What Is Attachment



What Are Emotional Attachments?

(Taken from various Developmental textbooks)

Attachments are reciprocal relationships.

Establishment of interactional synchrony

Coordinated interactions between infant and caregiver occur several times a day.

Important to establishing emotional attachments

What Is Attachment?

Attachment is a close emotional bond between the infant and the caregiver.

Characterized by:

Mutual affection

Frequent interaction and close proximity

Selectivity—preference for one or more persons.

The Growth of Primary Attachments

Four stages characterize the gradual development attachment between infant and caregiver:

• Phase 1 Asocial (0-6 weeks): Infants instinctively direct their attachment to human figures. Begin to prefer smiling faces. React favorably to social and non social stimuli

• Phase 2 Indiscriminate (6 wk-7 months): Attachment becomes focused on the primary caregiver—small tendency to discriminate familiar from strangers. Enjoy social stimulation.

• Phase 3 Specific attachment (7-9 months): Protest separation from particular person—usually mother, some wariness of strangers. Use caregiver as secure base for exploration

• Phase 4 Multiple attachments (shortly after stage 4): form attachements with multiple others. A goal-directed partnership is formed. . Specific attachments form and the infant is able to actively seek contact from regular caregivers.

Theories of Attachment

Psychoanalytic theory

Freud: I love you because you feed me.

Erikson: Overall responsiveness to child's needs is most important.

Freud believed that infants become attached to the person that provides oral satisfaction.

Harlow and Zimmerman’s classic study demonstrated that feeding is not the crucial element in the attachment process: contact comfort is more important.

Learning theory: Rewardingness leads to love.

Cognitive-developmental theory: To love you, I must know you will always be there.

Ethological theory: Perhaps I was born to love.

Origins of the ethological viewpoint: Animal research with Konrad Lorenz

Attachment in humans does not follow imprinting, but perhaps human infants have inherited a number of attributes that help them to maintain contact with others and to elicit caregiving.

Bowlby explained from an ethological perspective that the newborn is biologically equipped to elicit attachment behaviors from the caregiver.

Two Attachment-Related Fears of Infancy

Stranger anxiety

Separation anxiety

Why do infants fear strangers and separations?

The ethological viewpoint states that a fear or avoidance response has become biologically programmed.

The cognitive-developmental viewpoint states that infants have developed stable schemes concerning their caregivers.

Individual Differences in Attachment Quality

Assessing attachment security through the strange situation test

Secure attachment: explore in mothers presence; distressed when separated from mother; warly greets and contact mo when returns; outgoing to stranger when mo present

Insecure: Resistant attachment: anxious, explores little when mo present; very distressed when separated; ambivalent when mo returns—may resist mo contact; wary of strangers even with mother

Insecure: Avoidant attachment: uninterested in exploring when alone with mo; little distress when separated from mo; avoids contact when mo returns; now wary of stranger, but may avoid or ignore.

Disorganized/disoriented attachment: mixture of other 2 types of insecure; show approach/avoidance conflict when mo returns or act confused or dazed.

Cultural variations in attachment classifications reflect cultural variations in child rearing.

Factors That Influence Attachment Security

Quality of caregiving: Mothers of securely attached infants are sensitive, responsive caregivers from the beginning.

Sensitive to baby’s signals, consistently available to respond to infant’s needs

Mutual interaction; stimulation; a positive attitude; warmth; and acceptance

Caregiver characteristics hindering attachment:

Maternal depression---unresponsiveness to infant signals

Caregivers who felt unloved, neglected, or abused as children;

interprets normal infant irritability as rejection

Mother does not want baby

Mother unable to take lead in establishing synchronous interactions

Mother insensitive to infant cues, may under-or over-stimulate infant.

Insecure/Resistant: inconsistent caregiving; lack of synchronization; overzealous caregiving. if mother is slow or inconsistent in responding to her infant’s cries or if she regularly intrudes on the infant’s desired activities, she is likely to produce an infant who cries more than usual, explores less than usual, and seems generally anxious.

