Meltzoff and Moore

Conducted a study to investigate interactional synchrony.

Was a controlled observation where an infant was shown a model making facial expression

The infant's reactions were filmed.

They found an association between the infant behaviour and that of the model.

The fact that they were so young shows that the behaviour has not been learnt, but is innate

Eval

• A strength is that the evidence provided is from a controlled observation. This means situational variables were controlled (model, expressions, location, no other distractions). This makes the evidence more reliable, and allows for the study to be easily replicated if need be.
• The study has inter-rater reliability, since the observations were filmed and behaviours checked by observers.
• Low validity since we cannot be sure if the movements were specifically to copy the model. Babies move sporadically when they are young, since they have little control over their motor functions. We cannot be sure, therefore, if their movements were done intentionally to copy the model.

Stage 1: Indiscriminate Attachment

Birth- 2 months

Similar responses given to non-living objects and humans. Interactional Synchrony important at this stage 

Stage 2: Beginnings of Attachment 

4 months - 7 months

Child can differentiate between familiar and non-familiar faces, but is easily comforted by anyone

No stranger or separation anxiety

Stage 3: Discriminate Attachment

From 7 months

Child forms primary attachment with primary caregiver

experiences separation anxiety from this caregiver, and feels stranger anxiety around others.

Can only be comforted by primary caregiver.

Stage 4: Multiple Attachments

From any point after primary attachment forms.

Secondary attachments are formed (with siblings, grandparents etc.)

Child can experience separation anxiety from them too

The Role of the Father

Shaffer found that the mother was the primary attachment figure 65% of the time, father only 3%

This is due to CULTURAL and BIOLOGICAL reasons:

Cultural: Fathers normally spend more time at work, so less time interacting with their children and forming attachments.

Stereo-typically, fathers are not as caring and sensitive to their children, as they do not want to appear feminine

Biological: Men have less oestrogen in their bodies, which possibly makes them less sensitive and caring. They're just less psychologically equipped to take care of children.

Sometimes fathers can act to provide challenges to their children, and to engage them in physical activiies and challenges.

In single parent families, fathers and infants can form secure attachments

• The study was a longitudinal, natural study, this allowed them to see genuine behaviour with genuine results that can be considered to have high ecological validity. They can therefore be generalised since there was no IV manipulated. The infants would be in their most natural environments, so would show their true behaviour. 

Lorenz 

Took a clutch of geese eggs, separated them so half were put in an incubator, half stayed with the mother.

When the ones in the incubator hatched, he made sure he was the first moving thing they saw. They seemed to imprint on him.

What Lorenz found was that they would follow him around, showed no sign of recognising their real mother, and even went on to show mating rituals to humans later in life.

He also found that the geese had a critical period of about 2 days, after which if they had not imprinted, they never would.

Evaluation

Supporting evidence from Guiton, who exposed baby hens to a yellow rubber glove when they hatched. They imprinted on the glove. This supports the idea that animals are predisposed to imprint on the first moving thing they see during their critical period.

However, we cannot use Lorenz's results since he conducted the research on birds. Mammalian attachment is different to that of birds, and what's more human attachment involves emotions. Therefore we cannot apply the conclusions of Lorenz's research to humans, and his research contributes nothing to our understanding of attachment.

Harlow took 8 baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers and put them with two model 'surrogates' instead. The two mothers had different heads, and one was covered in cloth, and one with wire.

4 monkeys were in a condition where the cloth mother had a bottle, and the remaining four were in a condition where the wire mother had the bottle.

The monkeys were observed for 165 days, and their behaviour in the presence of a fearful stimulus was also observed.

Harlow found that the monkeys spent the majority of time with the cloth mother, and only went to the wire mother in order to eat. They also clung to the cloth mother when frightened, and used her as a base when put in an environment to explore

This proved that infants do not only form attachments with those that feed them, but comfort also plays a factor.

He also found that the motherless monkeys grew up to be socially and sexually abnormal, but if put back in an environment with other monkeys before the age of three months, the effects could be reversed.

Evaluation

Confounding variable, i.e. the mothers heads were vastly different. This could have been a contributing factor as to why they stayed with the cloth mother more. This means that the results are possibly not (internally) valid, and we cannot be sure if IV affects DV.

