Psychology Unit 1 DOMINIC EDWARDS

Contents• Attachment

• Attachment in everyday life

Attachment – Formations of attachment in babies

Attachment: An emotional tie or relationships between two people shown in their behaviour towards one another. E.g. mother and child.

• Babies are reliant on other for their own survival and they communicate in very simple ways, for example crying. They survive because they have the ability to make their biological parents care for them and protect them.

• There are differences in the meaning for both ‘attachments’ and ‘bonds’. Bonds are formed instantly whereas attachments take much longer to be made.

• Attachments are formed continuously throughout our lives such as family members and close friends, but it is the first attachments that we make which are the most important, usually occurring after about 7-8 months.

• Signs of an attachment:• Seeking proximity, they will want to be near to one another. Young babies will try to maintain maximum proximity to caregiver and will cry if they get too

far away.

• Distress on separation, young baby will show signs of distress such as crying when a caregiver leaves for a short period of time. Older child may feel homesick if for example is on a school trip.

• Joy of reunion, clinging onto their caregiver when they return from somewhere.

Attachment – Evolutionary explanation

John Bowlby

• Believed that attachment was an evolved mechanism that ensured the survival of infants.

• He also believed that we are born with innate tendencies to form attachments in order to survive. This attachment is generally to a biologically parent (mother). This also means that adults are innately programmed to ensure that their child survives.

• The biological process of forming attachments must take place in critical period otherwise it may not happen at all. A sensitive period of time is where something is likely to happen, for example infants usually start talking between the ages of 12-18 months. However development can take place outside of this sensitive period.

• Supporting Research:Konrad Lorenz – Imprinting

• He divided a number of fertile geese eggs into two groups, half with mother and half in an incubator.

• He ensured that he was the first large moving object that the incubator group saw and then the geese attached very quickly to Mr Lorenz.

• Critical period was found to be 13-16 hours, after 32 hours no attachment was formed at all.

• After concluding his findings he called this formation of attachment Imprinting.x Obviously it is very difficult to generalise findings based on animals onto human beings. Does support the idea of being innately programmed to form attachments in order to survive.

Other studies that support the evolutionary explanation could be Harlow's monkeys and Schaffer & Emerson. For any opposing evidence look at supporting evidence of the learning theory.

Dollard & Miller

• Dollard and Miller based their theory on the principles of classical and operant conditioning .

• The first attachments that we form will be to the individuals that looks after us, feeds us, changes nappies, comforts etc…

• This gives a powerful source of pleasure to a baby.

• Supporting research:Skinner - Operant Conditioning

• Skinner explains the role of operant conditioning through the use of rats in his investigation.

• He put the rats in cages and discovered that they started to explore their surroundings. The rat then accidently found a way to get food, this behavior is then repeated and learnt as the rat needs food in order to survive.

• To relate this back to how operant conditioning works in human babies is that a child cries due to a discomfort for example hunger, the caregiver will feel uncomfortable with the child's behavior and looks for a way to make the baby stop crying and therefore has the idea of feeding the baby. The baby will quickly begin to learn that whenever it cries they will be fed.

• Social releasers such as crying, cooing, laughing and smiling play a big role in the learning theory and the evolutionary explanation. x Difficult to generalize to humans as the investigation was carried out on rats.

Pavlov – Classical Conditioning

• Pavlov noticed that dogs quickly associated sound with mealtime.

• He measured the salivary response. Unconditional stimulus = FOOD, Unconditional response = SALIVATION, Conditional stimulus = BELL, Conditional response = SALIVATION.

• In Human babies this would correspond as Unconditional stimulus = MILK and Unconditional response = Relief of Hunger. Classical conditioning clearly has a role in human babies, this is strong supporting evidence.

For any opposing evidence look at supporting evidence of the evolutionary theory such as Konrad Lorenz.

Attachment – Learning theory

Attachment – Schaffer & Emerson

• Schaffer and Emerson produced strong descriptions concerning formations of attachments.

• Research:• The study was carried out on 60 babies from a working class area in Glasgow.

• Bothe Schaffer and Emerson visited these infants monthly for the first years of their lives and then returned again after 18 months.

• By this stage in their investigation two types of behaviours were found.

1. Separation anxiety: If the child shows signs of anxiety when the caregiver left then this indicates that an attachment has been formed between both child and caregiver.

2. Stranger distress: Child feels distressed when approached by a stranger. This indicates that the child has started to recognize familiar faces and feels anxious among unfamiliar people.

• In order to obtain these findings Schaffer and Emerson carried out observations and interviews. • Checked if baby cried, whimpered or showed signs of distress at a strangers face.

