Outline the development of attachments

Developmental Psychology – Key Assessment Task

1. Outline the development of attachments

An attachment is a powerful bond between an infant and its caregiver. Infants form attachments because they are helpless at birth and so need caregivers to provide for and protect them. There are many long term effects of attachments, for example an attachment gives a foundation for emotional relationships e.g. the infant is learning how to form an emotional or “love” relationship. Schaffer and Emerson believed that infants form attachments by three stages, this argument was based on a large scale study of 60 infants in a working class area of Glasgow over 2 years. The first stage of attachment Schaffer and Emerson believed a child to go through happens when they are 0-6 weeks old, this is known as the Asocial Stage and involves the infant smiling and crying but not directing these emotions at individuals. The second stage of attachment is known as Indiscriminate Attachment and happens when the infant is 6 weeks to 7 months old; this involves the child seeking attention from different individuals. The last stage of attachment is Specific Attachments and happens when the infant is 7-11 months old, this stage shows a strong attachment to one individual, with good attachment to others following afterwards.

2. Describe the procedures and findings of one study of individual difference in attachment

The type of attachment between an infant and its caregiver is very important to the child’s emotional development, however assessing infant-caregiver attachments is hard to do, as it isn’t always possible to observe such relationships over a long period of time. Ainsworth and Bell developed the Strange Situation procedure to assess infant’s attachment type. The procedure lasts for about 20 minutes and takes place in a laboratory. The test was carried out on American infants ageing from 12 to 18 months. The Strange Situation is composed of eight episodes, which involve the infant being separated for their caregiver, being with a stranger and then reunion with their caregiver. There are two separations and reunions during the procedure. There were four key behaviours used to asses the security or insecurity of the attachment in relationship these were; separation protest, the infant’s willingness to explore, stranger anxiety and reaction to reunion with the caregiver. Ainsworth found that there were substantial individual differences in behaviour and emotional response to the Strange Situation procedure. Seventy per-cent of the infants tested showed behaviour classified as typical of secure attachment, whilst ten per-cent were anxious or resistant, and twenty per-cent anxious or avoidant. This shows that secure attachment is the favoured type of attachment, implications to this include healthy emotional and social development and the type of attachment to maternal sensitivity and responsiveness.

c) Consider the extent to which Bowlby’s claim has been supported by research evidence related to privation

John Bowlby introduced his Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis in 1953; this focused on the effects of deprivation. Bowlby believed that breakage of the maternal bond with a child during the fist years of its life is likely to have a crucial effect on its intellectual, social and emotional development. Bowlby also expressed his belief that many of these negative effects were permanent and irreversible. In the early 1940’s psychologists had observed that children could be effected if they were separated from their mother for a long period of time, but the extent of suffering hadn’t been discovered. In 1944 John Bowlby undertook his own research using clients from the child guidance clinic where he worked to try and show a cause-and-effect relationship between maternal deprivation and emotional maladjustment. He had previously noticed that children who showed inadequate emotional development had often experienced separation or deprivation and he proposed that this could lead to psychological and behavioural problems later on in life.

        By interviewing children and their families Bowlby was able to build up a record of their early life experiences. From these interviews Bowlby discovered that some of the children had endured early and prolonged separation from their mothers, he also found that some of the children were emotionally maladjusted (their emotional development wasn’t normal). Bowlby also diagnosed some of the children with “affectionless psychopathy”, a disorder which involves a lack of guilt and remorse.

        Bowlby took an opportunity sample of 88 children from the child guidance clinic, 44 of these children had been directed to the clinic because they were stealing (these were the “thieves”) and the other 44 children with non-criminal emotional problem’s acted as “controls”. Bowlby discovered that 32% of the “thieves” could be described as emotionless psychopaths, whereas none of the control group were diagnosed with this. He also found that 86% of the “thieves” who had been diagnosed with affectionless psychopathy had experience of early separation. Only 17% of the “thieves” without emotionless psychopathy had been maternally deprived. From these findings Bowlby said that maternal deprivation could result in a lack of emotional development and that maternal separation in a child’s early life would cause permanent emotional damage in the form of affectionless psycopathy.

        Hodges and Tizard conducted a study following Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis and earlier contractictory research by Tizard, which expressed that the negative effects of privation could be reversed. Hodges and Tizard observed a group of 65 children, all of whom had been taken into care before the age of four months. These children were compared with a control group all of whom had been raised a home, the study was carried out over a long period of time and all the children who were involved were followed from entering care to the age of 16. The children who were bought up in an institution didn’t have a chance to from any consistent relationships as they had on average 50 different caregivers before they were 4 years old. This lack of consistent relationship meant that the children suffered from maternal deprivation, however this didn’t hinder the children’s cognitive development, with a mean IQ of 105 at the age of four and a half.

        By the time the institutionalised children were 4 years old, 24 of them had been adopted, 15 had returned to their natural homes, whilst the remaining children stayed in the institution. The children were reviewed at the ages of 4, 8 and 16. By the times the adopted children had reached the later two ages they had all become attached to their adopted parents and were equally attached as those in the control group. This wasn’t the case with the children who returned to their natural families, possibly because the parents weren’t sure they wanted their children back. Bowlby said as part of his hypothesis that it was better for children to go to a bad home than to a good institution because of the possible better emotional care that could occur. Nevertheless this research shows otherwise.

        However despite the adopted group doing better at home both the adopted group and the children who were returned to their natural parent struggled at school, Hodges and Tizard said that the children had “an insatiable desire for adult attention, and difficulty in forming good relationships with their peer group”. It was noticed that the children who had been institutionalised didn’t have a special friend or consider other children as a source of emotional support.