Conducted on monkeys and not humans, so we cannot generalise the results to humans. Shaffer and Emmerson do, in a way support Harlow, but we must rely on human studies the most

Ethically questionable, the research had lasting emotional harm on the monkeys which was not always reversible. But it was necessary as the research contributed to our understanding of attachment better

Aka the Evolutionary Theory

1. Bowlby suggests that forming an attachment is innate process, that babies and adults are born being able to do it.

2. That the attachment forms within the critical period of the first two and a half years of a child's life, and wont form after that. 

3. The first attachment formed should be a monotropic attachment with the mother

4. Babies innately have social releasers that indicate that they wish to interact with the caregiver (smiling, crying, gazing)

5. The monotropic attachment has an effect on the relationships of the infant later in life, since it provides an internal working model for relationships (part of the continuity hypothesis)

Monotropy: one special relationship which forms a mental representation of relationships. 

this allows the child to understand the caregiver, apparently

Evaluation of Bowlby

• There is supporting research for Bowlby's continuity hypothesis from longitudinal studies. Children were categorised into attachment types in early infancy and then were observed in adulthood too investigate how their adult relationships were. There were better relationships for those with secure attachments.

• A criticism of Bowlby's theory is that it places too much emphasis on monotropy. Research such as Shaffers have shown that infants can form multiple, equally strong attachments with different people. This is a weakness of the theory because it is partly centred around the idea of montropy

Furthermore, the idea of the Critical Period has also been critisised. Bowlby suggests that after the age of 2.5 yo, if a child has not formed ​an attachment, they never will. This is arguabl false however since it has been seen that adopted children can still form strong attachments with their adoptive parents, despite being older than 2.5 years

It's been proposed that the critical period is more of a 'sensitive period' where attachments are most likely to form.

Stranger Babies

Ainsworth studied 100 middle-class American Mums and their babs

Babies were observed to see their behaviour with their mum in a strange environment as well with a stranger. The behavioural categories that were being observed were examples of positive or negative reunion behaviour, stranger anxiety or separation anxiety, and willingness to explore.

There were a standardised series of stages involving the mother and a stranger that each mother and child would go through.

From her observations, Ainsworth determined three attachment types:

1. Insecure Avoidant 

2. Secure

3. Insecure Resistant

Insecure Avoidant (12%)

• Willing to explore

• Indifferent when mother returned

• Low stranger anxiety

• Low seperation anxiety

• Normal amount of stranger anxiety

• Normal amount of separation anxiety

• Pleasure on reunion with mother

• Distress on separation

• Willing to explore by using mother as a base

Insecure Resistant (12%)

• Not willing to explore

• High stranger anxiety

• High separation anxiety

• Ambivalent behavior: seeks and resists contact with mother at reunion

Cultural Bias in Ainsworth's study

theres a lot

Bias

• Ainsworth based the criteria for a secure attachment on American ideals of what children should be like
• It is assumed that children around the world will be the same
• These norms cannot be applied to all cultures, since different cultures have different ways of raising their children and different values.
• Modern psychologists are therefore conducting research on different cultures in order to better understand attachment around the world.
• This allows them to see if their theories are culture-bound, or universal

van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenburg

Conducted a meta-analysis of 32 studies of attachment that all used Ainsworth's Strange Situation

The studies were from all around the world. They were looking to see the differences between cultures and within cultures.

1. They found that secure attachment was the most common in all cultures studied
2. Variations within cultures were 1.5 times greater than those between cultures
3. In Japan, resistant was more common than avoidant. Opposite seen in West Germany

Eval

1. They studied an equal number of cases for each country. US=18, Japan=2, so possible that results to not represent the whole country.

2. Can't use it for other cultures because it's based on Western ideals (imposed etic). So could be incorrectly determining attchmnt types.

3. A strength of cross-cultural studies is that they provide evidence for Bowlby's theory that attachment behaviour is innate. If it occurs similarly across cultures it must occur naturally.

4. Could be considered socially sensitive research since it implies that some countries have worse parents.

Eval

However, as proposed by Takahashi, the reason Japanese babies are more insecurely (resistant) attached is because they are, on a regular basis, rarely seperated from their mothers, as per Japanese child-rearing practices. This means when they are put in the Strange Situation and seperated from their mothers, its stressful. This does not mean that they are insecurely attached though.

