow's study weaknesses

❌One weakness is ethical issues, the monkeys suffered greatly as a result of Harlow's procedures. This species is considered similar enough to humans to be able to generalise the findings, which also means that their suffering was quite human-like. He was criticised a lot because of the suffering he consciously caused to the monkeys, therefore his study is hard to replicate making reliability checks practically impossible.

Stages of attachment weaknesses

❌One weakness is issues with validity, the data collected by Schaffer and Emerson is based on mothers' reports of their infants. Some mothers might have shown social desirability and suggested they were sensitive to their infants' protests when they were not. This is an issue because it creates a bias in the results and therefore decreases internal validity.

Effects of institutionalisation weaknesses

❌One weakness is that the Romanian orphanages were atypical. It is possible that the conditions were so bad in those institutions that here results cannot be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care. After all, the Romanian orphanages had particularly poor standards of care are lo levels of intellectual situation. This is a limitation as these studies may lack generalisation due to situational variables.

Attchment type on adult and childhood relationships weaknesses

❌One weakness is that the assumption is overly deterministic. The research can seem to suggest that very early experiences have a fixed effect on later relationships and, therefore, children who are insecurely attached are bound to have bad relationships as adults. This is not the case as there is plenty of research to suggests that participants are experiencing happy adult relationships despite not having been securely attached as infants. Therefore we become too pessimistic about people's futures and may give them wrong advice.

Cultural variation weaknesses

❌One weakness is that the study is not representative of all countries. Over half of the 32 studies were carried out in the USA reflecting the dominance by America in research in this area. 27 of the studies were carried out in individualistic cultures with only 5 taking place in collectivist cultures. This implies that the sample used may not be truly representative of cultural differences in attachment types.

Strange situations weaknesses

❌One weakness is that there may be other attachment types that Ainsworth did not consider. For example, a couple of psychologists pointed out that some children's behaviour does not fit any of the 3 categories. This eas called disorganised attachment - a mix of both avoidant and resistant behaviour. These children do not show a consistent type of attachment. This means that Ainsworth's original classification system may not be entirely valid.

Caregiver-infant interactions weaknesses

❌One weakness is the difficulty of reliably testing the infant's behaviour. Infant's mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently, so it makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviour. This is a weakness as the findings may not be reliable.

Relationships in adulthood with Partners

👩‍🔬Aim: Hazan and Shaver investigated whether attachment type influences future romantic relationships.

Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg - Culture study

👩‍🔬Aim: Investigate the proportion of attachment types across a range of counties to see if there are any cultural variations

Effects of institutionalisation - Rutter

👩‍🔬Aim: Rutter followed a group of 165 Romania orphans adopted in Britain to test to what extent good care could make up for poor early experienced in an institution.

Harlow - Effects of privation study

👩‍🔬Aim: To investigate the effects of privation on rhesus monkeys

Lorenz - Imprinting study

👩‍🔬Aim: To investigate the mechanism of imprinting where young goslings follow and from an attachment to the first large moving object they meet.

Strange situations study - Ainsworth

👩‍🔬Aim: To produce a method for assessing the quality of attachment between mother and child.

Schaffer and Emerson - Stages of attachment study

👩‍🔬Aim: to investigate the formation of early attachments, which age they develop, their emotional intensity and to whom they were directed.

Maternal deprivation weaknesses

❌One weakness is that Bowlby's critical period is criticised to be more of a sensitive period. Research shows that damage is not inevitable, some cases of even the most severe deprivation can have good outcomes provided the child has good social interaction. For example, a psychologist reports the case of twin boys from Czechoslovakia who were isolated from 18 months until they were 7 years old. Afterwards, they were looked after by two loving sisters and appeared to recover fully. Therefore, this case suggests that the period identified by Bowlby is a sensitive period but not necessarily critical.

Learning theory weaknesses

❌One weakness is that learning theory ignores the importance of innate aspects of attachment that are suggested by Bowlby's theory. He suggests that infants are born with an innate tendency to form an attachment that serves to increase their chances of survival and that adults are innately programmes to become attached to their infants. Therefore, the process of attachment is not learnt but is an innate process for the caregiver and child. This challenges the learning approach as an explanation of attachment.

How does evolution explain attachment

-Attachment behaviour is programmed into humans and it operates similarly in all cultures

Bowlby's - Monotropy

-Bowlby believed the idea that a child attached to one particular caregiver is more important than other attachments. He believed the more time the baby spends with the primary attachment figure the better. Other attachments were possible but they were of less importance.

Effects of institutionalisation

-Physical underdevelopment: Children in institutional care are usually small as research has shown that lack of emotional care rather than poor nourishment is the cause of deprivation dwarfism

Explanatipon of attachment - Learning theory

-The main assumtion of learning theory is that children learn to become attached to their caregiver because they give them food, sometimes referred to as 'cupboard love'

Harlow's study conclusion

Harlow concluded that contact comfort was more important than food in the formation of attachment. This also shows that contact comfort is preferable to food but not sufficient for healthy development.