• Interviewed the children's mothers at each visit asking about the baby's responses in different situations and then asked them to rate their behaviour in these situations.

• He found that most babies formed their first attachment between 6-8 months and then went to form multiple attachments.

• 65% formed fist attachment with mother, 3% with father and 27% with both parents. The data is rich in detail and has high ecological validity.x Mother can lie to make their children seem better, this is known as social desirability bias.x Difficult to generalize results to entire population as it was only carried out in Glasgow on working class families.

Ainsworth

• ‘Strange situation’ is the investigation carried out by Ainsworth in two purpose-built laboratory playrooms with the children's mothers.

• Observations were taken through video cameras in each of the rooms.

• The mother and infant enter the room, child is left to explore, stranger enters the room and approaches the child, mother leaves both stranger and child alone in the room, after 3 minutes the mother returns and the stranger leaves, the mother then leaves the room a second time and the stranger comes in to comfort the child who is alone in the room.

• Ainsworth could then monitor the child's behaviour in each of the situations. He wanted to measure stranger anxiety and separation anxiety.

• Findings resulted in 3 types of distinct behaviour being discovered:• Secure infants (type B), these infants sue their mothers as a safe base and were happy to explore the new environment. Showed distress when mother left and

welcomed her on her return. Wary of stranger and treated them differently to mother. 70% in this category.

• Insecure-avoidant (type A), showed distress on mothers departure and did not seek her comfort when she returned. Rejected strangers attempt to comfort them. 15% in this category.

• Insecure-ambivalent (type C), very upset on separation, not easily comforted by mother when she returned. Appeared to be angry and holding a grudge against their mother for leaving them alone in the new environment. These babies altered between seeking closeness and wanting distance. 15% fell into this category.

х Lacks external validity because of the environment used, children's behaviours may be different in a familiar environment in which this investigation cannot be generalized to.

х Babies would have experienced distress and some would consider the use of babies in this study to be unethical.

This investigation is easy to replicate and also led to a rapid increase in experiments carried out on attachment both within and between cultures.

Attachment – Attachment types

• Unfortunately there are disruptions such as separation from parents that can cause changes in child's behaviour.

Short term response to separation: PDD

• E.g. mother goes to hospital because she is ill.

Protest, child cries, screams and protests angrily when the parent leaves. They are also clingy to parent.

Despair, the child becomes calmer but still upset, they reject other peoples attempt to comfort them. They become withdrawn and uninterested in anything.

Detachment, if the separation continues then they begin to accept others and reject the caregiver that left when they return, also showing signs of anger.

Long term responses of separation:

E.g. when child is often left by parent

Extreme clinginess, clingy to mother when she leaves and then clingy to babysitter when she arrives.

Detachment, detached from caregiver, refuses cuddles or hugging in order to protect themselves from not being hurt again.

Factors affecting child's response:

Age of child, separation is strongest between 12-18 months.

Type of attachment, securely attached children will cope better then the other two types of attachment.

Sex of the child, boys respond more strongly to separation.

Who the child is left with.

Attachment – Disruptions of attachment

• Lack of any attachment at all in early childhood can lead to permanent changes in behaviour for adult life.

• Generally happens when a child is separated from their parent due to institutional care or their parent passed away.

Koluchova twins: case study

Two boys born in Czechoslovakia were brought up in care and then were returned to father and stepmother.

They went through serious privation until the age of 7.• Locked in an unheated cellar

• Away from human interaction

• Starved

• Beaten

The twins had no speech, were terrified of people and had serious health problems

Fortunately the early damage had ben totally repaired after being raised properly by two adoptees.

x Ethical issues, this case study did not obtain any fully informed consent from the twins and could make them feel like objects

x There is a lack of control of extraneous variables in this case study.

Attachment – effects of privation

• Due to a family breakdown or an inability for a caregiver to look after their child then they may be placed in an institutionalisation.

• When children are in these institutions they have limited time for interaction or play, babies spend all day in cots.

• In developed countries most children are likely to be placed with foster parents however it is far more common to put children into institutions in other parts of the world such as Romania. This is because they had a civil war which lead to many orphaned children.

Research: Rutter (2007)• Longitudinal study where Romanian orphans were adopted by UK families, Rutter assessed these children that were aged 6 months and

some older. • 58 were adopted before and up to 6 months of age.• 59 babies were adopted between the ages of 6-24 months.• At the ages of 4, 6 and 11 some of these children were interviewed and observed in order to see any changes in their behaviour.• Babies adopted before 6 months had developed a lot better than those who were adopted after 6 months. These older children showed

signs of disinhibited attachments and had problems forming peer relationships• This suggests that the effects of privation can be overcome if the child is adopted into a stable family before the age of 6 months, after 6

months the negative effects tend to be more permanent. x Researchers must be careful when investigating children as ethical issues could arise, being sensitive to their needs is important and in

earlier investigations this was not a concern for researchers.

