Attachment theory proposes that secure attachment to caregivers in infancy and early childhood is crucial for healthy social-emotional development. Research on institutionalization and deprivation found that lack of consistent caregiving can impair children's ability to form attachments and relate to others. Studies of daycare quality suggest that high-quality care with low child-to-staff ratios, consistent caregivers, and social stimulation can support children's peer relationships and development, while poor quality care with frequent changes in caregivers or more than 20 hours per week may increase behavioral issues.
2. Learning Theory
Classical conditioning
Classical Conditioning – (Learning through association)
Attachment is based on provision of food alone.
Before conditioning:
The unconditioned stimulus (food) and unconditioned response
(happy baby/pleasure) are innately linked
During conditioning:
The unconditioned stimulus (food) plus a neutral stimulus (mother)
causes an unconditioned response (happy baby/pleasure)
After conditioning:
The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (mother) causes
the unconditioned response now the conditioned response (happy
baby/pleasure)
3. Learning theory
Operant conditioning
Operant Conditioning – Reward vs punishment
When we perform a behaviour, the consequence which follows
will determine whether we perform the behaviour again
A reward becomes a pleasure consequence and a punishment
becomes the unpleasant consequence
Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither
increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being
repeated.
Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the
probability of a behaviour being repeated.
Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the
likelihood of a behaviour being repeated.
As a child we try out a number of behaviours and learn from their
consequences.
4. Learning Theory
Evaluation
Strengths:
Dollard & Miller:
When hungry, an infant feels uncomfortable and experiences a
drive state. This motivates the infant to find a way to lessen it,
therefore cries. Being fed satisfies the baby and its comfortable
again. This acts as the primary reinforce. The person feeding the
baby (mum) becomes the secondary reinforce as she is associated
with the food. Therefore the infant becomes attached.
Weaknesses:
Harlow:
Two wire mothers were created for monkeys. One with a feeding
bottle and the other with a blanket but no food. Monkeys were
left to select which monkey they spent more time on. When
offered with the choice of food or comfort, the monkeys chose
comfort.
Schaffer & Emerson:
Found that babies were not necessarily attached to the adult who
fed them, but by the adult who interacted with the child proving
interaction to be an important part in attachment.
6. Evolutionary Theory
Bowlby
Bowlby was created 5 main reasons why attachment is
evolutionary (ASMIC)
He claimed attachment is adaptive and innate. We have
one primary figure and still make attachments with others
close to us.
A – ADAPTIVE – He said that attachments are adaptive and
if we are adapted well we are more likely to survive.
S – SOCIAL RELEASERS – Attachment behaviour has social
releasers which ‘unlock’ the innate tendency for adults to care
for them.
M – MONOTROPY – Is a special attachment with there
mother. If the mother is not present then the infant will bond
with another present adult.
I – INTERNAL WOKING MODEL – This is a mental
template for relationships. Children base how there
relationship is with there primary caregiver and use it as a
template to build new relationships with others.
C – CRITICAL PERIOD – This is a time for birth to 2 and ½
in which a child will form an attachment with there caregiver.
If this does not happen then the child will be damaged
through PIES.
7. Evolutionary Theory
Evaluation
Strengths:
Lorenz
Lorenz separated eggs from a goose. Half stayed with their
mother and the other half stayed with Lorenz. The geese naturally
took Lorenz as the mother figure. They grew an attachment with
Lorenz as this is what they naturally assumed was there mother
figure.
Hospital practises have since been changed in light of Bowlbys
theory recognising importance of avoiding separations from
parents
Harlow
Monkeys after Harlows research developed illnesses and some
went onto neglect their own infant monkeys proving after the
critical period you cannot form another attachment
Weakness:
Lamb:
Fathers are often preferred as playmates as their play is more
unpredictable and physical.
Schaffer & Emerson
Infants have multiple attachments, other figures in an infants life
also become equally as important. By 18 months, 87% of infants
had formed multiple attachments.
