Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Development - Measuring Attachment (Y1) - Coggle Diagram
Development - Measuring Attachment (Y1)
Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Aimed to investigate attachment styles in children, using studies in Uganda (1967) and Baltimore in 1970
The procedure of the Strange Situation; interest was in the child's attitude and approach to the stranger and the mother, with children aged 1-2
Unfamiliar environment, unfamiliar person and separation from the attachment figure
Attachment figure acts as a secure base for exploration
Demonstrates separation anxiety and fear of strangers
Demonstration of reunion behaviour
Series of 8 episodes, lasting 3 minutes each:
Mother and baby shown into an observation room
Mother inactive but baby explores
Female stranger enters, after one minute speaks to mother, after another approaches child - mother leaves
baby and stranger left alone
mother returns, stranger leaves, mother settles child then leaves again
Baby left alone
Stranger re enters and tries to interact with baby
Stranger leaves, mother returns
Key findings - 70% securely attached, 15% anxious avoidant and 15% anxious ambivalent
Secure attachment - greet parents with positive emotions
Insecure avoidant - no reunion behaviour and avoids parents
Insecure resistant / ambivalent - wary of strangers, not comforted at reunion
Attachment types: A (avoidant), B (secure), C (resistant / ambivalent), D (disorganised) - ACD are insecure / anxious
Type B - Secure
Active exploration / secure base
Separation - upset / protest
Stranger - moderate anxiety
Reunion - greets mother warmly, seeks proximity, but outgoing with stranger somewaht
Cause - responsive and sensitive caregiving
Type A - Insecure Avoidant
Engage in exploration but ignore mother
Separation - no upset and little distress
Reunion - turn away and ignore mother even when attention is sought, and outgoing with stranger or ignore them
Cause - intrusive caregiving, rejecting - infant becomes emotionally and physically independent as needs are not met
Type C - Insecure ambivalent
Secure base - stays close to mother, clingy
Separation - extreme distress
Reunion - infant remains near mother but appears angry and resists physical contact initiated - wary of stranger
Cause - inconsistent caregiving
Type D - Disorganised
Secure base - confusion about whether to approach or avoid mother
Separation - mixture of avoidant and resistant
Reunion - act dazed, freeze, may move sloer then abruptly retreat as mother gets closer
Cause - abusive caregiving, depressed parent, frightening
Attachment styles linked to personality types:
Secure - well adjusted, content, engaged and on task
Avoidant - unempathic, compulsively self reliant and controlling and withdrawn, quiet and anxious
Ambivalent - low self esteem, bullying victim, anxious, unfocused, insecure, asking many questions
Disorganized - bullies, aggressive, angry, depressed, not following directions, short fuse and difficulty making friends
Implications of the procedure: determinants of attachment style are:
parental sensitivity and responsiveness to infant distress
depressed caregiver
formerly mistreated caregiver
unwanted pregnancies
Status of attachment: Vaughn et al's 1980 poverty study - observed children at 1 year and 18 months and found that 38% changed categories in ways related to mother's life situations or day care arrangements
Therapy - individuals can come to recognize and reflect on their current attachment style, and then can work to change it if it is causing relationship problems
Critiquing attachment research - cross cultural findings
Limitations of attachment research: Designed as a research tool so categories are not diagnoses:
Reliable but requires highly trained observers
Applicable to limited age range
Ethical issues associated with causing distress
Too mother focused - what about other attachments
limited data collection from observation - emphasis on child's behaviour not on caregiver's - not whole story
Child rearing practices vary considerably from place to place, due to different environments, traditions and beliefs in raising children
This causes different responses to the Strange Situation and it is not a unievrsal procedure but culturally specific
Attachment styles describe West - not generalisable
Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg: meta analysis of 32 studies in different countries
looked at proportions of different SSC attachment types
Secure attachments always most common, but there is variation
Japan - high levels of resistant (27%) and Germany high levels of avoidant (35%)
Japanese children are usually not left in their first year of life and so they are likely to show my resistant behaviour, whereas in Germany independent behaviour is more encouraged, explaining the avoidance
Collective parenting in Japan and Israel also lead to resistant attachment
