1. Caregiver-infant interactions in humans: reciprocity and interactional synchrony.
Stages of attachment identified by Schaffer. Multiple attachments and the role of the father.
Animal studies of attachment: Lorenz and Harlow.
Explanations of attachment: learning theory and Bowlby’s monotropic theory. The concepts of a critical period and an internal working model.
Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’. Types of attachment: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant. Cultural variations in attachment, including van Ijzendoorn.
Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation. Romanian orphan studies: effects of institutionalisation.
The influence of early attachment on childhood and adult relationships, including the role of an internal working model.

2. Defining Attachment
“The strong affectional ties that bind a person to an intimate companion.” (Bowlby, 1969)
“A close emotional selective relationship between two persons characterised by mutual affection and a desire to maintain proximity.” (Cohen, 1974)
“A relatively long enduring tie in which the partner is important as a unique individual and is inter-changeable with non-other” (Ainsworth, 1989)
Maccoby (1980): In general, we can behaviourally think of attachment in terms of:
Seeking proximity, Distress on separation, Joy on reunion, General orientation of behaviour towards other person.

3. Formation of Attachment
Lorenz (1935): Precocial species (e.g. geese) have immediate ‘imprinting’ that must take place within a ‘critical period’.
Humans on the other hand only begin to crawl at around 8 months, so a more stationary means of bonding ...
Klaus & Kennell (1976): extended physical contact between mother and baby in the 4 days after birth correlated –a year later- with increased ‘soothing behaviour’ and closer proximity/more gazing.
Thus suggests particular importance for those early days after birth in early bond formation (i.e. a ‘sensitive period’). This led to a change in maternity ward practices!
Though this early bonding appears to be valuable, ‘attachment’ is a more gradual process, showing signs of emergence around 7/8 months.

4. Interactional synchrony
Reciprocity
The word reciprocal means two-way, or something that is mutual. Infant and caregiver are both active contributors in the interaction and are responding to each other. This is referred to as reciprocity.
Interactional synchrony
The word synchrony means a simultaneous action or occurrence. Interactional synchrony relates to the timing and pattern of the interaction. The interaction is rhythmic and can include infant and caregiver mirroring each other’s behaviour and emotion.  The infant and caregiver’s behaviours and affect are synchronised because they are moving in the same, or a similar, pattern.

5. Reciprocity & Interactional synchrony
Condon and Sander (1974) have investigated interactions between infants and caregivers in particular in relation to responses to adult speech. In their paper they report:
“As early as the first day of life, the human neonate moves in precise and sustained segments of movement that are synchronous with the articulated structure of adult speech”
According to research by Meltzoff and Moore (1983) infants as young as 3 days imitate the facial expression of adults. This implies that this ability to mirror is an innate behaviour.

6. Formation of Attachment II – multiple attachments?
Schaffer & Emerson (1964):
Visiting 60 babies in Glasgow monthly for their first year. Found they began to develop ‘separation anxiety’ only around 6-8 months, with ‘stranger distress’ developing about a month later.
This ‘first attachment’ becomes a social anchor for the baby. For most this was the mother (65%), some formed ‘joint attachment’ to both father and mother (27%) and very few to father only (3%).
For 40% of babies this was not the primary care giver (feeder/ changer) but to a responsive person who interacted a lot with them.
So babies can develop multiple attachments and social interaction is very important in their formation.
These results are supported by Cohen & Campos (1974) in the USA and Fox (1977) in Israeli kibbutzim.

7. Schaffer & Emerson (1964) Stages of Attachment
Age Approx.
Characteristics
Indiscriminate Attachment
Up to 6 Mths
Doesn’t matter who is holding the baby, the baby smiles at everyone and protests when put down
Specific Attachment
7Mths-1 year
One specific attachment usually to the mother fear of strangers and separation anxiety are intense for 3 to 4 months
Multiple Attachments
1 year +
shows attachment to number of people important to their life.

8. Learning Theory of Attachment
A ‘Behavioural’ model – attachment is a learnt behaviour, both for mother and baby through ‘conditioning’.
For the BABY, the mother’s presence is tied to ‘pleasant things’ happening – being fed, changed, comforted, etc. This ‘reinforces’ forming an attachment and wanting her in close proximity (Dollard & Miller, 1950: ‘secondary drive hypothesis’)
For the MOTHER, she also receives ‘reinforcement’ for taking care of the baby: stops crying when fed/changed/etc, smiling and cooing when entertained, watching baby develop because of her.
Plus, girls learn to be ‘good mothers’ from a young age by having their ‘caretaking behaviours’ reinforced, so looking after a baby in itself may become emotionally reinforcing

9. Learning Theory - Evaluation
As we’ve seen with Schaffer & Emerson (1964), care giving is not the only important factor in attachment formation.
Harlow & Harlow (1958): infant rhesus monkeys provided with a wireframe, feeding surrogate and a soft fabric covered, non-feeding surrogate went to the latter in time of stress for comfort.
Ignores evolutionary/intrinsic aspects of attachment – which the Evolutionary explanation accounts for.
However, it makes intuitive sense, may have some elements of truths.
If attachment takes 6-8 months to develop, then some degree of ‘learning’ is plausible.

