ATTACHMENT
AINSWORTH STRANGE SITUATION
Aim: Observe key attachment behaviours as a mean of assessing quality of Childs attachment to caregiver.
Procedure: controlled observation in quite room w/ a two way mirror. Recorded every 15 seconds, behaviours are then scored on intensity from 1-7. 106 middle class subjects from America
P + I play.
P sits while I plays (parent secure base)
S + P talk (Stranger anxiety).
P leave, S help I if needed. (Separation anxiety)
P enters, S leaves. (Reunion behaviour).
P leaves I alone (Separation anxiety). S enterss (stranger annxiety).
P returns (Reunion behaviour)
TYPE A- Secure Attachment(66%)-
Explore, regularly proximity seek, moderate separation + stranger anxiety, reunion is enthusiastic and requires comfort
mother type: Sensitive, accepting, cooperative
TYPE B- Insecure Avoidance (22%)-
Explore freely show no secure base behaviour, Do not seek proximity, Little separation + stranger anxiety, Reunion they show no effort.
Mother type: Ignore infants, unresponsive to crying.
TYPE C-Insecure resistant(12%)-
Explore less, Seek greater proximity, Huge separation + stranger anxiety, Not easily comfoten upon reunion.
Mother type: Ambivalent toward babies- preoccupied
Culture bias- German infants are more insecure avoidant, they encourage dependance.
Lim- Need a type D. a minority does not fit into categories.
SUP- interrater reliability 94% agree on Childs attachment type.
lim- Child acts differently depending on each parents. less internal validity as only correct when carried out with main caregiver, not testing what it intends to.
BOWLBY
BOWLBYS MONOTROPIC THEORY OF ATTACHMENT
??Babyface hypothesis:
Sup- Harlows monkeys- attachment is innate, comfort is needed
sup of Critical period Rutter- Romanina orphans adopted by British family. Adopted before 6 moths: Clingy, seek attention from ALL adults, problems with peers. Adopted after 6 months didn't.
SUP- Schaffer and Emerson- baby attach to more than 1 person, but only minority can form multiple attachments at the same time. Relationships are diff not better/worse.
LIM- if a baby has a temper they will affect the formed relationships. If Childs 'easy' tempermant they have stronger statement as they are easier to interact. vice versa.
LEARNING THEORY.
Classical Conditioning
Operant conditioning and attachment.
Reinforcement is a two way process Baby cries care giver received negative reinforcement.
Attachment is a secondary drive. Hunger is primary
LIM-Harlow monkeys attached to soft surrogate not food 23/24 hr.
Lim- Schaffer and Emerson- multiple attachments, mother was not only one to feed. Cannot be generalised
Better Alternative- Bowlby can explain why attachments form. LT=how they form. B is more complete.
LIM- Interaction suggest quality of relationship. interaction such as synchrony. Show that parents that are sensitive carriers have best quality relationship.
ANIMAL STUDIES
Lorenz (1935)- Imprinting
Harlow (1969) Origins of love
Procedure: Divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half the eggs were grouped with the mother, the other half in an incubator with L.
Findings: Incubator group followed and copied L. Mothered group followed their mother
Procedure: 16 monkeys. He placed 2 models one with cloth the other was wire with a bottle.
Lasting effects: 1965, one of the goose has to sleep with him every night.
Chicks that imprinted of humans would also try and mate with them.
Monkeys stayed with cloth model 23/24 hours, soughing comfort.
Long lasting effects: Ones brought up with wire monkeys were more aggressive. Critical period is 90 days.
ROLE OF THE FATHER
Harlow- Ethical Issues. If monkey results can be shared w/ humans due to similarity, but would never do to a baby.
Cannot generalise animals, mammalian mothers are more emotional rather then birds.
Harlow- Monkey mother heads were very different (extraneous variable)
Guiton- Chickens that imprinted on yellow kitchen gloves could then learn to be able to reproduce with their own kinds.
Parent infant attachements: Schaffer + Emerson
Babys become attached to mothers first , then secondary attachments. Father-Infant relations 75% at 18 months.
The role of the father: Grossman
Time spent with father predicted future adolescence. Fathers relationship was more to play and stimulate.
