2. Attachment
• A strong, reciprocal, emotional bond
between an infant on primary care giver
• Two way
• Primary care giver is normally the mother
• Nature vs. Nurture argument
3. Learning Approach
• Attachment is behaviour learnt from the environment through conditioning
• Operant conditioning
– Learning through consequence
– Caregiver is seen as a reward
– When the child cries, caregiver responds by fulfilling needs which reinforces the behaviour
to continue
• If the caregiver doesn’t respond, the child is less likely to repeat the behaviour as it is seen as
punishment
• Classical conditioning
– Learning through association
– When the same person fulfils the child’s needs they associate that person with the feeling of
comfort
• Once this happens several times, the caregiver becomes the conditioned stimulus to which the child
responds with comfort
• Dollard and Miller
– Combines the two types of conditioning
– Cupboard love
• The need of food for survival
• Not having food creates distress
– Reinforced behaviours that produce desirable responses
• Food, warmth, etc.
• Operant conditioning
– Learn to associate caregiver with feeling of pleasure
• Classical conditioning
4. Learning Approach
• Evaluation
– Shaffer and Emerson
• Attachments are formed to responsive individuals
– As opposed to those who provide care
• Challenges learning theory as children form attachments to people
who don’t feed them
– Harlow
• Rhesus monkeys formed attachments with comforting dummy rather
than feeding dummy
– Research suggests that it may not be to do with food but rather
comfort
5. Bowlby’s Evolutionary Theory
• Attachment has evolved due to a survival value
• Evolutionary trait which is always genetically
transmitted
– It is pre-programmed
– Children born with drive to attach to a caregiver
• It is innate
• Lorenz
– Goslings become attached to the first moving thing
they see when out of the egg
• Called imprinting
• Influenced Bowlby’s theory
6. Bowlby’s Evolutionary Theory
• Most innate characteristics develop best in a limited time period
– Sensitive period
• 6-9 months
– Can develop later but is much more difficult
• Infants born with certain characteristics which elicit care giving
– Social releasers
• Appearance, crying, cooing, smiling, etc.
• Attachment provides a secure base
– Allows the child to explore the world but return when they feel threatened
• Even in adult hood, you return to the secure base
– Attachment creates independence instead of dependence
• You form a number of attachments but one of them is different
– Called the primary attachment monotropy
• Relation between child and primary caregiver creates a template
– Internal working model
• What the child will base all future relationships off of
• Link between early attachment relationships and later emotional behaviour
– Continuity hypothesis
7. Bowlby’s Evolutionary Theory
• Evaluation
– Shaffer and Emerson
• Attachments formed to responsive individuals rather than ones that
provide care
• Develop multiple attachments earlier than Bowlby predicted
• Primary attachment can be father
– Challenges Bowlby’s theory
– Harlow
• Rhesus monkeys attached to comforting dummy mother rather than
feeding dummy
– Shows attachment is probably innate rather than learnt
• Study carried out on animals
– Cannot extrapolate results to humans
» We are cognitively and physiologically different
8. Harlow
• Done in 1950’s
– Not affectionate era
• Bred monkeys
– Took away from mothers so became attached to nappies
• Sought out physical contact and attachment
• Were given a wire dummy mother and a cloth dummy mother
– Wire dummy provided food, cloth dummy didn’t
– Became attached to cloth dummy despite not giving food
• Monkeys attached to cloth mother experienced privation
• They never learnt to socialise
– No model to imitate
– Internal working model
• Evaluation
– Chose to experiment on monkeys due to closeness to humans
– Moral obligations
– Anthropomorphism
• Animals given human characteristics
– Shows comfort is basis for attachment
• Not survival (food)
• Contact comfort
9. Measuring Attachment – The Strange Situation
• Mary Ainsworth
– Explore different types of attachment between child and mother
– Controlled observation
• Child and mother observed interacting
– Four main behaviours observed
• Exploration behaviour
– Is mother considered a secure base
• Stranger anxiety
• Separation anxiety
• Reunion behaviour
– Procedure
• Experimenter introduces mother and child to room and leaves
• Parent seated while baby plays with toys
– Exploration behaviour
• Stranger enters, sits and talks with parent
– Stranger anxiety
• Parent leaves room, stranger responds to child and comforts if upset
– Separation anxiety/stranger anxiety
• Parent returns, greets and offers comfort of necessary to child, stranger leaves
– Reunion behaviour
• Parent leaves room
– Separation anxiety
• Stranger enters, offers comfort of necessary
– Stranger anxiety
• Parent returns, comforts if necessary, and tries to get baby re-interested in toys
–
10. Measuring Attachment – The
Strange Situation
• Secure attachment
– Nearly 70% showed these behaviours
• Uses mother as a secure base
• Stranger anxiety
• Separation anxiety
• Happiness upon reunion
• Insecure avoidant
– 15-20%
• Not worried when left
• Treat mother and stranger in a similar manner
• Avoids mother on reunion
• Insecure resistant/ambivalent
– 10-15%
• Extremely distressed when left