Grossman et al (1991) - high avoidance of children in Germany
Findings do suggest attachment has some universal features:
However, there is variation both between and within cultures
SSC may not be the best tool for cross cultural research as it assumes behaviour has same significance as in US/UK
Disorganised attachment and unresolved attachment representations:
Disorganised infants show behaviours of freezing and hair pulling, avoiding mother despite separation distress and misdirected behaviour such as seeking stranger proximity
Unresolved stress and anxiety
Cause - parent is a source of fright
Van Ijzendoorn - most common in infants with neurological abnormalities (35%, 15% in normal)
43% in parents with substance abuse issues and 48% in those who abused infants
Not higher for those with physical disabilities and is not related to maternal unresolved loss or trauma
Said to result from having a frightened mother or one who shows frightening behaviour due to her own unresolved mental state
Hughes - 53 mothers who had a birth after stillbirth, with 58% scoring as unresolved, compared to 8% of controls and 36% had disorganised infants
Stillbirth experience predicts unresolved maternal states of mind and this then predicts infant disorganisation
Jacobsen et al - disorganized attachment related to high levels of expressed emotion (critical speech)
Disorganised attachment is a predictor for later aggressive behaviour and child psychopathology (Carlson, Van Ijzendoorn) - parental maltreatment and abuse and so Type D is most relevant to understanding maladptive and antisocial behaviours in later life
Some genetic cause, DRD4 gene, Belsky and Pluess (2009)
Changing attachment - Vaughn - attachment can change later in life due to events that affect the family system;
Attachment type is mostly continuous, but infants who become insecure note negative experiences and those that become secure note positive ones
Many studies concluded most people retain attachment,, going from secure to autonomous, avoidant to dismissive, ambivalent to enmeshed and disorganized to unresolved
Discontinuous attachment linked to environmental factors like divorce
AAI indicates that parents and children share attachment types (IWM teaches parenting, transmit parenting they known which makes children insecure also)
Fonagy et al - longitudinal study with 100 mothers and fathers in London:
Given AAI before child was born, SS at 12 months and 18 months - AAI predicted SS scores
Obtained estimates of deprivation / disrupted parenting, and found that this influences infant attachment only if parent is deeply affected by their own parenting experience
Reflective self function scale - ability of parents to reflect on conscious and unconsious psychological states and conflicting beliefs and desires
17 mothers with deprived parenting and low self reflective scores all had insecurely attached infants
10 mothers with deprived parenting but high scores had secure infants
A change of IWM is possible and breakaway from generational attachment is possible
Those who achieve this are known as earned secures - changed IWM, continuous secures have positive upbringing
Earned secures, like continuous secures, show positive parenting even under conditions of stress, and grandparents in an AAI study who were in the Holocaust also showed a growth out of disorganised attachment from unresolved attachment trauma
Attachment has often been crticised for being too simplistic, and feminist psychologists have also objected to the implications of the female identity being associated with child rearing
Socially sensitive - high price of maternal sensitivtiy in areas such as careers and self esteem puts unfair pressure on women
Adult attachment and changing attachment: Main et al (1995)
adults and adolescents have operational thinking and so IWM's can be altered with direct interaction - to measure attachment, they developed the AAI (Adult Attachment Interview)
This is a semi structured interview that probes memories of one's own early childhood experiences
4 main patterns - AAI; Autonomous, Dismissive, Emmeshed, Unresolved:
Autonomous - persons who can recall early attachment related experiences objectively and openly, even if these were not favourable
Dismissive - persons who dismiss attachment relationships as of little concern, value or influence
Enmeshed - persons who seem preoccupied with depedency of their own parents and still actively struggle to please them
Unresolved - persons who have experienced trauma or death of an attachment figure and have not worked through this
VI concluded through analyzing 33 different studies that mothers, fathers and older adolescents do not significantly differ in their distribution among the three main categories - people from lower socio economic groups more likely to be dismissive
Most are A, D or E
Large difference in those having clinical treatments, as most are not autonomous