Father as Primary caregiver: Schaffer+ Emerson.
Found Father can take role of mother. The key is the responsiveness within the relationship.
Lamb found that men may not be capable of strong infant relationships as they lack as much sensitivity.
App- Socially sensitive on single/same sex parents. Creates laws for divorce women to have custody of young children
Grossman- Fathers are important, girls mature early if they don't have a father.
LIM- Research into different questions are applied to answer the same questions.
Fathers have an important role to the dev. of a child and learning abut the world. Parents have different roles.
STAGES OF ATTCHMENT
Schaffer and Emerson- Formation of early stages go attachment.
Method: 60 babies, 31 males + 29 females. All from Glasgow, skilled working class families. Babies+ mother visited every month for first year then again at 18m. Mothers were asked about child protests in SS.
Findings: between 25 and 32 weeks, 50% showed signs of separation anxiety. By age 40w 80% of the babies had a specific attachment and 30% had multiple.
Stage 1: Asocial Stage (first few weeks) Baby if coming bonds with care but also to objects, can show preference.
Stage 2: Indiscriminate Attachment (2-7m) Dspay more objserbative behaviour. Preference for humans. Accept cuddles and comfort from any adult. Do not show separation/stranger anxiety.
Stage 3: Specific Attachment(7 months) Start to display separation/stranger anxiety. Forms specific attachment.
Stage 4: Multiple Attachments(1y) Form secondary attachments.
LIM- Ecological validity but may not be reliable as it is a self assessment (demand characteristics/social desirability)
LIM-The research is ethnocentrism as it used not variety of baby only 60 middle class babies from Glasgow, cannot be generalised. Also made in 1960.
Lim- Study states the first few weeks are 'Asocial' but baby have bad hand eye coordination and are immobile so cannot express they selfs.
STRE-Study was Longitudinal.
LIM- people drop out its a lot of data lost that cannot be replaced.
ATTACHMENT
Proximity, Seperation distress,
Secure base
Caregiver- Infant interaction
Reciprocity- Feldman + Eidelman.
- From Birth Babys have an periodic 'Alert phase' and signals to show they are ready for interaction.
- From 3 months, interaction increases (verbal+ facial expression)
- Brazelton. Birth mother and child have innate interactions called a 'dance'.
- Brazelton. Birth mother and child have innate interactions called a 'dance'.
Interactional Sychrony- Metlzoff +Moore
- Procedure: An adult displayed one of three facial expressions, they childs response was then filmed.
- Findings: An association was found. Found synchrony in 3 days old.
- Issablla Procedure: Observed 30 mothers + infants and assessed synchronicity. and found high levels.
WHY? Survival
HOW? Innate drive. Critical period is 2 yr. Sensitive period of 3-6m. Social releasers: innate behaviours. Monotropy
CONSEQUENCE? Internal working model, continuity hypothesis
Isabella further studies and said the stronger the attached the higher levels of synchrony.
LIM- Study is only an observation no cause and effect.
SUP- Infants shown video of mother. Child would get distressed and try and attract attention. Shows baby knows how to gain attention and is aware of actions
SUP- Infants (5-12 weeks) made little response to objects stimulating movement (tongue + mouth open/close). Babies do not just respond to stimulus
BOWLBYS THEORY OF MATERNAL DEPRIVATION
1951 B proposed that the continual presence of nature form a mother or mother substitute is essential for normal psychological development of babies/toddlers.
Diff between separation and deprivation
Critical period (30m)
44 Thieves study-
Procedure: 44 criminal teens accused of stealing were interviewed for signs of affections psychopathy. Their families were interviewed to establish whether the 'theirves' had prolonged maternal early separation.
Control group of emotionally disturbed.
Findings: 14/44 criminal teens would be describe as affections psychopaths. 14/12 had experienced prolonged separation from mothers in first 2 years, and only 5 of remaining 30.
APP- Parents can visit and stay with children in hospital. Money spent on beds is less that psyc treatment.
LIM- Hilda Lewis took on large scale study with 500. In her study there was no correlation.
Lim- Bowlby carried out his own experiment. leaving it liable to investigator bias.