Lasting effects of Harlow's study

Harlow observed the difference in behaviour between the monkeys who had grown with surrogate mothers and those with normal mothers. Those that grew with surrogate mothers:

Relationships in later Childhood

Securely attached children tend to go on to form better quality childhood friendships, whereas insecurely attached children have difficulties with friendships. Psychologists used standard questionnaires to measure attachment type and bullying behaviour in 196 children aged 7-11 years old from London. Secure children were very unlikely to be involved in bullying, whilst insecure-avoidant were most likely to be victims and insecure-resistant children were most likely to be bullies.

Multiple attachment strengths

✅A strength is that multiple attachments make sense, a psychologist found that farther's play interactions were more exciting than mothers, whilst mother's are more nurturing and affectionate, which supports the idea of fathers being playmates rather than caregivers. Lamb found that children prefer interacting with fathers when in a positive emotional state but would interact with the mother when distressed and seeking comfort. Therefore having both mother and father, therefore forming multiple attachments. This makes better sense for enchanted social development

Strange situations strengths

✅One strength is high predictive validity. Attachment type predicts later development, e.g secure babies typically have greater success at school and more lasting romantic relationships. Compared to insecure resistant attachment is associated with the most outcomes e.g bullying and adult mental health problems. Due to this predictive validity, identifying attachment types can help to identify and possibly help those in danger of having later issues.

Cultural variation strengths

✅One strength is supporting research by Jin. He compared the proportions of attahcement types in Korean to other studies. The SS assessed 87 children. The overall proportions of insecure and secure babies were similar to those in most countries, with most infants being secure. However, more of those classified as insecurely attached were resistant. This distribution is similar to the distribution of attachment type found in Japan, this can be explained due to the similarities in child-rearing these countries have. Therefore this supports Ijzendoorn study as it backs up the results he found in the Japanese studies.

Bowlby's theory strengths

✅One strength is supporting research from Tronick. He asked mothers who were talking to their babies to maintain a static, unsmiling expression on their faces. Babies would try to tempt the mother into interacting by smiling and would become puzzled and increasingly distressed when their smile didn't provoke the usual response. Thus, babies expect reciprocal responses to their smiles, suggesting this is an innate need.

Fathers as POOR primary caregivers Evaluation

✅One strength is supporting research, a psychologist found that fathers were less able to detect low levels of infant distress, in comparison to mothers. These results appear to support the biological explanation, that the lack of oestrogen in men means that fathers are not biologically equipped to form close attachments with their children. This provides further evidence that fathers are not able to provide a sensitive and nurturing type of attachment, as they are unable to detect stress in their child.

Fathers as GOOD secondary caregivers Evaluation

✅One strength is supporting research. There is evidence to support the role of the father as a playmate. Geiger found that father's play interactions were more exciting in comparison to mothers. However, the mother's play interactions were more affectionate and nurturing, This suggests that the role of the father is, in fact, a playmate and not as a sensitive parent who responds to the needs of they children. These results also confirm that the mother takes on a more nurturing role.

Caregiver-infant interactions strengths

✅One strength is that the observations were controlled. The procedure was well-controlled with multiple angles capturing expressions. this ensures that fine detail of behaviour is recorded for later analysis. Furthermore, babies don't care or know that they are being observed so their behaviour doesn't change in response to the controlled observation. This is a strength as the research has high validity.

Maternal deprivation strengths

✅One strength is that there is supporting research from other studies. For example, a psychologist studied 250 women who had lost mothers, through separation or death, before they were 17. They found that the loss of their mother doubled the risk of depressive and anxiety disorders in adult women. The rate of depression was the highest in women whose mothers had died before the child reached the age of 6, supporting Bowlby's notion of a critical period.

Learning theory strengths

✅One strength is the ample opportunity for reinforcement. Dollard and Miller argued that in their first year, babies are fed 2000 times, generally by the main carer, which creates ample opportunity for the carer to become associated with the removal of the unpleasant feeling of hunger(negative reinforcement). This gives support to the idea that attachments are learned though operant conditioning.

Harlow's study strengths

✅One strength is the theoretical value that psychologists gained. Harlow showed that attachment does not develop as a result of being fed by a mother figure, but as a result of contact comfort. Harlow also showed the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development, including the ability to hold down adult relationships. This is important as parents want a healthy upbringing for their child

Effects of institutionalisation strengths

✅One strength is the value of longitudinal studies. Rutter's study followed the lives of children over many years, these studies take a great deal of planning and time waiting for results, but the benefits are substantial. Without this study, people may mistakenly conclude that there are major effects due to early institutional care, whereas some of these studies have shown that effects can disappear after sufficient time if the child is given high-quality care. Therefore, longitudinal studies offer more valid results of long-term consequences

Bowlby's theory weaknesses

❌A weakness is that Bowlby's monotropy principle is being questioned. Schaffer and Emerson found that most babies did attach to one person first, however, they also found that a significant minority appeared able to form multiple attachments ad the same time. 31% of infants had formed multiple attachments e.g with older brothers. Therefore Bowlby's principle could be wrong and maybe there is a different explanation for attachment.