44 Thieves

In order to test his hypothesis, Bowbly conducted a series of interviews with 44 delinquents and compared them to another group of emotionally disturbed teens who were not thieves.

They were from ages 5-16

From the group of 44, Bowlby identified a group of 'affectionless psychopaths' who felt no guilt or remorse for their actions

He interviewed the teens and the parents, and found that 86% of the APd's had experienced frequent separation from their mothers, compared to only 17% of the other thieves.

Only 4% of the control participants experienced early separations.

He concluded that there is a link between early separation and becoming an affectionless psychopath. He also suggests that early separations may lead to severe emotional maladjustment.

Evaluation of Bowl

Strengths

Natural experiment: IV not manipulated. they had already suffered separations. This is more ethical than doing it to them.

Has applications to real life. Before the 1970's, children in hospitals weren't allowed to have visits from their parents. Since research has shown the negative effects of deprivation, parental visits are highly encouraged.

Weaknesses

• Self-report method, social desirability from parents. Can't be sure if there's a link because answers aren't valid
• Individual differences between how people deal with separation. Securely attached kids may deal better with it. Hard to generalise to everyone, cant assume its the same for all children.
• Researcher bias. Bowlby did it himself, diagnosed the APD, knew which ppts were thieves or not thieves, so its possible he exaggerated the difference between the two. Unconsciously. Therefore results lack validity.
• Life-long effects. This is not the case. Koluchova twins were fine after being put in a supportive home. Period is sensitive rather than critical

The Effects of Institutionalisaton

He found: 

Inititially, they showed signs of mental retardation and a majority were severely undernourished.

By age 11 the amount of improvement they had made was proportional to the age at which they were adopted

Emotionally, there was also a difference depending on the age at which the children were adopted.

Those adopted after 6 months of age showed DISINHIBITED ATTACHMENT STYLE: being clingy, attention seeking and indiscriminately social with familiar and non-familiar children and adults

Therefore the effects of early institutionalisation can be reversed to some extent. Long-term effects may be more severe if the child has formed an attachment already

Evaluation of Romanian Orphans Studies

Real life Applications: The findings of these studies have shown the importance of early adoption. Most orphans nowadays are adopted within the first few months. There has also been a change in orphanages where each child is now assigned a key worker with whom they are meant to form an attachment. This has improved quality of emotional stability for the orphans

Lacks generalisability: The Romanian orphans in particular went through very severe abuse and neglect that is not common amongst children in institutional care. This could act as a confounding situational variable which could affect the results of studies on how institutional care affects children

Orphans not randomly assigned to their families: so some children may be adopted over others because they have a more outgoing personality or seemed friendlier to parents. This is a confounding variable since the differences between the orphans affected how soon they were adopted, and means that it is possible that those kids made faster and deeper connections with their parents, leading to faster cognitive development.

Bowbly suggested that secure attachment is associated with healthy emotional and social development.

Children who have this type of attachment style are more likely to form mature and lasting relationships adult relationships .

This is because their caregiver was dependable and reliable and made them feel valued, which leads to high self-esteem and high levels of interpersonal trust

Those with insecure resistant attachment types are going to go on to have less long-lasting relationships and more trouble developing intimate trusting relationships

Hazan and Shaver

Put out a 'love quiz' in a newspaper asking people about how they were as children and how their relationships are as adults

two questions

1) Which of 3 descriptions best fitted their general experiences of romantic relationships

2) An adjective checklist to describe the relationship they experienced with their parents

There were 600 participants between ages 14 and 82 chosen from many responses

56% classified themselves as secure

24% as avoidant

20% resistant

Same as what Ainsworth found, suggests that attachments are distributed similarly amongst adults and infants

Strong relationship between attachment type and conception of love.

Those classed secure had relationships that lasted twice as long as those classed insecurely attached

Eval

- Bowlby has ignored the influence of temperament on relationship style. Temperament refers to personality differences, how friendly someone is, how much attention they need. These things can affect attachment style as well as relationship type. It's possible that people behave the way they do in relationships because of their temperment rather than because of their attachment type. There relationship between attachment and relationship type may therefore be due to temperment.