Bowlby never stated whether the Childs attachment bond was formed and broken or whether it had never been formed. The long term damage bowl spoke of id more likely to be a result of privation.
EFFECTS OF INSTITUTIONALISATION- Romanian Orphanages
Background: Poorly sanitised(children sleeping on rotten matters and lying in own faeces. Over crowding, lack of access to services. 137 die in 2 years.
Effects-
Disinhibited attachment: Affectionnante to all people.
Intellectual under functioning: children improved 30 (IQ points) when moved to better institution.
Poor parenting: Children raised by psychological damaged parents are normally unloved.
Physical under development: Usually small. Deprivation dwarfism.
Rutter-
Procedure: 165 children (111 adopted before age 2, 54 before age 4) were tested at regular intervals (6,11,15), info was gathered from parents and teachers. They were compared control group of 52 British 6y.
Findings: Time of adoption- Orphans lagged behind in all measurements (social, cognitive +physical).
Age of 4- Some of the children had caught up, This was almost all the Romanian children adopted before 6.
Follow up- Ideas were less sever than perceived.
LIM- Extraneous variables, lack of cognitive stimulus and lack of physical cause. Can be responsible for negative effects on institutionalisation.
LIM- as they study is longitudinal but the children haven't fully finished developing at 15y. Also what happens when they become parents themselves.
Theory isn't conclusive enough as Rutter imply that effects may be permanent but Disinhibited Dwarfism (after 6m), children may need more time to recover.
APP- Led to improvements in childcare as it enhances the effect. Lower turn over, encouraging mothers to nurse children before giving them up.
INFLUENCE OF EARLY ATTACHMENT OF LATER RELATIONSHIP
Internal working model
Friendships
- Securely attached (less likely to be bullied)
- Insecurely attached.
Romantic relationships- Hazan + Shaver 'Love Quiz'
Procedure: 620 replies to a 'Love quiz' in an American news paper. There were 3 parts.1) assessed current/most important relationships. 2) general love experiences (no. of partners. 3) asked them to chose 1 of 3 statements.
Findings: 56% of respondents were identified as securely attached. 25% insecure avoidant. 19% insecure resistant.
Being a parent: Parent style is based on IWM.
Mcarthy studies 40 women who had been assessed as infants to establish attachment type.
Securely attached = best adult relationships.
Insecure resistant = Problems maintaining friendships.
Insecure Avoidant = Problems with intimacy. Then Zimmerman found little relationship between quality of infant relationship and adolescent attachment.
LIM- The results are contradictory.
Retrospective data, this can be fault to social desirability, this makes the data unreliable and have low validity.
LIM to IWM-Researchers have found adults in happy relationships who were not securely attached as a child.
The study shows a correlation, not cause and effect this is due to it breaking ethical issues. Attachment style and later love life may be due to temperament.
CULTURAL VARIATION
Great Britian- 75% secure,
3% insecure resistant.
China- 50% secure, 25% Insecure-resistant
Germany- 55% secure
Israel- 65% secure
United States- 65% secure
Van Ijzendoorn + Kroonenberg- Wanted to look at the proportions of each attachment type in different countries.
Used a meta analysis of 32 studies to distinguish attachment types.
Grossman + Grossman found that German = insecure due to different cultures. They promote independence.
Takahashi. Used SS to study 60 middle class Japanese infants+ mothers. Found similar rates of secure attachment, how ever non showed insecure avoidant. Insecure resistant was 32%.
LIM- SS was designed by an American using British Theory (Bowlby). This is culture bias + imposed etic
SUP-Van Ijzendoorn + Kroonenberg studies over 2000 babies + attachment figure. (Internal Validity)
LIM-Van Ijzendoorn + Kroonenberg suggested that media can explain cultural similarities. I.e parenting books.
This states that the secure attachment majority is not to biology but environment.
LIM- Attachment type is more related to temperament.
Le Mare + Audet- Romanina orphans were physically smaller at age 4 but by age 10 had caught up.
Zeanah- Compared 137 children who had spent 90% of live in institution. Children age 12-31m were asses in SS. Showed signs of Disinhibited attachment.