What is meant by attachment?
” A deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space”
What are the three criteria for recognising an attachment?
- Proximity (staying physically close to an attachment figure)
- Separation distress (being upset when attachment figure leaves)
- Secure-base behaviour (leaving the attachment figure but regularly return while playing)
What is seen as the role of the father?
Play and stimulation, boundary pushing and economical/peripheral support
What is a primary caregiver?
The adult spending the most time looking after and nurturing the infant
What is a secondary caregiver?
he adult spending the second most time nurturing the infant
What is an primary attachment figure?
The adult the infant forms the most secure relationship with (usually around 7-12 months)
What is meant by multiple attachments?
Other adults the infant forms secure relationships with (after 12 months)
What are some biological reasons as to why the mother is often the primary caregiver?
- Women produce more oxytocin after giving birth, often called the bonding or trust hormone
- Fathers brain activity patterns don’t change as quickly as mothers when they hear their baby’s cry
- Evolutionary effect, such as different fight or flight responses.
- The dads role is better at encouraging play, independence and resilience in the infant due to a higher amount of vasopressin, for aggressive protective response.
What are some social reasons as to why the mother is often the primary caregiver?
- gender stereotypes through media or real life
- Pregnancy and childbirth. Women have already practically done 9 months of nurturing
- Western culture suggests the woman to be the PC and the father to be the SC
- Male and female schemas and beliefs about their own skills.
Research supporting that mothers and fathers can be equally good as the primary caregiver:
- Schaffer and Emerson (1964) - Infants formed primary attachments most often with mothers, however they tended to form attachments based on responsiveness to signals not time spent
- MacCallum and Golombok (2004) - Single parent families and same sex couples had no more attachment issues than heterosexual couples.
- Field (1978) - Filmed parent-infant interactions. PC fathers were similar to PC mothers based on responsiveness to infant signals. SC fathers weren’t.
Research supporting that mothers and fathers have different roles:
- Grossman (2002) - Quality of attachment as a teen related most to mothers nurturing attachment and fathers “play” attachment as an infant.
Evaluation points for the role of the father.
+ research evidence for both sides
- Researchers find it difficult to agree on the most important research question around fathers. (Research contradicts itself) leading to an underdeveloped understanding
- Difficult to distinguish whether role of father is different due to biological or social reasons
- Socially sensitive. Ethical implications and can have impacts on careers. Also has same sex implications.
What are caregiver interactions?
- They are interactions which help the attachment to form
- One of the key interactions between infant and caregivers is non verbal communication.
What is reciprocity?
- From around 3 months, interaction becomes increasingly frequent when each person responds.
- Back and forth pattern of communication
Give an experiment used to show reciprocity
- Tronick’s still faced experiment
- 1978
- Lack of reciprocity = distress in infant.
What is interactional synchrony?
It involves a high degree if similarity and timing between the infants behaviour and the caregivers response.
Research for caregiver interactions:
- Isabella et al (1989) - Observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed degree of synchrony. Higher emotional intensity of relationship resulted in a higher degree of synchrony.
- Meltzoff + Moore (1977) - Adult model displayed one of three facial expressions or hand movements. Following the display, the child’s expression was filmed. Association demonstrate between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model
Evaluation points for caregiver interactions
+ Highly controlled research clearly shows an association between interactions and attachment. (Isabella + Tronick)
+ Practical application with changes to hospital procedures as encouraging contact with the parent straight from birth.
+ No demand characteristics, infant does not know they are being observed.
- Difficult to know what is taking place from the infants perspective, cannot be questioned.
- Mother-infant interactions are socially sensitive, implying that mothers who have to work restrict opportunities for interactional synchrony. Suggests women should not return to work soon after giving birth
Findings of Isabella et al’s research
- Mother-child with secure attachment interacted in a well timed and mutually rewarding manner
- Mother-child with insecure attachment displayed less synchronous interaction.
How operant conditioning explains attachment
- Positive and negative reinforcement is used in both the mother and infant (a two way process) to create a closer emotional bond.
- When a baby is hungry, the mother feeds them. This is negative reinforcement as the feeling of hunger is removed.
- For the mother, negative reinforcement is used when comforting a crying child removes the unpleasant sound and feelings of stress associated with their child crying
Who suggested that the infant caregiver attachment can be explained using learning theory
Dollard and Miller
Evaluation of learning theory (-/+)
- A weakness is evidence that nature plays a greater role than nurture in the formation of attachment
- A weakness is evidence that caregiver interactions plausibly a greater role than conditioning in the formation of attachment
+ A strength is that condition may still explain various aspects of attachment
Why do we study animals?
Darwins evolutionary theory suggests that humans are animals and we have similar biological and behavioural traits