Attachment – Effects of institutionalisation

• Researchers have looked into the effects of day care and try to observe the child's relationships with peers, ability to make friends, communication skills, whether they share or not. They also look at negative behaviour such as signs of aggression.

• Two types of care:1. Nursery based, this would be staffed with trained worker, children would benefit from better facilities.

2. Family based care:• registered child-minders, child would be away from their own house and the child-minder generally has children of their own, they must be

registered as child-minders.

• nanny/au pair, children get looked after in their own home and the children will most likely be with siblings rather than meeting new children from other families.

• informal arrangements, on short notice a family member or a neighbour may look after children for a short period of time.

• It is important that children get a lot of individual attention and this can be difficult at nurseries as there are many other children attending at the same time, children will get much more attention in family based care.

• It is however very important that children get to interact with other children and this can only be achieved in nursery based care as there would be many more children to play with. This also means that there is an increased opportunity to enhance skills such as talking and sharing when there are other children instead of siblings in family based care.

Attachment in everyday life – Day care

• Campbell studied children who attended child care continuously between the ages of 18 months and 3 and a half years of age.

• 9 children were in family based care and 30 were in nursery based care, during the study a further 9 children switched from family based care to nursery based.

• These children were compared with a group of children whose parents had applied for day care however did not obtain them due to competition.

• They were observed in their homes where researchers assessed the standards of care.

• Children were observed in both family based care and nursery based care. At home children played with familiar peers and the researcher assessed the standard of care the children were receiving. In day care children were observed playing with others for around 30 minuets. This gave researchers a baseline condition at 18 months to see how socially skilled they were before care started.

• These assessments were repeated at 2 and a half years and 3 and a half years old.

• At 6 and a half years old the children's competence and behaviour was assessed by asking parents or carers to describe the child’s social skills.

• At 8 and a half years old researchers asked teachers to describe the children's behaviour in class.

• At the age of 15 the children were visited at their own homes and were asked to complete two self report measurements of social development.

• Findings:• Children who spent long days in care under the age of 3 and a half years old were found to be less socially competent.

• Those that spent more days in day care however for fewer hours each day were more socially competent. Longer days may make the children more tired and therefore frustrated.

Attachment in every day life – Campbell et al. Sweden, Gothenburg

• Belsky has found that children who have experienced day care tend to develop bad behaviours including aggression towards peers. This has also led to children becoming a lot more disobedient to authoritative figures and this could become and issue for children as they get older. • Maccoby and Lewis supported these findings and added that children who spent longer hours in day care resulted in having more

problems in school, a greater amount of conflicts with teachers and lower social skills.• Further research carried out by Field elaborated on these findings as teachers were asked to rate children who had been in full-time

day care, results showed us that these children were more aggressive and assertive with their peers.

Assessing the effects of day care:• Variety of settings, they differ in terms of adult-child ratio and child-child ratio leading to both positive and negative outcomes for

either of the settings.• Time spent, children start at different ages and attend for different amounts of time. Does not make sense to compare children who

start at 6 months old and those who start at 3 years old and only attend for a few hours a week. • Quality of care, has a massive effect on the outcome of the experience.

• Melhuish carried out a quasi-experiment on 3 groups of children in London who started day care before 9 months of age. The groups consisted of care by relatives, childminders and a private nursery. These settings varied in adult-child ratio, high In relative group and lowest in nursery setting. Obviously it was the other way round when it came to contact with children.

Attachment in everyday life – Effects of day care/Comparing different types

Research has told us that a child needs to have a secure attachment with adults in order to be successful at forming bonds and attachments.

We also now understand that a child can form multiple attachments with various adults.

We have discovered that children use adults as a safe base so that they can explore their surroundings whilst knowing that they can rely on attachment figures to aide them in times of stress or when they are frightened.

Good day care:• A low adult to child ratio so that each child has plenty of time with key figures (adults).• Small groups of children and trained workers, easier for younger children as there are fewer strangers.• A mixed group of children including various ages and those of the opposite sex. Gives them the chance to observe how older

children behave and will then hopefully ensure positive development in their behaviours.• A well structured day including lots of play time and a balanced amount of learning, this could be anything from drawing activities

to basic time together in groups. Routines allow children to feel at ease with their environment and can predict what will happen, this makes them feel safe.

• Well trained staff ensures that the children will never feel insecure when their parents leave them for the day. This links to the quality of the day care and what experience the children will get from day care if they have either good or bad staff caring for them.

Attachment in everyday life – implications of research into attachment and day care

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