Outline and Evaluate Bowlbys Evolutionary Theory of Attachment. (12mark)
Outline and Evaluate Bowlby’s Evolutionary Theory of Attachment. (12mark) Attachment can be described using two theories, one being Bowlby’s attachment theory which is based on an evolutionary perspective. The theory suggests that evolution has produced a behaviour that is essential to the survival to allow the passing on of genes. An infant that keeps close to their mother is more likely to survive. The traits that lead to that attachment will be naturally selected. Bowlby has the idea that attachment has evolved and it is innate as it increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction, he suggests that children are already born with this innate drive and that they were born to perform these behaviours and born to attain attachment. To enhance the survival of their offspring caregiving is also adaptive and we are born to care for our children. He suggests that infants were born with social releasers (for example: crying/smiling) which encourage caregiving. Bowlby also suggests that there is a best time to form an attachment, this is called the sensitive period where infants are most sensitive to development of attachments and Bowlby would suggest that this is when the child is 3-6 months old. However, attachment can still take place at other times but it becomes increasingly difficult. Attachment acts as a secure base for exploration, which influences independence
Describe & Evaluate Freuds Theory Of Psychosexual Development
Describe & Evaluate Freud's Theory Of Psychosexual Development There are five stages in psychosexual development that, according to Freud, must be successfully completed in order to achieve a balanced & stable adult personality. If someone, however, doesn't complete a stage successfully, part of their libido can become fixated at that stage & not allow progression. This can lead to abnormalities within the adult personality, where the child will continue to seek satisfaction at this stage. The libido is our unconscious sexual pleasure drive & is the focus for each of the five stages. A normal personality will occur only if no libido is fixated within a stage. The first stage is the oral stage & occurs from birth until roughly 18 months of age where it will finish with weaning. This is where the mouth is the focus of pleasure due to being nursed. Fixation would occur at this stage either due to not being nursed or if nursing stopped too soon. This would cause an adult to have a biting personality (sarcastic), envious & dependent. They may also bite their fingernails, smoke regularly or even suck pens. The second stage of psychosexual development is the anal stage that is from 18 months of age until 2 & half years. In this stage, the anus & the expulsion or retention of faeces is the focus of pleasure, due to the experience of toilet training. Any fixation at this stage
Critically evaluate the impact behaviourism has had on psychology.
Critically evaluate the impact behaviourism has had on psychology For hundreds of years philosophers speculated about "the mind" and in around the 1880's the popular method of psychology dealt only with the conscious mind. The experiments carried out at this time were criticised for their lack of objectivity and by the 1920's a new brand of psychology emerged in the form of behaviourism. Psychology became a recognised discipline in around 1897 when Wilhelm Wundt started the first psychology lab in Germany. Wundt, along with others, attempted to investigate the mind through introspection, and observed their own conscious mental processes. While analysing their thoughts, images and feelings, they recorded and measured their results under controlled conditions and aimed to sort conscious thought into its basic elements as a chemist would with a chemical compound. This theory was known as structuralism. A particular critic of this method, in the early 1920's was John Broadus Watson (1878-1958), who felt that introspection was subjective and therefore erroneous. He also felt the only way forward was by using methods that could be observed by more that just one person and this could be achieved by studying behaviour. He wrote that "Behaviourism claims that 'consciousness' is neither a definable nor a usable concept; that it is merely another word for the 'soul' of more ancient
Outline and evaluate one or more explanations of attachment
Outline and evaluate one or more explanations of attachment (18 marks) Attachment is a strong, emotional, reciprocal bond between two people, especially child and carer. Attachment serves three main purposes these are that it is essential for; a child's survival, a child's emotional stability throughout his/her life and the stability of a child's future relationships One explanation of attachment is the learning theory. This theory explains that an attachment is something that is learnt (nurture). Behaviourists came up with the theory that attachment is either learnt through classical conditioning or operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning through association; food is an unconditioned stimulus and provides pleasure, which is an unconditioned response. The individual who feeds the infant is a conditioned stimulus and this individual becomes associated with pleasure, which is a conditioned response. When this association is made an attachment bond is formed between infant and 'feeder'. Operant conditioning is learnt when we are rewarded for doing something. Every time you do something and the result is pleasurable the behaviour is reinforced (repeated). On the other hand every time you do something and the result is not pleasurable it is less likely that the behaviour will be reinforced. Learning theory assumes that an infant will be attached to the person
The five major perspectives in Psychology and their main strengths and weaknesses.