Insecure/Avoidant: impatient caregiving; unresponsive caregiving; negative feeling; rejection. Mother consistently rebuffs or rejects the infant’s attempt to establish physical contact, the infant may learn to avoid her

Disorganized/Disoriented: Abusive caregiving

Ecological constraints on caregiving sensitivity

Health-related, legal, or financial problems

Unhappy marriages

Several children in family

Interventions can assist insensitive caregivers in becoming sensitive to their infants.

Characteristic of infants that promote attachment:

“kewpie doll” appearance

Rooting, sucking, grasping reflexes

Smiling

Cooing, babbling

Crying (communicating distress)

Synchronous movement, responsiveness to social overtures

Characteristics of infants making attachments more difficult:

Physically unattractive (prematurity)

Weak reflexes

Irritable, few smiles

Little pleasant vocalization

Irritating, shrill cry

Easily overstimulated, resists or ignores social overtures

Temperament can not explain attachment security.

Style of caregiving better predictor of infant attachement classification than temperament. Most “at risk” sluggish or irritable infants end up securely attached, suggesting infant’s behavior not key factor: maternal responsiveness is.

Critics of the Strange Situation highlight that the isolated, controlled events of the setting might not necessarily reflect the interactions that would happen in the babies’ natural environment.

Researchers have found that early attachments seem to foreshadow later functioning and that consistency in caregiving is likely an important factor in connecting early attachment and later functioning.

Attachment theorists argue that the type of attachment has a profound impact on the child’s developing personality and is central to social functioning well beyond the childhood years. John Bowlby: the nature of this early relationship shapes beliefs about oneself and others that influence social competence and well-being throughout life.

Attachment and Later Development

Long-term correlates of secure attachments. Securely attached toddlers and preschoolers tend to be:

Better problem solvers age 2

More complexity and creativity in symbolic play

More attractive to toddlers as playmates

More likely to initiate play activities

Sensitive to needs and feelings of others

Curious

Self-directed

Eager to learn

Long-term correlates of insecure attachments

Hostile and aggressive preschool and grade school children

Peers likely to reject

Social and emotional withdrawal

Why might attachment quality forecast later outcomes?

Attachments as working models of self and others

Parents’ working models influence attachment patterns formed with their infants.

Attachment history is not destiny.

Hazan and Shaver used infant attachment theory as the basis for examining how adult love relationships are related to early parent-child interactions. Research findings have indicated that adults with different styles differed predictably in the way they experienced love.

Secure lovers had relationships characterized by happiness, trust, and friendship. They emphasized being able to accept and support their partner despite their partner’s faults. Their relationships tended to endure longer.

The avoidant lovers were marked by fear of intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy.

Anxious/ambivalent lovers experienced love as involving obsession, desire for reciprocation and union, emotional highs and lows, and extreme sexual attraction and jealousy.

Hazan and Shaver have found that adult attachment style is also related to feelings about work:

Securely attached respondents had higher levels of work satisfaction in terms of job security, co-workers, income, and opportunities for challenge and advancement. Anxious/ambivalent attachment was associated with feelings of job insecurity, lack of appreciation and recognition by co-workers, and not getting deserved promotions.

Avoidantly attached respondents reported dissatisfaction with co-workers but were similar to secure respondents in their satisfaction with job security and opportunities for learning.

The Unattached Infant

Effects of social deprivation in infancy and childhood

By 6 months of age, infants no longer respond to environment or social contact.

Over long term, unattached infants lag behind in development in every way.

Reactive attachment disorder is possible.

Infants need sustained interactions with responsive companions in order to develop normally.

Infants need to believe that they have some control over the social environment.

Children can recover from early deprivation effects if placed with highly responsive, affectionate caregivers.

Recovery seems to go especially well if children are deprived for less than two years and have not been physically abused.

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