• Stranger anxiety
• Difficult to comfort upon reunion
– Both seeking and rejecting mother
11. Measuring Attachment – The Strange
Situation
• Evaluation
– Procedure is easy to replicate
• Similar results have been found
• Results are reliable
– Lack of mundane realism
• Infants and mothers in an unfamiliar environment
• This type of situation happens regularly in real life
– Going to a child minders
– Ethics
• Children may have been stressed when mother left room
• Procedure was discontinued if child showed intense distress
– Population validity
• Original done on middle class, white Americans
– Might have different ways of bringing up children
– Could influence results
– Cannot generalise to wider audience
• Could be ethnocentric as well
– Only looked at attachment between mother and child
• Child may have primary attachment to father
• Different types of attachment occur through sensitivity of mother
– Mothers who are sensitive and read child’s moods and feelings, more likely to
have a secure attachment to children
• Van Ijzendoorn and De Wolff
– Found a weak positive correlation between sensitivity and attachment
• Kagan
– Argued child’s temperament must be taken into account
12. Measuring Attachment – The
Strange Situation
• Temperament hypothesis
– Different aspects of temperament
• Activity
– How much time the child spends awake
• Emotionality
– How the child becomes upset and aroused by events
• Sociability
– How much the child seeks human company
– Different temperaments require different types of care
• Belsky and Rovine
– Individual differences in attachment relate to the temperament of child and
sensitivity of carer
• Hazan and Shaver
– Type of attachment in early childhood predicts the type of relationships
in adulthood
• Backs up continuity hypothesis by Bowlby
– Some people with a poor attachment in early childhood develop secure
relationships in later life
• Challenges the continuity hypothesis
13. Measuring Attachment – Cross Cultural Variations
(Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg)
• Meta-analysis
– Looked at 8 countries
– 32 studies done
– Over 1000 strange situations
• Didn’t do all studies themselves
• Evaluation
– Large meta-analysis
• Includes collectivist and
individualistic cultures
• 27 took place in Western cultures
– Largest sample was America
• Sample is biased and may not be
representative
– Procedure developed in US
• May not be suitable for other
cultures
– Japanese children never
separated from parents before
age of 2
» React very differently to a
child used to separation
– Ethical issues
• Children got so distressed,
procedure had to be stopped
Country No. of
Studies
Secure Avoidant Resistant
Germany
3 56.6 35.3 8.1
Israel
2 64.4 6.8 28.8
Japan
2 67.7 5.2 27.1
China
1 50 25 25
USA
18 64.8 21.1 14.1
Great
Britain 1 75 22.2 2.8
14. Disruption of Attachment
• Separation
– Child separated from attachment figure for a short amount of time
• Deprivation
– Child formed attachment but experiences loss of attachment figure
• Loss is long term/permanent and attachment bond is broken
• Privation
– Child has never been able to form an attachment with any one caregiver
• PDD model
– Little John’s mother in hospital and was left in hospital crèche for 9 days
• Father visited everyday but nurses ignored him
– Protest
• Child protests at separation by crying, calling for primary caregiver and shows signs of
panic
– Despair
• After approximately 1 day, child looses interest in surroundings, becomes withdrawn,
cries less, eats and sleeps poorly
– Detachment
• Child cries less, appears to have recovered, more alert and interested in surroundings
• If caregiver reappears, child may not show interest
• Attachment between child and caregiver may be damaged
– Most children re-establish attachment over time
• Bond may be permanently broken for some
• 4 children were fostered while mother was in hospital
– Maintained contact with primary caregiver
• Did not go through PDD model and happily went back to mother
– Quality of care is critical
15. Effects of Privation
• Koluchova twins
– Found at age 7
– No recognisable speech
– Placed with foster carers who provided secure home
• Developed strong attachment to foster family
• Cognitive and social development normal once in foster care
– Doesn’t support Bowlby
• Formed attachment to foster carers
• Cognitive development caught up to normal norms
• Could have attached to one another when in isolation
• Genie
– Found at age 13
– No speech found
• Never developed past basic communication
– Formed attachment to David Rigler
• Bond broken when moved to foster care
– Supports Bowlby
• Effects of deprivation were long lasting
• Could have been retarded from birth
• Cannot draw accurate conclusions
• Evaluation
– Case study so very small sample
• Cannot generalise to wider population
– Results may have been influenced by individual characteristics
– Ethical issues
• Results cannot be replicated so not reliable
– Retrospective data
• Impossible to check what happened before children were found
16. Effects of Institutionalisation (Hodges
and Tizard)
• Natural experiment
• 65 children brought up in children’s home until age 4
– Unable to form attachment until then
– Provided good physical care and intellectual stimulation
– No emotional support
• 25 returned to family, 33 adopted, 7 remained in care
• Followed up at age 8 and 16
• Results
– Most adoptees formed close attachments to adoptive parents