The five major perspectives in Psychology and their main strengths and weaknesses In this essay I will outline and describe the major theories in Psychology and evaluate them. There are five major theories' these being, Psychoanalytic, behaviourist, cognitive, humanist and biological. The basis of Freud's Psychoanalytic theory is that human behaviour is controlled by the un-conscious mind, meaning we are unaware of why we behave the way we do. Freud felt that Psychologists should focus on understanding the mental process. Freud believed individuals to be in a state of conflict due to demands that are made from different parts of their personality, these being, ID, EGO and SUPEREGO. There needs to be a good balance between them to have the normality, however there will always be some degree of conflict between them. The ID is the demanding part and it is what responds to the instincts, e.g., the biological need for food, drink and warmth. It is determined by the seeking of pleasure and controls our behaviour when we act selfishly or on impulse. Freud explains this as: "It contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth that is laid down in the constitution- above all therefore, the instincts" (Freud, 1964) The EGO is the rational part of the personality, that does the planning and decision making. It makes us see the difference between wanting/
Multi-store model and working memory model
Multi-store Model and the Working Memory Model Models of Memory The Multi-store Model of Memory The multi-store model (MSM) was designed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). It says that there is actually more than one kind of memory. Multi-store model has three parts: sensory memory (SM), short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). Sensory Memory is the type of memory that receives and stores information about the world from our senses. Information lasts just as long enough for it to be transferred to STM (1-3 seconds). The visual system possesses iconic memory for visual stimuli such as shape, size, colour and location (but not meaning), whereas the hearing system has echoic memory for auditory part of sensory memory. Short-term Memory is the type of memory where information is selected by attention from sensory memory, may pass into short term memory (STM). This allows us to retain information (acoustically) long enough to use it, e.g. looking up a telephone number and remembering it long enough to dial it. Peterson and Peterson (1959) have demonstrated that STM last approximately between 15 and 30 seconds, unless people rehearse the material, while Miller (1956) has found that STM has a limited capacity of around 7+/-2 'chunks' of information. STM also appears to mostly encode memory acoustically (in terms of sound) as Conrad (1964) has demonstrated, but can also
Smacking Children right or wrong
Smacking Children right or wrong? To strike or slap with force using the open hand is the definition of smacking which is the issue that is being debated a lot amongst many people. The controversial issue is weather smacking children is morally right or wrong in the 21st century. Smacking children is an issue, which is very, complicated hence the reason why so many people have opinioned opinions on the issue. Some people are for smacking children as they feel hitting children allows discipline whereas other people feel that smacking children in an ineffective way of discipline and only teaches violence. Therefore In this essay I intend to put across both side of the arguments and then conclude with my own personnel opinion. Some people are against smacking children because the research evidence shown is overwhelming; smacking children is an ineffective way to manage children's behavior and damages their development. We have laws that protect adults from being assaulted by other adults however many people still believe that smacking children is a legal form of discipline. Is this therefore not ironic? As an adult can be protected by violence but a child does not have the same right. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child expresses that children should not be physically abused. Therefore a number of countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden)
Outline and evaluate evolutionary explanations of parental investment
Charley McCarthy Highsted School Assignment 4 Outline and evaluate evolutionary explanations of parental investment (24 marks) The evolutionary explanations of parental investment all believe that parents invest in their offspring in various ways, such as giving food and the energy put into rearing the child, and risks taken to protect them. This investment is defined as 'any investment made by a parent in one of his or her offspring that increases the chance that the offspring will survive at the expense of the parent's ability to invest in any other offspring (alive or yet to be born)' by Trivers, 1972. The amount of parental investment however, differs between males and females. Trivers, in 1972, came up with the parental investment theory. Central to this is the fact that men and women do not usually invest the same amount in their offspring. Women have to invest more to start with, as women have far less eggs, and these are harder to produce, than men do sperm. As well as this, females are limited to how many offspring they can have, whilst males can produce a virtually unlimited number. For this reason, females are typically concerned with the quality of a male and the resources they can supply, whilst males are more concerned with the quantities of females he can impregnate. After birth, human women have babies that are far more immature that other species, due to
"Fear is a contributing factor in power relations between adults and children". Critically discuss this statement in relation to at least two of the research papers you have studied so far.
JACQUELYN KNIGHTON U4222403 TMA 02 OPTION 2 - "Fear is a contributing factor in power relations between adults and children". Critically discuss this statement in relation to at least two of the research papers you have studied so far. In order to critically discuss the quoted statement it is first necessary to determine what the power relations between adults and children are. How do adults demonstrate power over children, and what part does fear play in contributing to this power. Fear is another word which will need to be classified, what frightens children and how do adults exploit this fear to exercise power over children. Throughout history and in all cultures adults exercise power over children, in all aspects of their lives from parental power, teacher/school regulation through to the passing of laws at national level that affect the lives of all children within that society. S. A. Taylor (2000) cited in Doing Research with Children and Young People Edited by Fraser et al, pointed out that it is adults and not children themselves who write about, debate and decide what rights children should have. This can be seen as an indication of the power adults exercise over children which confines them to subordinate roles within society. Power means different thing to different people, however, it is generally thought of as the ability of individuals or groups to
If a child does not form a significant attachment to a main caregiver within the first five years of life, he/she will grow up to become an affectionless psychopath- Discuss
"If a child does not form a significant attachment to a main caregiver within the first five years of life, he/she will grow up to become an affectionless psychopath"- Discuss Name: Matthew Joseph Addai Tutor: Charlotte Curtis Date: 28/3/11 The above statement is taken from a hypothesis made by famous British psychologist, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist John Bowlby, with regards to child development in correlation with maternal relationships. John Bowlby studied in Trinity College in Cambridge, University College Hospital, London, the Institute for Psychoanalysis, as well as Maudley Hospital, gaining qualifications for psychology, psychiatry, medicine and psychoanalysis respectively. He is known prominently for the development of "attachment theory", the "maternal deprivation hypothesis", as well as his "44 thieves case study", between his time working in a clinical hospital. This essay shall observe the importance of attachment through the perspectives of the two psychological perspectives of behavioural and developmental psychology. The evolutionary approach is compromised of much of Bowlby's ideas gathered from much of his research and work on child development between the 1930's and 1980's. The evolutionary approach considers attachment as an innate process for children, in that they are naturally inclined to seek development of one with a caregiver. It describes
