Attachment Theory and Development

• Attachment is an emotional bond formed in the second half of a baby's first year with its caregivers.
• Signs of attachment include warm greetings, smiles, and making contact.

Theories of Attachment

• Freud's psychoanalytic theory states that babies become attached to caregivers because they are associated with gratifying the infant's drive to obtain pleasure.
• Learning theory of attachment is supported by evidence, associating a mother with reducing a baby's hunger drive.
• The mother's role is providing food (primary reinforcer), which causes herself to become a secondary reinforcer.
• Harlow's experiment involved separated baby monkeys; one group was given a wire "mom" that provided food, and another group a warm cloth "mom" without food.
• The monkeys preferred the warm cloth "mom," disproving the learning theory of attachment since attachment is not automatic.
• Cognitive developmental approaches indicate that before attachment, an infant must differentiate between their mother and strangers.
• Infants must understand that people exist even when out of sight, known as object permanence, influenced by Piaget.
• Ethological theory of attachment, by John Bowlby, is related to Lorenz's study of imprinting.
• Bowlby suggested that attachment roots stem from instinctual infant responses crucial for species protection and survival.
• These responses include crying, following, sucking, and smiling.
• Attachment emphasizes the active role of the infant's early social signaling system and stresses mutual attachment.
• Critics suggest Bowlby's attachment theory is biologically programmed.

Development of Attachment

• Schaffer proposes 4 phases in the development of attachment: preattachment (0-2 months), attachment-in-the-making (2-7 months), clear-cut attachment (7-24 months), and goal-corrected partnership (24+ months).
• Fatherhood varies across cultures.
• Prepare men for fatherhood through biology and hormonal changes like a drop in testosterone.
• A strong connection between mother and father during pregnancy results in hormonal changes.

The Nature and Quality of Attachment

• Mary Ainsworth studied attachment and her concept of secure base via "Strange Situations".
• It involves how infants organize their attachment behavior around a particular adult, using them as a secure base.
• The Strange Situation is a scenario where a mother leaves her baby alone with a stranger twice, and reunions occur twice, typically observed at 8-9 months.
• About 60% of the time results in secure relationships, because they sought contact when she came back

Four Categories of Attachment

• Secure
• Insecure-avoidant
• Show little distress over the mother's absence
• They actively avoid their mother upon return
• 20% of USA samples are in this category
• Insecure-resistant
• 10-15% of USA samples
• Become extremely upset when the mother leaves
• Act ambivalent upon her return
• Can seek contact and resistance
• Insecure-disorganized
• Seem disorganized when reunited with their mother
• Freeze in movements
• Are unable to cope in an organized way when distressed

New Methods

• AQS (Attachment Q Sort), a set of cards with mother-described behaviors on a likely-less likely scale, for ages 1-5.
• AISI (Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory), designed for ages 6-12.
• CAP (California Attachment Procedure), assessing how mothers manage their children's fears.

Cultural Differences

• Cultural differences in parenting: Different cultures encourage different levels of independence. Norwegian parents promote independence sooner than Italian parents.
• Behaviors categorized as "avoidant" in one culture may be normal in another, impacting the Strange Situation's reliability.
• Attachment categories are applicable across cultures, but expression varies among ethnic groups.
• Parental solicitude factors: Attachment is affected by personality, beliefs, resources, and ability to care for the child under stress, per Thompson (2006b).
• Attachment as adaptive: The main attachment types (secure, resistant, avoidant) reflect responses to parental investment instead of strict security.
• Cultural variations: Ganda infants (Uganda) show more separation distress than U.S. infants due to different caregiving.
• U.S. infants are encouraged to play alone and sleep separately, while Japanese infants sleep with parents.
• Japanese infants react more strongly to separation due to more constant contact with caregivers.
• Japanese and Israeli infants display more resistant behavior.
• This is because Japanese babies are rarely separated from mothers.
• Israeli kibbutz infants show resistant attachment because of inconsistent caregivers caring for multiple children.
• Potential limitations: Some cultures (Germany, Sweden) have children who appear avoidant, challenging test validity.
• The procedure may be too distressing for Japanese and Israeli infants.

