Attachment, parenting and development: research and clinical implications
Lecture 1: General overview 1, 13, 18, 29
Review
- Deadline before start of lecture 3 and 5
- Different form for RM
- Always give a reason/explanation for your claims.
- At the end most important part, strong aspects of the paper, 2 limitations
o Try not to say the same as in the paper
RM → try to come up for next step, for next research, 2 suggestions
Overview of attachment theory
What is attachment? (John Bowlby)
- Mental representation of child about how mother would react
- Strongly disposed ➔ innate system of attachment
- Seek proximity to and contact ➔ attachment behavior
o There are different phases and different types of behavior ➔ a baby would show it
on a different way than a child that can talk
o Not with everyone, but with specific person(s)
- Specific figure ➔ often primary caregiver
- Certain situations ➔ it is not always visible, mostly in distress situation for child
o When child is frightened, tired or ill
Attachment
- Role in development of the child
o Especially early attachment, an enormous important role for the development
- Influencing theories:
o Psychoanalysis ➔ focused on breastfeeding and very early attachment
o Animal studies ➔ for animals it is the feeding, but in humans it isn’t feeding.
▪ The aim focus is getting comfort and protection
Influences of other research fields on Bowlby’s attachment
- Ethology ➔ detailed study of animal behavior ➔ saw significance of two-way bond
between infant and mother
- Psychoanalysis ➔ understood long-term emotional impact of early relationships ➔ Bowlby
more concern with impact of real-life experience throughout the entire life course
- Cognitive psychology ➔ humans organize their believes about their self and relation to
others in the world based on mental models or schemes
Evolutionary base of attachment
- Selection of attachment behavior
o Survival – protection – proximity
o In order to survive, to be safe, it needs protection, can be find through proximity
- Harlow: drive for comfort can be distinguished from the need of food
o When monkeys where frightened it went to the ‘mother with fur’ instead of the one
with food
o So even in animals it is not the same, and not only about food
,Behavioral system and attachment
- Inherent motivation
- Behaviors can vary: effectiveness matters (crying, walking)
o Signaling = smiling, vocalizing ➔ bring mother to child for interaction
o Aversive = crying ➔ bring mother to child to terminate them
o Active = approaching and following ➔ move child to mother
- Maintaining homeostasis, active
- Not only for pleasure, because child can also attach to maltreatment parents
- ‘Safe haven’ and ‘secure base’ ➔ mother
o Safe haven ➔ supporting attachment relationship; comfort for child, child needs to
feel safe
o Secure base ➔ child knows parent is there, it can back to the base, can therefore
explore the world
o Secure attachment = balance between exploring and expressing attachment
behavior to seek protection
Activating conditions
- Internal conditions ➔ feeling sick, tired or ill ➔ conditions of child
- External conditions ➔ danger in the environment ➔ location and behavior of mother
Activation of proximity seeking:
Infant receives info (both internal & external sources) about a goal (= desired distance from mother)
is not met. It remains activated until goal is achieved
Behavioral Systems
- Include rules for selection, activation, and termination of behaviors based on individual’s
internal state and environmental context
- 4 specific behavioral systems:
o Attachment
o Fear/wariness
o Exploration
o Sociability ➔ related to children’s friendly interactions
Emotional and cognitive mechanisms
- Emotional regulation ➔ individual differences are related to how well a child can regulate
their emotions
- Internal working models ➔ child starts to develop certain expectations of behavior of the
other, and behave also to these expectations
Related to other behavioral systems ➔ if you have good expectations, it can help to learn and to
develop.
➔ If you expect more fearful situations, you intern react to these fear
4 phases development of attachment behavioral system
First 3 → first year of life, 4th → around age 4
1. Orientation and signals without discrimination of figure
a. Largely caregiver who maintains proximity
2. Orientation and signals directed toward one or more discriminated figures
a. Infant has control
3. Maintenance of proximity to discriminated figure by locomotion and signals
a. Locomotion → child can move, seek proximity
4. Implications of partnership for organization of attachment behavior during preschool years
a. Knows still attachment, although not close proximity
,Individual differences
- Quality differs across dyads
▪ All children are becoming attached, but quality differ
o Perception of the availability of caregiver
o Organization of infant response
o Balance between attachment and exploration
If the care (from parent) is different, than response (from child) will also differ (behavior)
- Secure and insecure relationship
o Secure: trust, promotes exploration
▪ How much they can trust the stability of the caregiver,
▪ That the caregiver is always going to be there
▪ Child has trust and confident about the caregiver, that it will be there
o Insecure: inconsistent caregiving, less mastery of environment
▪ Balance is off in how much child explores and receive from the caregiver
Insecure children ➔ their behavior is a strategy that is going to work for child (can’t depend on
caregiver)
Monotropy
- Child has preference for a principal attachment figure
- Motivation is protection
o One figure with principal responsibility
o Child’s quick automatic response
▪ When there is danger, child can quickly response to go to main caregiver
- Selection takes time (Belsky)
- Does mother survive childbirth?
o Evolutionary vision: when mother dies during birth, would be bad for child if it was
attached immediately and then loses her
- Who invests most?
o Investment time has going to decide who’s going to be primary attachment figure
o And what kind of attachment relationship child will have with a figure
Mostly mother = principle attachment figure
- Mother can be certain of a true biological connection
- Mother devotes her body and bodily resources to infant
- Mother has fewer opportunities to produce additional offspring than fathers and siblings do
Concordance (Van IJzendoorn & De Wolff, 1997)
- = overeenstemming
- Between child and mother, and child and father ➔ if attachment is the same
- Small, but significant correlation
o 45% were secure with both
o 17% were insecure with both
o 38% were non-concordant → different for father and mother
- Not yet tested for disorganized attachment
3 principal propositions about multiple attachment in infancy (Bowlby)
1. Most infants are thought to form more than one attachment
2. Potential numbers of attachment figures is not limitless (3-4)
3. Not all attachment figures are treated equivalent, there is an attachment-hierarchy
, Aspects of how attachment hierarchy is determined (Colin)
1. How much time infant spends in each figure’s care
2. Quality of care each figure provides
3. Each figures’ emotional investment in child
4. Social cues
Central hypotheses
- Antecedents of attachment:
o Different experiences of infants with caregiver: parental behavior
- Consequences of attachment:
o Individual differences in social and personality development, model of self
o Social competence
▪ Social relationships develop, if early attachment has an influence on it
o Behavior problems
- Continuity:
o Stable attachment: not the behavior but the organization
- Universality (and cross culture)
Central hypotheses from book:
- Universality = all infants (if possible) will become attached
- Normativity = majority of infants are securely attached in contexts of a save environment
- Sensitivity = attachment is dependent on childrearing antecedents, particularly maternal
sensitivity and response
- Competence = secure attachment → positive child outcomes (later in life)
Measures of attachment in early and middle childhood
Measures
- Strange Situation Procedure infants
- Strange Situation Procedure preschoolers
- Attachment Q-sort ➔ home observation
- (symbolic representation measures)
Strange Situation Procedure infants (Mary Ainsworth)
- From construct to operationalization
o Behavioral indication of “a state or perception of being secure about availability of
attachment figure”
o Behavior under conditions of increasing though moderate stress
SSP-infants