10. Bowlby's Evolutionary Explanation of Attachment
- Heavily influenced by ethological theorists such as Lorenz.
- Both mother and baby are biologically predisposed to stay in contact for the infant’s survival.
- Bowlby’s theory is centred around two concepts:
1) Monotropy – the innate tendency to attach to one particular care giver, usually the mother (as primary, though not necessarily only).
2) A critical period – a brief period in time (first years) in which attachment must develop.
- Attachment essential for social and emotional development; infants should experience intimate and continuous relationship with its mother as it provides an ‘internal working model’ for future relationships – primarily if they are loveable and if others are trustworthy (known as the ‘continuity hypothesis’).

11. Bowlby's Evolutionary Theory - Evaluation
Strethearn et al (2008): fMRI scans show rewards centres of mothers' brains are activated when seeing own child smiling, but not others.
‘Secure attachments’ tend to foster autonomy rather than dependency as Learning Theory would seem to suggest (Rutter & Rutter, 1992).
Broad research support for the continuity hypothesis; e.g. Hazan & Shaver (1987) and Black & Schutte (2006).
However, Zimmerman et al (2000): longitudinal study found infancy attachment type not a good predictor of attachments in adolescence; serious life events supersedes it in importance.
Serious challenges to monotropy (e.g. Schaffer & Emerson, 1964).
Ignores positive experiences outside home, as well as ‘horizontal relationships’ (i.e. peers, siblings)

12. Attachment Types- Ainsworth & Bell (1971)
Controlled observation of children’s attachment behaviour using the ‘Strange Situation Classification’ (SSC):
- Parent and infant are alone. Infant left to explore.
- Stranger enters, converses with parent, then approaches infant.
- Parent leaves inconspicuously leaving infant with stranger.
- Stranger tries to comfort the infant and offer to play with them.
- Stranger leaves when parent returns, greets and comforts infant.
- Parent leaves again, leaving the infant alone.
- Stranger re-enters and tries to comfort and play with infant.
- Stranger leaves when parent returns, greets and comforts the infant.
Seeks to observe exploration behaviour, departure anxiety,
stranger anxiety, and reunion behaviour.

13. Three overall patterns of attachment:
Ainsworth & Bell (1971)
Three overall patterns of attachment:
Secure (70% of sample)
Insecure – resistant (aka ambivalent/resistant) (15%)
Insecure – avoidant (15%)
Ainsworth suggests that attachment type was determined by primary carer’s (mother’s) behaviour and how sensitive the carer is to the child’s needs.

14. Secure Attachment
Explores when mother is present using her as ‘safe base’
Upset when mother left
Happy when she returned
Avoidant of stranger when alone but friendly when mother present
Will use the mother as a safe base to explore their environment
 Associated with sensitive & responsive primary care.

15. Insecure Resistant Intensely distressed when mother left
Apparent fear of stranger
Clinginess mixed with rejection on return
Fear of exploration (insecure behaviour)
Associated with inconsistent primary care. Sometimes the child’s needs and met and sometime they are ignored. Mother demands supersede child’s needs.

16. Insecure Avoidant Unconcerned by mother’s absence
Showed little interest when she returned
Strongly avoidant of mother and stranger
Stranger will be treated similar to the mother (does not seek contact).
Associated with unresponsive primary care. The child comes to believe that communication of needs has no influence on the mother.

17. But what about child’s own natural temperament?
Primary Carer’s Behaviour Towards Child
Child’s ‘Working Model’ of Itself
Positive & Loved
Unloved & Rejected
Angry & Confused
Secure
Avoidant
Resistant
But what about child’s own natural temperament?

18. Cultural Variation in Attachments
Van Ijzendoorn Kroonenberg (1988): Meta-analysis of 32 studies over 8 countries showing variations of attachment types.
Highlights the need to be cautious with our classifications.
Country
No. of Studies
Secure
Resistant
Avoidant
USA 18
65%
14%
21%
West Germany 3
57% 8%
35%
Israel 2
64%
29% 7%
Japan
68%
27% 5%
Sweden 1
74% 4%
22% UK
75% 3%
China
50%
25%
Netherlands 4
67%
26%

19. Loss of Attachment - Deprivation
Bowlby (1944) ‘Forty four juvenile thieves’ -
To test effect of maternal deprivation by looking at habitual delinquency he compared 44 JTs to 44 ‘emotionally disturbed’ but committed no crimes.
17 of the thieves were separated from mother for more than 6 months before age 5, compared to 2 in the ED group
14 of the 17 were considered ‘affectionless psychopath’ (lacking guilt/remorse) compare to none of the ED
Bowlby concluded a correlation between maternal deprivation in infancy and subsequent criminal behaviour in adolescence.
However, Bowlby does not consider the intervening life events, thus other possibilities for the criminal behaviour. Also,  the study relies on the recollections of participants, which may be unreliable.

