Attachment - The three stages that are involved in social development.

Andrew Caldwell

Psychology Homework – Attachment

The three stages that are involved in social development are:

Stage One - The infant is attached to other human beings in preference to inanimate features of the environment. At round about six weeks, babies begin to smile at human faces and voices - the first social smile.

Stage Two – At round about three months the infant learns to distinguish different human beings. The parents are recognised as familiar and get a smile response, strangers are seen as unfamiliar. The infant does not appear to be distresses when cared for by unfamiliar people.

Stage Three – At round about six to seven months the baby is capable of forming a lasting, emotionally meaningful bond or attachment with certain specific individual whose company it seeks. The major indications that a bond has been formed are:

Missing the mother when she is gone for a few minutes
A fear response to strangers – crying, and distress, if the mother is present.

Rutter see’s the purpose of attachment as detachment, but successful detachment depends on secure bonds. This refers to the confidence that the child has in the attachment figure being ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Missing the mother when she is gone for a few minutes
A fear response to strangers – crying, and distress, if the mother is present.

Rutter see’s the purpose of attachment as detachment, but successful detachment depends on secure bonds. This refers to the confidence that the child has in the attachment figure being

In 1976 it was thought that emotional bonding with a child had to happen. It was discovered by Klaus and Kennell, as they studied premature babies and found that attachment between mother and child is enhanced by physical contact and the timing of such contact is critical. They argued that 6-12 months after birth is a critical period for motnher’s emotional bonding to her baby.

There are two theories that are related to the need of food:

Psychoanalytic Theory – Freud argued that the baby’s primary drive is for food and that they baby associated its mother with the primary drive. The child later gets a second drive for it’s mother and she then becomes desired in her own right.
Learning Theory – Is when the baby’s hunger drive it reduced (primary drive) and then the child is conditioned to depend on its mother, with the mother being the secondary drive as a result of being conditioned by the satisfaction of the hunger drive.

There are two pieces of evidence that suggests that these theories are incorrect:

Hallow and Zimmerman – In their work with monkeys they found out that the warmth and comfort provided by the cloth (mother) was a more powerful contributor to attachment than the milk provided by the wire (mother)

Schaffer and Emerson – They found out that infants can become attached to people who do not perform care-taking activities. They also found that the nature of the attachment can be influenced by responsiveness to the infant’s behavior and the total amount of stimulation provided. Schaffler argued that the need for stimulation is innate, initially focusing on human sources in general, later moving a preference for specific attachment figures