9. Types of attachment
The strange situation
Ainsworth & Bell
Identified 3 main types of attachment after doing a controlled
observation for 100 middle class American infants and mothers
Stages of experiment:
1) Parent and infant play
2) Parent sits while infant plays
3) Stranger enters and talks to parent
4) Parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comfort
5) Parent returns, stranger leaves, parent offers comfort
6) Parent leaves, infant is alone
7) Stranger enters, offers comfort
8) Parent returns, greets infant, offers comfort
Findings of Ainsworth & Bells study was 3 main attachments:
Insecure
avoidant (22%)
(type A)
Secure
(66%)
(type B)
Insecure
resistant (12%)
(type C)
Exploring High High Low
Separation Not bothered Easy to
sooth
Distressed
Reunion Avoids contact Enthusiastic Seeks and
rejects
10. Types of attachment
Evaluation
Strengths:
Efficient (time and money wise)
Easy to replicate – good reliability
Weakness:
Low generalizability – only 100 babies and mothers used aswell
as it only being Americans – might be different in other cultures
Ethics for children – Need to ensure the children do not have any
long-term effects from taking part in the study
Measures relationships with others, not the individuals
themselves – low validity
12. Cultural Variations
The culture variation studies examine if the strange situation can be
applied to another culture other than just the American one
Takohashi – Japanese Strange situation:
60 Japanese children and mothers were put in the strange situation.
90% of the studies had to be stopped in the ‘left alone’ stage of the
experiment as the culture doesn’t include the baby being left alone
much.
Findings:
68% Securely attached
0% Insecure Resistant (Japanese culture teaches that its rude to
ignore others)
32% Insecure Avoidant
Grossman et al:
They did the strange situation in Germany:
Findings:
49% Avoidant
33% Secure
18% Resistant
Two strange situation experiments were done in Germany, the two
had very different results. This shows cross-country differences.
13. Cultural Variations
Ijzendoorn & Kroonberg
They did a meta-anaylsis across 8 countries and 32 studies
Securely attached was by far the most common type of
attachment but between the other two types the found that:
Western – Dominant type was avoidant (Most experiments were in this
area)
oNon-western – Dominant type was resistant
The strange situation cannot be used across the globe as there
are cross cultural differences
There are bigger differences within a culture than between
cultures
Evaluation:
Cross culture differences can be explained by the media. The
media spreads ideas about parenting and countries with no media
have very different results to those that do.
Cross-country differences like those found in Germany might
indicate invalid results
Ethical problems of children being involved in the studies e.g- the
Japanese study, should ensure there are no long term effects on
the children.
15. Attachment difficulties
Maternal deprivation hypothesis
Bowlby – Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis (MDH) & 44
Juvenile thief's
The MDH suggests that loss of attachment from the mum can
result in difficulties later in life.
If a child does not have a continuous attachment they will find it
harder to form adult relationships
The child therefore could be at risk of behaviour disorders and
find it hard to form adult relationships
They must have a continuous relationship which is made in the
critical period with one main figure (monotropy)
This comes under both Privation and Deprivation
Bowlby extended the MDH by comparing thief's with normal
children and measuring emotional problems.
44 children thief's and 44 children with emotional problems were
compared to see if being separated from your mother at a young
age resulted in problems later in life.
32% of the thief group were classed as ‘affectionless psychopaths’
86% the 32% had been separated from their primary caregiver
before 5 years old.
This proves there's a link between juvenile behaviour and
abnormal emotional development.
16. Attachment Difficulties
Robertson
Robertson
He studied children that were taken away from parents at a young
age for a short period of time
He recorded the children in the institutions
Laura:
Put in a hospital for 8 days
She was visited occasionally by parents
Alternated between calm and distress
She begged to go home and became very distressed
John:
He was put in a residential nursery for 9 days whilst his mum
gave birth
His father tried to visit as often as he could though this wasn’t
often
John struggled to compete for nurses attention and therefore
broke down refusing to eat, drink, play and cried a lot
When his mum finally picked him up, he tried to get away from
her
Months later he still had outbursts of resistance to his mum
17. Attachment difficulties
Evaluation
Strengths:
Lots of detailed information can be collected by using case studies
like Robertson did
Bowlby found a strength of his own hypothesis
Weaknesses:
Bowlbys MDH has high validity as it was a natural observation
not an experiment
The theory cannot necessary be applied to other people individual
differences.