Alternative Methods

• Alternative methods involve shortening separation times in the Strange Situation for distressed infants.
• The Attachment Q-Sort (AQS) allows caregiver input.
• Cross-cultural consistency shows separation behaviors vary across cultures (Posada et al., 1995).

Future Research Directions

• Future cross-cultural assessment needs naturalistic studies with observations in diverse contexts.
• Applicability of attachment assessments varies across cultures, related to diverse caregiving practices.

Influences on Attachment Quality

• Ainsworth described how parental interaction styles relate to attachment relationships, particularly sensitive care, which relates to secure attachment.
• Parents can be rejecting/unavailable, inconsistently available, neglectful, or abusive.
• Approach/avoidance behavior is when infants alternate between approaching and retreating in response to their mother in the Strange Situation experiment.
• This may occur when they are unsure of what to expect, or due to maternal depression.

Implications of Early Attachment Problems

• Long-term consequences: Early attachment problems impact emotional and behavioral outcomes and a meta-analysis (Hoeve et al., 2012) analyzed 74 studies with over 55,000 participants.
• It revealed a strong link between poor attachment and delinquency in both boys and girls, which a greater impact exists when parent and child are the same sex.
• It showed stronger effects are seen in younger children.

Children Raised in an Israeli Kibbutz

• Ansfield's experiment sought to prove the impact on attachment styles.
• Low income, inner-city mothers were participants.
• Soft baby carriers were compared as control groups, and rigid carriers with experimental groups.
• Soft baby carriers led to secure attachment types in 83% of cases.

Internal Working Models/Attachment Representation (Bowlby)

• These are mental representations of oneself, one's parents, and parenting styles.
• Individuals tend to recreate their own childhoods.
• Main and colleagues supported this via interviews with mothers, finding three categories: autonomous, dismissing, and preoccupied maternal attachment categories.
• There is also the earned secure type, who can overcome their attachment style and establish a secure one.
• Grossmann and colleagues found strong connections adult recollections of attachment style

Introduction

• Parenting styles transmit across generations, with attachment styles persisting across three generations.

Method

• Three generations of 32 middle-class Italian families with no divorce history participated in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).
• The total number of participants was 224 parents, grandparents, and offspring.
• Participants completed a mental health questionnaire.
• The youngest generation was psychology students, so this potentially limits findings.

Results

• Secure parents tend to have secure offspring.
• The effect is more pronounced when mothers or grandmothers were the primary caregiver.
• Having both maternal and paternal grandmothers influenced the mother's caregiving.

Discussion

• Attachment styles have a female lineage.
• Societal shifts and parenting norms have changed in the last 60 years, which shows correlation between attachment styles and not causation.

Leman 153-155

• Motor abilities are intrinsically bound, like walking.
• Proprioception is sensory input from muscles to know body's position.

Neonatal Reflexes

• Reflexes are involuntary responses to external stimuli.

Miller's General Orientation Theory

• Ethology involves species-specific innate behaviors, evolutionary perspective, learning predisposition, and ethological methodology.
• Innate behaviors are the same, inherited, and adaptive, but are modified by environment.
• Innate behavior is stereotyped across individuals, presented without experience, and universal for species.
• Innate behaviors are relatively unchanged by experience or are not present at birth like bird songs.

If Another Species Has the Same Innate Behavior

• It resulted due to shared ancestry or had similar environmental developments.
• Infants reflexes are simple responses, while fixed action patterns are complex and promote survival.
• Animal dances and burying nuts are examples of fixed action patterns are genetically programmed sequences of coordinated actions.
• Fixed action patterns are elicited by a sign stimulus, which triggers the action.
• Exaggeration of the sign stimulus can trigger the response. An example is where an infant sucks, even though nothing is in their way
• Varied modal action patterns are variations of fixed action patterns.
• Waddington's model is how regulatory mechanisms constrain development, while allowing modification by the environment.
• Biological self-righting, or adapting to changes
• Phylogeny changes, while ontology is within one generation.

Learning Predispositions

• Biology enables and constrains learning
• There is a sensitive learning period where individuals are biologically ready to learn new information, such as Lorenz's imprinting, where offspring recognizes their parents.
• General and specific learning skills allow CNS to have capability of flexible thinking and rely less on fixed action patterns.