• Difficulties with peer relations
– Less than half restored children had close attachments to parents
• Difficulties with peer relations
– Supports Bowlby’s critical period theory
• Children had difficulties developing peer relationships
– Challenges Bowlby’s critical period theory
• Adopted and nearly half restored able to form strong bonds with parents
• Evaluation
– Natural study
• Lack of control of extraneous variables
– Attrition
– High ecological validity
– High mundane realism
17. Effects of Institutionalisation
• Rutter
– On-going longitudinal study
– Adopted Romanian orphans
– Assessed them at ages 4, 6 and 11
– Children spent early years in physical and emotional privation
• Adopted children at 6 months showed normal levels of development
– Compared to UK adopted children of a similar age
• Adopted after 6 months showed disinhibited behaviour
– Superficially accepting anyone as a caregiver
– Problems with peers
– Shows children could recover from effects of early privation and
institutional care
• Early adoptions had a more positive outcome
– Evaluation
• Used a variety of research methods
– Makes research more detailed
– Responses could have been influenced by social desirability
• Attrition of sample
– Some participants dropped out of study
• Natural experiment
– Extraneous variables may have influenced results
18. Day Care
• Day nurseries
– Provide for a large number of children
– Children divided into smaller groups depending on age
– Inspected regularly
– Have to employ qualified staff
– More children per staff member the older that are
• Childminders
– Maximum of 6 children
• No more than 3 under age 3
• Childminders own children count
– Usually look after them in a home environment
– Must be registered and inspected by Ofsted
– Not all childminders are qualified
• The best one for a child differs
– Age of the child
• If they have formed an attachment
– Type of existing attachment
• If it is a secure attachment, if an attachment has been formed
– Childs temperament
• Easy-going or shy
– Quality of the day care
19. Quality of Day Care
• 4 main things to be of good quality
– Low children to staff ratio
• Child can form a bond
• Affect the anger/happiness of child
• Quality over quantity
– Low staff turnover
• Longer staff work at nursery the better
• Consistency for the child
– Stimulating environment
• Clean and tidy
• Warm and light
• Plenty of stimulating toys and activities
• Children need stimulation to develop properly
– Well trained staff
• Care for children
• Good at interacting in an appropriate way
• Know how to encourage and support
20. Social Development – Peer Relations
• Clarke-Stewart
– Studied 150 children attending school for the first time
• Experienced different forms of day care
– Children who attended nurseries coped better in social situations and able to
interact better with peers
• Compared to children looked after in family settings
– Being in day care helps social relations and improves peer relations
– Evaluation
• Small study
– Can generalise findings but with caution
• Andersson
– Studied social and cognitive progress of children attending Swedish day care
– Children who attended day care got along better with peers and had better
abilities to play with other children who did not attend day care
– Being in day care help social development and improves peer relations
– Evaluation
• Swedish day care is particularly good quality
• Findings are supported by other studies
• DiLalla
– Correlational study into time spent in day care and pro-social behaviour
– Found a negative correlation between amount of time spent in day care and pro-
social behaviour
• Children who spent more time in day care were less cooperative and helpful
– Day care can harm peer relations
– Evaluation
• Correlation so cannot infer cause and effect
21. Social Development – Aggression
• EPPE project
– Studied over 3000 children in UK aged 3-7
– Slight risk of antisocial behaviour when children spend more than 20 hours per week in
nurseries
• Risk noticeably increases when 40+ hours a week spent in care
• Increased aggression amongst children’s carers who were constantly changing
– Day care can increase anti-social and aggressive behaviour
• Longer child spends in day care, more apparent aggressive behaviour is
– Evaluation
• Supported by other research
– NICHD study found increased aggression among children in day care
• Baker
– Analysed data on 33,000 children of 2 parent families
• Day care for all in Quebec introduced
• 0-4 year olds in day care increased by 14% and number of married women returning to work
increased
– After day care for all introduced, aggression in 2-4 year olds increased by 24% in Quebec
• Compared to the rest of Canada
• Well being of parents also decreased
– Greater incidence of hostile parenting and dissatisfaction with spouse
– Day care can increase aggressive behaviour
– Evaluation
• Relations between parents and parents attitudes also changed
– Difficult to know whether day care directly caused aggressiveness or if partly through parent behaviours at home
• Shea
– Video-taped children aged 3-4 during first 10 weeks of nursery school
– Children became more sociable the longer they were in nursery
• Amount of aggressive behaviour decreased
• Changes were greater in children attending 5 days a week compared to those attending 2 days a
week
– Day care can increase sociability and decrease aggressive behaviour
– Evaluation