Robertson's study used 2 case studies -> lacks generalizability
Bowlbys strength of his MDH could be bias as it was conducted
by himself
19. Curtis & Koluchova
Examined two case studies in failure to form attachments
Genie:
Genie was found at the age of 13 when she was strapped to a potty
chair.
Genie could barley speak, had animal like characteristics, and had
been beaten for making noise
After being studied by a team of scientists and moving to foster
homes genie improved, however one of the foster homes abused
her by beating her for being sick
Scientists claim she might have been mentally retarded from
birth
Genie never made a full recovery and only learnt to speak around
100 words
Czech twins
Cared for by dad and step mother after their mother had died
The twins were kept in a small closet or cellar until discovered at
the age of 7
When found, there speech was poor, they had rickets and could
not walk
They ended up being adopted by 2 sisters and well cared for
They made a full recovery with no long-term effects
Privation
20. Privation
Hodges and Tizard – Institutionalisation
65 Children were assessed over 16 years.
The children had been placed in an institution since 4 months
Some children were adopted, others fostered and some returned to
biological parents
Those children who were adopted has a close attachment to their
parents
However those returned to biological parents did not
All the groups were not successful in peer relationship
All groups were more likely to be bullies, less liked and described as
‘quarrelsome’
No differences to normal children regarding boyfriend/girlfriends
Rutter et al – Roman orphanages
Romanian adoptive children were placed in an orphanage a two weeks
old
Assessed children at the age of 4, 6 and 11 out of 100 children in
orphanages to see if they would end up forming a normal attachment
The children who were adopted by families in three different age
brackets:
6 months and below
6 months – 2 years
2 years +
It was found that the later the adoption, the harder it was to form that
attachment
21. Privation
Evaluation
Strengths:
MDH supports the case of Genie as she was never able to make a
proper attachment
High ecological validity – both case studies were real
Weaknesses:
Hodges and Tizard & Rutter used a longditutional study ->
Attrition
The Czech twins had each other to form attachment with ->
disproves the MDH as they didn’t make the attachment with their
mother
Hodges and Tizard used an interview (interviewer bias)
Case studies cannot be generalised to other situations
23. Attachment in everyday life
Quality of day care
General:
From the age of 3, the government provides 15 hours of free day
care
Staff – child ratios:
1:3 – aged 2 or younger
1:4 – aged 2-3
1:8 – aged 3-5
Child-minders can only have a maximum of 6 children with no
more than 3 of those under 3 years old
Factors affecting the quality of day care:
Time spent in day care
Age you start day care
Depends on attachment type of child e.g- securely attached is best
Training of staff
Staff to child ratios – size of group
Simulative environment to improve cognitive skills
Commitment to job
Staff turnover – Consistency of staff
24. Day care
Positive and negative effects on day care
Peer relationships
Strength
Clarke-Stewart – She found that children that attended day care
coped better in school situations and were able to negotiate better
with peers. Good day care can provide plenty of social
stimulation, independence and dinner time obedience.
Weakness
Sammons et al – There is a risk of anti-social behaviour when
children spend more than 20 hours per week in nurseries
Aggression
Strength
Shea et al – Children became more sociable the longer they were
at nursery. The amount of aggressive behaviour decreased. These
changes were more apparent for children attending 5 days a week
compared to those attending 2 days
Weakness
NICHD - A longitudinal study between 1000 children and
parents. It was found that the more time a child spent in day care,
the more adults rated them as assertive, disobedient and
aggressive. The children also may develop behaviour problems
e.g. – arguing, lying and tantrums.
25. Implications
How has this affected real-life?
Implications of attachment research:
Visiting hours for hospitals
Trying to avoid later adoptions
Having a longer maternity leave of 9 months instead of 6
months
Ofsted inspections for nurseries
Implications of day care research:
Low child to staff ratios
Minimal staff turnovers
Consistency of care
Well trained staff
Having legal expectations – ‘Sure Start’ Nurseries