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Attachment - Learning Theory: emphasises importance of caregiver as…
Attachment - Learning Theory: emphasises importance of caregiver as provider of food. Attachment is a set of learned behaviours.
Classical Conditioning
Learning to associate two stimuli together so that we begin to respond to one in the same way as we already respond to the other.
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Operant Conditioning
Involves learning to repeat behaviour, or not, depending on its consequences. Behaviours with pleasant consequences are reinforced and are likely to be repeated.
Process
Positive Reinforcement - crying leads to a response from the caregiver. As long as the caregiver provides the correct response (i.e. feeding) then crying is positively reinforced because it leads to pleasurable consequences.
Negative Reinforcement - the caregiver responds to the baby's crying because they want it to stop, so their behaviour is negatively reinforced (used to escape something unpleasant).
Drive Reduction
Hunger is a primary drive, an innate biological motivator. We are motivated to eat to reduce the hunger drive.
Attachment is a secondary drive learned by an association between the caregiver and the satisfaction of a primary drive. Sears et al. suggested that as caregivers provide food, the primary drive of hunger is generalised to them.
Evaluation
Ignores other factors linked with attachment - research shows that quality of attachment is associated with reciprocity and good levels of interactional synchrony. These ideas cannot be easily linked with the idea that attachment develops primarily through food.
Human research shows feeding is not an important factor - Schaffer and Emerson showed that for many babies primary attachment was not to the person that fed them. Evidence suggests other factors are more important than food in attachment.
Animal studies provide evidence against food as the basis for attachment - Lorenz's imprinted geese maintained attachments regardless of who fed them. Harlow's monkeys sought comfort from the cloth mother even if it was the wire mother that fed them. Neither examples of attachment are based on feeding. The same must be true for humans (learning theorists believe that humans and animals are equivalent.
Some elements of conditioning could be involved -
it is plausible that conditioning could play a role in attachment, as many aspects of human development are affected by conditioning. E.g. associations between primary caregiver and provisions of comfort and social interaction could be part of what builds attachment.