Theories of Attachment

Bowlby's Theory

Ainsworth's Theory

Rutter's Theory

Schaffer & Emerson's Theory

He said that infants form attachments because its adaptive. adaptive = good for survival.

Bowlby's theory of attachment suggested that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachment with others because this will help them survive.

He discovered that there are four ways to categorise attachment, these are secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-ambivalent and insecure-disorganised.

He suggested that a baby will form an attachment to one figure to act as a secure base in the exploring world so whenever they get freaked out or need to seek comfort, they have someone to go to.

this theory can also be explained as the 'evolutionary explanation'

the baby will come back to the caregiver for food and protection

babies are born with the 'attachment gene'

Disorganised - child shows no attachment behaviours, often appear dazed or confused in the presence of the parent.

Abivalent - child shows distress when the parent leaves but not comforted when they return.

Avoidant - child shows no distress when the parent leaves and no acknowledgement when the parent returns, doesn't make contact.

secure - the child is able to separate from their parents and seek comfort in their return, greeting them with a positive response.

He suggests that the clingy, attention seeking, guilt and dependent behaviour may not be due to the lack of attachment to their mother but to factors of the lack of intellectual stimulation and social experiences.

He wrote a book called the Maternal Deprivation Re-assessed. In the book, Rutter explained that Bowlby's theory may of oversimplified the concept of maternal deprivation.

Rutter argued that if a child fails to develop attachment, this is 'privation', whereas 'deprivation' is the loss or damage to attachment.

Deprivation - the loss of something someone once had.
Privation - never having something in the first place.

According to Rutter, privation should be the most likely to lead to attention seeking, a personality characterised by lack of guilt and clingy behaviour.

Rutter's procedure:
He studied over 2000 boys between 9 and 12 years old living on the Isle of Wight. He used interviews with the boys and their families to see if the boys who had been separated from their mothers in early life turned to crime later on.

Rutter re-assessed Bowlby's theory and suggested that infants and young children display a whole range of attachment behaviours towards a variety of different figures not specific to the mother. the mother is not special in the way that the infant shows its attachment to her.

He concluded it was conflict and stress which came before the separation rather than the separation itself, which was the cause of antisocial behaviour.

He found that if the separation was due to illness or death of the mother, the boy was unlikely to turn to crime. However, if the separation was due to psychological disorder or one or both of the parents, or to stress and arguments in the family, they were four times more likely to turn to crime.

the baby will display social releasers such as crying or smiling to increase chances of receiving care.

The strange situation is a standardised procedure devised by Ainsworth to observe attachment security in children within context of caregiver relationships. This applies to infants between the age of 9 and 18 months.

The security of attachment in 1-2 year old children were investigated using the strange situation paradigm, in order to determine the nature of attachment behaviours and styles of attachment.

Mary Ainsworth worked with John Bowlby where she began her research of maternal development of the "strange situation" assessment used to observe child attachment exist: secure, anxious-avoidant and anxious.

The procedure involves a series of eight episodes lasting approximately three minutes each, whereby a mother, child and stranger are introduces, separated and reunited.

The experiment is set up in a small room with one way glass so the behaviour of the infant can be observed covertly. the sample was 100 American families.

The eight stages

  1. mother, baby and experimenter (lasts for less that one minute)
  1. mother and baby alone
  1. a stranger joins the mother and baby
  1. mother leaves the baby alone with the stranger
  1. mother return and stranger leaves
  1. mother leaves, baby is left alone
  1. stranger returns
  1. mother returns and stranger leaves

Scoring: based primarily on four interaction behaviours directed to the mother in the two reunion episodes.

Proximity and contacting seeking

contact maintaining

avoidance of proximity and contact

resistance to contact and comforting

Schaffer and Emerson studied 60 babies at monthly intervals for the for 18 months of their lives (aka longitudinal study). The children were all studied in their own home and a regular pattern was identified in the development of attachment. Interactions with their carers were observed and carers were interviewed.

they discovered that the baby's attachment develops in the following sequence:

The mother also kept a diary which was used to examine the evidence for the types of attachment. Three different types of attachment measures were recorded:

separation anxiety - distress level of a child when separated from a carer and the degree of comfort when the carer returns

Social referencing - a degree where a child looks at their carer to check how they should respond to something new

stranger anxiety - the child's response to when a stranger enters the room

0-6 weeks: Asocial, little to no attachment formed

6wks-7mths: Indiscriminate attachments, sometimes visible but not always easy to see

7-9mths: specific attachments, easy to see an attachment to a person

10mths+: multiple attachments, child can form more than one attachment to different people

Many of the babies had several attachment by ten months old including attachments to mothers, father, siblings, grandparents and neighbours. In the experiment, the mother was the attachment for roughly half the babies and the father for most of the other half.

The most important fact that Schaffer and Emerson discovered is that the forming of attachments is not specific to who feeds them or changes them. Or who does the day to day things for the child.

The child forms attachments to the ones who play with them often and communicates to them because thats when the child feels close to the carer and safe.