Summary
Summary Psychology: Attachment Notes
- Module
- Attachment
- Institution
- AQA
Psychology Paper 1 notes on Attachment including definitions, evaluations and experiment and key studies such as Ainsworth's Strange Situation
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Attachment:Attachment - an emotional bond between two people causing certain behaviours such as
clinging and proximity-seeking
How we recognise attachment:
● Proximity - staying close
● Separation anxiety - upset when they leave
● Secure-base behaviour - making regular contact even when apart
Function of social interaction for babies:
● Communication needs
● build a relationship and template for all future relationships
Caregiver-Infant Interactions:
Reciprocity:
● How two people interact
● Interaction must be reciprocal / two way
● Key to attachment
● Each person must respond to the other
● Baby and mother must both react to other or interaction will be insufficient which is bad
for attachment development
● Tronick, Still face experiment, shows that reciprocity is important
Examples of reciprocity:
● Small infants usually have “alert phases”
● This is when they are awake and are willing to engage and is important for reciprocity
● Mothers typically respond to alert phases two-thirds of the time
● Babies play an active role in these interactions
Interactional Synchrony:
● Mother and infant reflect each others actions and emotions in synchronised way
● Takes place when infants mirror the actions or emotions of another person
● Interaction serves to sustain communication between the two individuals
Meltzoff and Moore (1977):
● Aim - to examine interactional synchrony in infants
● Method - Using controlled observation, an adult model displayed one of three facial
expressions or hand gestures. To start, the child had a dummy in their mouth to prevent
facial response. Following the display the dummy was removed and childs expressions
filmed
● Results - There was a clear association between infants' behaviour and that of the adult
model.
● Conclusion - Suggest that interactional synchrony is innate and reduces the strength of
any claim that imitative behaviour is learnt
, Evaluation of Caregiver-Infant Interactions:
- Low Reliability - Testing children has poor reliability as they are constantly moving
and therefore some may believe behaviour has occurred by chance
- Methodological problems - Studying synchrony using observational methods can
result in problems such as observer bias
+ Controlled observations - Often filmed resulting in good internal validity
- Implications for mothers - As all studies done on mothers which results in a lot of
stress that everything relies on them
- Lack of supporting evidence - leads to unreliability as Koepk et al failed to replicate
findings
Isabella et al (1989)
● Aim -to see if caregiver-infant interactions correlated with secure attachment
● Method - Used a controlled observation of 30 mothers and infants that were assessed
on their interactional synchrony and quality of attachment
● Results - showed higher levels of synchrony were associated with higher quality
attachments
+ Controlled observation has high internal validity
- Only shows correlation so cannot establish cause and effect.
Stages of attachment:
Schaffer and Emerson conducted a longitudinal study on 60 Glasgow infants from
working-class homes at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of their life.
Mothers asked to keep a diary of the infant's responses to separation in seven everyday
situations:
● Left alone in a room
● Left with other people
● Left in pram outside house
● Left in pram outside the shops
● Left in their cot at night
● Put down after being held by an adult
● Passed by while sitting on their cot or chair
These were designed to measure separation anxiety and stranger anxiety
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