20. Loss of Attachment – Deprivation II
Rutter (1981): Questioned Bowlby’s view that it is
separation itself that produced harmful long term effect.
Studied over 2000 boys between the ages of 9 -12, interviewing the boys and families to see if the boys who had been separated from their mothers in early life turned to crime later on.
Mothers are not unique as attachment figures.
If separation was due to physical illness or death, the boys were unlikely to turn to crime; if due to psychological disorders of parent(s) or stress and arguments within the family, then the boys were four times more likely to turn to crime.
Concluded it was the conflict and stress which came before the separation that caused the antisocial behaviour.

21. Harlow’s monkeys and Privation
Harlow worked with rhesus monkeys, which are more mature at birth than humans, but like human babies show a range of emotions and need to be nursed. He took infant monkeys away from their real mothers, giving them instead two artificial mothers, one model made of wire and the other made of cloth.
The wire model was outfitted with a bottle to feed the baby monkey. But the babies rarely stayed with the wire model longer than it took to get the necessary food. They clearly preferred cuddling with the softer cloth model, especially if they were scared. (When the cloth model had the bottle, they didn't go to the wire model at all.)

22. Harlow’s monkeys and Privation
Harlow’s monkeys suffered from privation and developed delinquent behaviour.
Suomi & Harlow (1972) found the effects of this privation were not totally irreversible. It was possible to socialise 6 months old isolated monkeys by introducing female monkeys 3 months younger than themselves, which reduced the delinquent and stereotypical behaviours becoming much reduced.
Melinda Novak & Harlow (1975) repeated these findings, this time after keeping the newborn monkeys in total isolation for a year.

23. Lack of Attachment  Privation
Less common are cases of privation, where there is a lack of any attachment in early childhood.
Rutter (1981): privation can lead to an initial phase of clinging, dependent behaviour followed by attention-seeking and indiscriminate friendliness. Long-term, it results in inability to form relationships, a lack of guilt and antisocial behaviour.
However, ‘extreme privation’ case study evidence is contradictory; some ‘make up’ for early privation (e.g. Koluchova, 1972, 1991 – the Czech twins) and others don’t (e.g. Skuse, 1984).
Other valuable information comes from following children raised in orphanage, such as Tizard & Hodges (1978).

24. Hodges & Tizard (1989) - Institutionalisation
Aim: To investigate long term effects of institutionalisation.
Procedure: Longitudinal, followed 65 children placed in care before the age of 4 mths. Some stayed in institution, some went home and some were adopted.
Findings: At age 2, children demonstrated ‘indisciminate attachment’ to any adult. Early follow up between 4-8 y.o found adopted children doing the best in virtually every way when compared to those returned home. At 16 y.o, 23 adopted and 11 restored were tested. The adopted children closely bonded, the restored children were not so much.
Conclusions: Adopted children did well at home vs. the restored children. So while Bowlby and Rutter are right on the importance of early years, privation can be overcome to large degrees and later attachments can be formed leading to normal sociability.

25. The Romanian orphans
President Nicolae Ceausescu was a Communist dictator who was the president of Romania in the early 1990’s.
He banned contraception in a bid to increase the country’s population, and passed a law that all women had to have 5 children.
Many parents couldn’t afford so many children, and were encouraged to hand them over into state care.
These children were placed in huge, poor quality institutions.
When Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989, the children’s plight was revealed to the rest of the world, and many of the orphans were adopted by people in other countries, including the UK

26. Rutter et al (2007)
Longitudinal study of Romanian orphans adopted by British families. Assessed at 4, 6 and 11 years old.
Those adopted before 6 months showed normal levels of development.
Those adopted after 6 months were more likely to display disinhibited attachment and poor peer relationships.
Children exposed to privation are more likely to make a fuller recovery if adopted into a caring environment at an earlier age. 

27. Zeanah et al (2005)
Aim – To compare attachment types between Romanian children in institutionalised care and those who had not experienced institutionalised care.
Method - Experimental group of 95 children who had spent an average of 90% their lives in institutional care.
Control group of 50 children who had never lived in an institution.
Took part in the Strange Situation to assess attachment type (secure or insecure).

