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A level psychology aqa attachment
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A-level PsychologyPAPER 1 PAPER 2 PAPER 3
a. Social influence a. Approaches a. Issues and debates
b. Memory b. Biopsychology b. Relationships
c. Attachment c. Research methods c. Schizophrenia
d. Psychopathology d. Aggression
ATTACHMENT
An attachment figure is a caregiver who looks after the baby for long periods of time,
responds when they are hungry or need comfort and makes them feel safe.
An attachment bond is a strong lasting emotional bond formed between a baby and their
main caregiver.
3 behaviours that babies display when they have a strong attachment to their caregiver:
1) Safe base behaviour - when children treat their caregiver as someone they can
quickly return to whenever they’re scared or anxious. A child is treating a caregiver
as a safe place when they are willing to explore and interact with their surroundings
when the caregiver is nearby.
2) Separation anxiety behaviour - when children become distressed when they are
separated from their attachment figure.
3) Stranger anxiety - when children display distress in the presence of unfamiliar
people and instead prefer the company of their attachment figure.
Methods in attachment research
(Observational studies) When researchers study babies and small children they often rely
on the observational technique, recording the interactions between the caregivers and the
babies and carefully analysing every single frame of the recording, making detailed
observations of the behaviours displayed by babies - frame-by-frame video analysis.
A strength of using frame-by-frame video analysis is that it leads to more reliable
observations, as the researcher can repeat his observations of each frame, again
and again, to make sure that he gets consistent results each time.
A weakness of observational studies is that the researchers may not have always
been objective in their observations; they may have seen what they expect to see
when conducting observations - observer bias.
(Longitudinal studies) A longitudinal study is when a researcher investigates the same
participants at multiple time points to see how they change over time, they can be
observational studies, but they don’t have to.
A strength of using longitudinal studies is that it allows researchers to gain deeper
insights into behaviour and how it changes over time.
, Another strength of using longitudinal studies is that it gives researchers insights
into how early experiences shape behaviour.
Another strength of using longitudinal studies is that by studying behaviours at
multiple time points researchers can see if the results are reliable across time.
A weakness of using longitudinal studies is attrition, meaning across the study,
the researcher may lose some of their participants from the sample.
(Natural experiments) In attachment studies, laboratory studies are less used as they might
be unethical, e.g. taking a mother away from their child to see how the baby reacts, instead
natural and quasi experiments are used.
Not able to control all the extraneous variables that could influence the dependent
variable, meaning that we can’t directly test cause and effect.
(Animal studies) Other attachment researchers also conduct animal studies so they can
directly manipulate IV, just like in the behaviourist approach.
An advantage of using animal studies is that the researchers can directly
test cause and effect and there is no need to rely on natural and quasi
experiments.
The effects of variables such as deprivation of an attachment figure may
not be the same in an animal compared to a human baby. In other words, the
results of animal studies may not generalise to humans.
A second limitation of animal studies is that they might not always be
considered ethical as they might cause distress to the animal, and if we
argue that the studies don’t cause distress to the animals, then we’re implying
that animals are very different to humans, which limits the generalisability of
the findings.
But on the other hand, many researchers argue that the benefit of
animal research outweighs the negative impact of it. And even if
animals are quite different to humans, they have sufficiently similar
behaviours and genes for the results to still be valid.
How is attachment form?
Attachment is developed in 4 stages:
1) Pre-attachment stage - is the first 3 months of babies’ life and doesn’t show any
preference over any adults.
2) Indiscriminate attachment - begins at around 3 to 7 months of age, in this stage
babies begin to recognise and prefer familiar people, though they don’t yet form a
strong attachment to one particular person.
3) Discriminate attachment - at 7 to 9 months, babies form a preference or attachment
to just one person, usually the main caregiver. If babies are taken away from their
caregiver they cry and get upset - display separation anxiety. Babies cry and get
upset even when they are around unfamiliar people - displaying stranger anxiety.
4) Multiple attachments - from 9 months onwards, babies begin to form attachments
with people other than their main caregiver, babies have multiple attachment figures.
Schaffer and Emerson (1964), conducted a longitudinal study, using naturalistic
observation. They followed 60 babies and their families from birth to 18 months. Schaffer
, and Emerson assessed whether babies displayed separation anxiety by observing the
babies’ behaviour when they were taken away from their caregivers, and stranger anxiety
by observing the babies’ behaviour when they were in the presence of strangers, in addition
to interviews conducted with the families. Shaffer and Emerson's study supported the
evidence of the existence of the 4 stages of attachment, the results showed that it was super
common for babies to form multiple attachments, 87% of the babies form attachments of at
least 2 adult figures, 35% form 5 or more attachments. Babies' main attachment figure
wasn’t always their main caregiver or mother either. Babies who form the strongest
attachment to their caregiver have caregivers who were sensitive to their needs - known as
sensitive responsiveness.
A strength of the study is that it was a naturalistic observation. The families
were observed in the places where they usually interacted; at home, in the shops or
the park, therefore the results were more likely to have ecological validity and be
generalised to how babies and their caregivers behave in everyday life.
A weakness of the study is that due to the design, the research may have been
prone to observer bias because the observers already had a hypothesis which may
have biased their observations.
One weakness of using the interview technique is that the participants may give
inaccurate answers that they think are socially desirable, to avoid being judged
negatively - social desirability bias.
CAREGIVER-INFANT INTERACTIONS
➔ Reciprocity in caregiver-infant interaction is when the infant and caregiver both take
turns in an interaction so that they respond to each other’s actions. The more
reciprocity is shown by the infant and caregiver the stronger is their attachment bond.
(e.g. a baby laughing in response to their caregiver pulling a funny face. A baby claps
her hands after seeing her father clap his hands together)
➔ Interactional synchrony is displayed by infants and caregivers when they perform
similar actions in time with one another, they mimic each other. Interactional
synchrony helps to strengthen the bond between the caregiver and the infant. (e.g. a
father and son both open their mouths in the same way at the same time)
Condon and Sander (1974) analysed frame-by-frame video recordings of the movement
of babies when they were with their mothers. Condon and Sander found that babies timed
their actions to occur in time with their mother’s speech, their study provided evidence that
infant and caregiver displayed reciprocity and interactional synchrony in their
interactions. though the study didn’t show if the interaction causes or promotes
attachment bonds.
Isabella et al. (1989), used frame-by-frame video analysis of caregiver-infant interactions
to examine the fine details of the movements made by babies and their mothers to
investigate the bond between the mother and infant that participated in the study, by
measuring the amount of strangers and separation anxiety that baby displayed. Isabella et
al. found that mothers and babies who showed more interactional synchrony and more
reciprocity also had stronger attachment bonds, the researchers found a positive
correlation between interactional synchrony and the strength of caregiver-infant
attachment.
When there is a correlation between two variables there is an association between the two
variables we can't infer a causal relationship between the variables
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