Describe four key pieces of research into the role of attachment in behaviour acquisition.

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Applied Psychological Perspective in                                                              Vanessa Addo

Health and Social Care

P3

Describe four key pieces of research into the role of attachment in behaviour acquisition.

M2

Analyse the contribution made by the four pieces of research to the understanding of the role of attachment in behaviour acquisition.

D1

Evaluate the contribution made by the four pieces of research to the understanding of the role of attachment in behaviour acquisition.

For this assignments, I will be describing the four key pieces of research into the role of attachment and analyse the contribution made by the four pieces of research to the understanding of the role of attachment in behaviour acquisition. Then I will evaluate and also show by views about the most useful aspects of each piece of research and draw a conclusion about the one I think offers the greatest contribution.  

Attachment is an emotional bond between infant based upon trust, which is developed overtime. It is very important for early relationships in a child development.

Bowlby’s theory of attachment

John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist. He believed that earliest bonded formed by a child with their caregiver have a great impact that continues throughout life.  Research shows that infants go through stages as they develop their relationship with other.  There are five stages of attachment that an infant needs to go through in order develop their relationship with others. They are:

  • pre-attachment (0-2 months)
  • attachment-in-the-making (2-7 months)
  • specific attachments (7 months)
  • multiple attachment (8 months)
  • reciprocal relationships (8-24 months)

Bowlby theory suggested that a child would originally form only one attachment and that the attachment figure will act as a secure base for exploring the world. He believed that there should be a primary bond which is much important more than any other. This is usually the mother. During his studies he also suggested that nature of monotropy is a breakdown of the maternal attachment, which leads to consequences. E.g. affectionless and psychopath. The theory of the monotropy led to the formulation of his maternal deprivation hypothesis.

In 1944, Bowlby investigated the effects of maternal deprivation on people, in order to see whether delinquents have suffered deprivation. According to Bowlby breaking the maternal bond with the child during the early stages of its life is likely to have a great impact on its intelligence, social and emotional development. In order to compare his findings, Bowlby interviewed two groups of 44 adolescents. One group were referred to a child protection program because of stealing. The second group of children acted as controls. The controls were also referred to the clinic because of emotional problems but they have not yet committed a crime. He interviewed the parents of both groups to investigate whether their children had experience separation during the critical period and also for how long.

Overall, Bowlby found out that 32% of the juvenile thieves had been separated from their mothers during their first five years. However, in the control group only two have had such a separation. The uncontrolled group showed affectionless psychopath. None of the control group was affectionless psychopath. This shows that affectionless psychopaths show little concern for others and are unable to from relationships. The reason for their anti-social behaviour and emotional problems in the first group was due to maternal deprivation.

Overall conclusion, Bowlby’s maternal deprivation suggested that a discontinuous relationship between a mother figure and infant would result in emotional maladjustment. For example, unable to cope with everyday social situation and personal relationship. Nevertheless, some of his findings indicates that children can and do recover from early deprivation but this might not be the case when it comes privation.

The effect of privation

 Hodges and Tizards carried out study to relating to privation. This is called longitudinal study. Their study focused on a group of 65 children who were placed in one institution. These children were less than 4 months old, which means they had not yet formed attachments. It was a policy in the institution for caretakers not to form any kind of attachment with the children and they were also short of staff. This meant that children had less chance to from a close continuous relationship with adults. According to their finding 70% of the children did not care deeply about anyone. This concludes that most of the children had experience lack of attachment rather than a loss of attachment. At the age of 4, 24 of the institutionalised children had been adopted, 15 of the children had returned back to their original homes and the rest of the children remained in the institution.  

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In addition to their findings, at the age of four the caretakers reported that the children did not have deep relationships. They were more of an attention seekers and indiscriminately affectionate than the children who were not in the institution. Most of the children who were restored and adopted had formed a close relationship with their parents and adopted parents. Their teachers reported that they children still tend to be more attention seeking and more overly friendly than normal peers. At the age of 16, the adopted children were closely attached to their parents at the control, whereas the restored ...

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