28. Experimental group (%)
Zeanah et al – Findings
Experimental group (%)
Control group (%)
Secure attachment
18.9 74
Disorganised attachment
65.3 22
Behaviour so odd that attachment type could not be categorised
12.6

29. Evaluation of all institutional studies
The case of the Romanian orphans highlights the fact that many children in institutions are exposed to very poor conditions.
Therefore, how much can we separate the effects of this neglect/abuse from the effects of privation?

30. Continuity hypothesis Hazen and Shaver’s study
Attachment with parents
Relationship with peers
Later romantic
relationships
Hazan and Shaver (1987) extended Bowlby’s idea that later love relationships should be predictable from knowledge of an individual’s early attachment style. In particular, they predicted the consequences shown in the table below.
Hazan and Shaver (1987) tested Bowlby’s hypothesis with their ‘love quiz’. This was a quiz of nearly 100 questions published in the Rocky Mountain News. They received 620 replies to their questionnaire and drew the following conclusions.

31. Securely attached adults Insecurely attached adults
● had certain beliefs (love is enduring)
● reported certain experiences (e.g. mutual trust)
● were less likely to have been divorced
● felt true love was rare; fell in and out of love easily
● found relationships less easy
● were more likely to be divorced
Secure adults
Resistant (anxious) adults
Avoidant adults
Different love experiences
Relationships are positive
Preoccupied by love
Fearful of closeness.
Adults’ views of relationships
Trust others and believe in
enduring love
Fall in love easily but have trouble finding true love
Love is not durable nor necessary for happiness
Memories of the mother–child relationship
Positive image of mother as dependable and caring
Conflicting memories of mother being positive and rejecting
Remember mothers as cold and rejecting

32. In terms of attachment style 56 per cent classified themselves as secure, 25 per cent as avoidant and 19 per cent as resistant.
Hazan & Schafer found a relationship between the type of attachment people developed in infancy and the length of a committed relationship that they had in adulthood.

33. Continuity hypothesis
Simpson et al 2007 Longitudinal study 25 years+ 78 participants.
1 year- parents reported on attachment behaviours
6-8 years- teachers rated peer interactions
16 years- asked to describe their close friendships
Adulthood- romantic partners asked to describe their experiences
Securely attached infants  higher social competence as children  closer to their friends at 16 years  more expressive and emotionally attached to romantic partners.

34. “Bowlby’s theory suggests that attachment is essential for healthy BLANK and BLANK development.”
…social
…emotional

35. “It therefore follows that BLANK might have a negative effect of healthy social and emotional development.”
…disruption

36. “Such disruption can occur when an infant is BLANK from his or her attachment figure.”
…separated

37. “However, physical separation can be unavoidable, for example they may spend time in/with BLANK, BLANK and BLANK.”
Day Care
Babysitter
Hospital

38. “Bowlby claimed it was essential for mental health that an infant has a warm, intimate and BLANK relationship with his mother.”
continuous

39. “Psychologists are interested in the effects of separations so they can provide BLANK about how healthy development can be safeguarded when attachment is BLANK.”
advice
disrupted

40. Impact of DAY CARE on Child Development
This section is REMOVED from the 2016 syllabus

41. Attachment in Everyday Life
Day care: Refers to a form of temporary care (i.e. not all day and night long), not provided by family members or someone well known to the child and usually takes place outside of the home.
Arguments against:
Separation from parent(s) is ‘bad’ and can have long term effects.
Quality of care is not what would be given by parents.
Arguments for:
Can provide fun, stimulation, and peer relations.
If ‘stay at home’ parent is bored, how stimulating would they be?
It’s a matter of good Vs bad quality care.
 So what are the evidence??

42. Cognitive Development
Negative effects: Ruhm (2000) surveyed 4,000 babies and found 3 / 4 year olds tend to have lower verbal ability, 5 / 6 year olds tend to have worse reading and maths skills.
Positive effects: Andersson (1992) conducted a longitudinal study of over 100 children assessed at age 8 &13. Children who entered day care before 1 y.o had higher school performances. Horwood & Ferguson (1999) study in New Zealand found better cognitive performance with no negative effects.
Trade off!: Belsky (2006) – longitudinal study of 1000 children from birth; day care children show advanced cognitive & language development BUT higher level of problem behaviour including aggression towards peers; which leads us to ...

43. Social Development
Negative effects: Belsky and Rovine (1998) assessed attachment; infants receiving 20 hours+ day care per week before 1 y.o. more likely to be insecurely attached compared with children at home. Maccoby & Lewis (2003) suggest a positive correlation between hours in day care (before 4.5 y.o.) and negative social outcomes.
However, Vandall et al (1994) found children in better-quality care have more friendly and fewer unfriendly interactions than those in lower-quality; so quality of care is key issue.
Indeed, Clarke-Stewart (1992) argue day care promotes greater confidence and independence from a younger age, which may seem aggressive and more challenging of adults/authority.
Campbell et al (2000): more days per week for less hours is optimum for rounded development.