Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Explanations of attachment, Rutter (1981) also disputes Bowlby's idea…

- - - - Classical conditioning happens when a response produced naturally by stimulus becomes associated with another stimulus not normally associated with that particular response.
        
        Attachments are learned by the food (the unconditioned stimulus) producing a natural response of please (unconditioned response) being paired with a caregiver (conditioned stimulus). As there parents persist, the infants learns to associate caregiver with please even in the absence of food.
    - - Operant conditioning states that where any action with a pleasurable outcome is repeated, the behaviour will also be repeated.
        
        So attachments happen because the caregiver has become associated with the reduction if hunger (negative reinforcement) and the caregiver becomes the source of reinforcement (or reward) themselves.
- - - - Bowlby applied his findings of animal studies to humans, concluding that emotional bonds had evolutionary functions.
        
        According to Bowlby, attachment bonds developed during the Pleistocene or Stone Age era as a response to the constant threat from predators.
        
        So attachment evolved to make sure the offspring remain close to caregivers.
  - - - Through evolution, infants have developed innate species-specific behaviours, making sure they are cared for and protected. These behaviours are known as social releases.
  - - - Crying - to attract parents' attention
      - Looking/smiling/vocalising - to maintain physical proximity to parents
      - Following and clinging - to gain and maintain physical proximity to parents.
    - - To begin with, they appear in an automatic, stereotyped way and are triggered by many people, but become focused on fewer people within the year.
  - - - Bowlby saw this generally happening between infants and their biological mothers, but admitted that it might occasionally happen with fathers or non-biologically related individuals.
  - - - Attachment behaviour give little purpose for most children if developed beyond the first year and were useless if developed after two and a half to three years.
  - - - Bowlby called this template the internal working model.
        
        Disruption in infancy could have repercussions later on and, although Bowlby believed that other attachments were possible, he saw these as secondary to the bond between mother and child.
  - - - Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that multiple attachments are the norm, disputing Bowlby's theory of monotropy.
    - - The continuity hypothesis, the notion that there is a consistency between early attachment types in later relationships,, is supported by research evidence.
        
        Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that infants do have multiple attachments, but they also have one primary attachment figure. This supports Bowlby's theory of monotropy.
    - - Imprinting applies primarily to precocial (animals mobile soon after birth), but humans are an altricial species (they are born at a very early age of development) so imprinting might not relate to humans.
        
        Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that attachments happened mainly with individuals displaying sensitive responses.. This disputes Bowlby's suggestion that attachment is a form of human imprinting.
        
        While Bowlby saw fathers as minor attachment figures, research disputes this.