Attachment is on the Specification so every candidate learns it and the Examiner will expect you to know it in detail. The Specification identifies BOWLBY and AINSWORTH as researchers into attachment, but candidates aiming for the highest bands should be familiar with other researchers too, such as Robertson, Spitz, Lorenz and Harlow. Theories of PRIVATION and DEPRIVATION also draw on the theory of attachment, making this topic area even more important.
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ATTACHMENT
In Unit 2, Child Psychology expects all students to know about attachment and the linked topics of privation and deprivation.
Attachment is the bond between an animal and its parent - usually its mother. It is vital in learning and in social development and it seems to have effects which carry on into adult life. Attachment is observed in all animals.
The term "attachment" was coined by British psychologist John Bowlby who defined it as: the lasting psychological connectedness between human beings - John Bowlby Bowlby's work was followed up by Mary Ainsworth:
Attachment is a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another across time and space - Mary Ainsworth STAGES OF ATTACHMENT
Rudolph Schaffer & Peggy Emerson (1964) studied 60 babies at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life. This is a longitudinal study. The children were all studied in their own home. They observed attachment develop through these stages:.
The most important factor in attachment in humans is not who feeds the child but who plays and communicates with the child. Responsiveness is vital for attachment.
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THEORIES OF ATTACHMENT
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James Robertson was a research colleague of Bowlby's who had also worked with Freud's daughter, Anna Freud. Robertson studied children at Anna Freud's children's hospital and noticed the distress they showed when they were separated from their mothers. He made a film about a 2-year-old girl called Laura who was in hospital for an operation. The film proposed the view (which wasn't widely accepted at the time) that children suffered when their attachment figure wasn't near.
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WHAT? Did people in the early 20th century really not notice that their children got upset when they were apart? Remember that the middle and upper classes routinely employed nannies or sent their children to boarding schools (Bowlby went to a boarding school and hated it), so the idea that this might be bad for children was slow to take hold
Robertson's study of Laura was a case study and a naturalistic observation. He kept the procedure scientific by sampling the girl's behaviour at random intervals over 8 days. He concluded that when the child was separated from the attachment figure, there were three stages:
- Protest: the child cries and throws tantrums, showing anger and fear
- Despair: crying becomes intermittent and the child seems to be settling down, but distress is really deepening
- Detachment: the child seems content but really the attachment is breaking and long-term emotional damage may take place
This is the PDD (Protest - Despair - Detachment) model of separation.
1-minute extract from Robertson's film A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital (1953)
SPITZ'S INSTITUTIONALISED CHILDREN
René Spitz (1946) studied children in hospitals and identified that they became depressed when away from their attachment figure.
Spitz concluded that if an infant forms an attachment with the mother in the first 6 months of life, the child will develop in a healthy way. If the attachment is broken (such as by a stay in hospital) then the child suffers anaclitic depression - the infants wastes away emotionally, socially and physically and can even die.
Spitz concluded that if an infant forms an attachment with the mother in the first 6 months of life, the child will develop in a healthy way. If the attachment is broken (such as by a stay in hospital) then the child suffers anaclitic depression - the infants wastes away emotionally, socially and physically and can even die.
Anaclitic depression is depression brought on by separation from an attachment-figure. You can add this to your understanding of the non-biological explanations for depression in Clinical Psychology.
Short breaks in attachment can be recovered from; if the child is reunited with its mother it re-attaches in a couple of months. However, longer detachment can become severe and Spitz terms this HOSPITALISM. Three months seems to be the crucial period: before that time, the child will try to form attachments with nurses and carers and cling to them, but after that the child becomes severely depressed and withdraws. These hospitalised children lose weight and stop showing facial expression; they refuse to interact with carers or playmates.
This 7-minute film of Spitz's research has no sound - but students could use it for their observation practical
Spitz didn't just blame hospitalism on separation from the attachment figure. He also blamed lack of stimulation in hospitals where there was nothing for the child to look at or play with. He linked this to institutionalised children having low IQs.
In 1990, after the fall of Romania's Communist regime, thousands of orphans were discovered living neglected in state orphanages in shocking conditions. The mental states of these Romanian orphans resembled Spitz's description of hospitalism. |
A surviving Romanian orphan looks back on the experience of growing up institutionalised - damaged by growing up in an institution
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THEORIES OF ATTACHMENT
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The study of behaviour from an evolutionary viewpoint is ETHOLOGY and one of the most famous ethologists to study attachment is Karl Lorenz. Lorenz noticed that ducks and geese, when hatched, follow the first moving object they see; this is called imprinting.
Usually, ducklings imprint on their mother, but occasionally they can imprint on another animal or a human, with comical results.
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Human infants don't "imprint" on a mother as immediately and as dramatically as ducklings, but something similar does go on in a subtle way. John Bowlby combined this insight from ethology with Freud's insight from psychodynamic theory to create his own maternal deprivation hypothesis.
HARLOW'S MONKEYS
Harry Harlow is notorious in the history of Psychology for his experiments on rhesus monkeys to explore attachment. These infant monkeys were taken away from their mothers and encouraged to become attached to two models known as surrogates (replacements):
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Harlow observed that monkeys that had access to both surrogates developed into healthier adults than those who only had access to a wire surrogate. This shows that attachment is not just about food (which the wire mother provided), but emotional comfort as well. When Harlow used loud noises and lights to frighten the monkeys, those with access to a cloth mother would run to 'her' for comfort then show courage; those with no cloth mother would simply cower.
Harlow's experiments revealed a great deal about attachment but were condemned for the unethical treatment of animals - which verged on the sadistic.
John Bowlby was inspired by Harlow's ideas (but not his methods) and concluded that the protest stage when infants are separated from their attachment figure might also be a survival trait - the loud protest attracts the attention of the caregiver and (hopefully) brings her back.
EVALUATING THEORIES OF ATTACHMENT
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