Attachment Theory

■ John Bowlby (1969) defines emotional attachment as strong affectional ties that
we feel with the special people in our lives.
■ people who are securely attached take pleasure in their interactions and feel
comforted by their partner's presence in times of stress and uncertainty.
■ parent-infant attachments are reciprocal relationship, that is initiated by the
parent and is built slowly from parent-infant interactions that occurred over the first
several months even when there is no early contact.
■ synchronised routine - one of the contributors to the growth of
attachment, which normally began as social expectancies and synchrony
between the gestures of the baby and caregivers especially i
during the state of alertness, receptiveness, and attentiveness of the
baby.
■ The Growth of Primary Attachments (Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson)
1. The Asocial Phase (birth to 6 weeks) - infants respond equally (asocial) in
interesting social and nonsocial stimuli through a smiling face
2. The Phase of Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 6 or 7 months)
- enjoy human company than other lifelike objects
- enjoys the attention they receive from anyone including strangers,
and fuss whenever they were put down
3. The Specific Attachment Phase (7 to 9 months)
- begun to protest only whenever that one particular individual, mostly
their mothers, has been separated from them, an indication of
genuine attachment
- According to Mary Ainsworth, the formation of secure attachment is
important in the development of exploratory behaviour for it serves
as a secure base for exploration. Example: Babies find it comfortable
to explore the room only when their mother is in line of sight.
4. The Phase of Multiple Attachments (9 to 18 months)
-infants are now becoming attached to other people
■ Early Theories of Attachment
■ Psychoanalytic Theory : I love you because you feed me - oral pleasure
i.e. sucking
■ Learning Theory: I love you because you reward me - continuous grant of
needs and comfort establishes the mother as a commodity or as their
secondary reinforcer.
■ Cognitive Developmental Theory : To love you, I must know you will
always be there - congruent with cognitive development, familiar
companions must be consistently present and establish object permanence
in the sight of babies, since attachments also first occur at the same time as
the sensorimotor stage.
Contemporary Theories of Attachment: The Ethological Theory
■ Bowlby (1969) states that all species are born with a number of innate
behavioural characteristics that in some way, contributed to the survival of
the species in the course of evolution; i.e. Konrad Lorenz and his report on
how goslings followed and imprinted on their first seen moving object, a
duck, their mother, for adaptive response. This imprinting later became
preadaptive characteristic.
Attachment in Humans
■ Kewpie doll effect, or an infant's appearance of a large forehead, chubby
cheeks, and a soft and rounded features, are attributes that elicit caregiving.
■ In addition, their reflexive responses which are endearing in nature, emit
signals that the infants are contented and happy with the stimulus given by
the caregivers, which gets the infants favorable responses from others.
■ Likewise, adults also find it difficult to not respond to the infant's signals. In
conclusion, according to Bowlby, human infants and their caregivers are said
to have evolved in a way or with qualities that predispose them to
respond favorably to each other, form close attachments, and ultimately,
survive. However, although human beings are biologically prepared to form
close attachments, secure emotional attachment will not develop unless each
participant has learned how to respond appropriately to the behaviour of the
other.
Attachment-Related Fears of Intimacy
■ These fear and avoidance response according to ethological viewpoint, are
biologically programmed from continuous danger encountered throughout
human evolutionary history.
■ Stranger Anxiety - there is a projected negative reaction towards
strangers especially in the specific attachment phase or after their first
attachment
■ Separation anxiety - infants who have formed primary attachments also
begin to display obvious signs of discomfort when separated from their
attachment objects, which starts at 6 to 8 months of age, and peaks at 14 to
18 months.
How to combat anxiety:
- Keep familiar companions available
- Arrange for companions to respond positively to the stranger
- Make the setting more familiar
- Be a sensitive, unobtrusive stranger
- Try looking a little less strange to the child
Assessing Attachment Security
■ Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation - a series of eight episodes that
stimulates (1) exploratory activities in the presence of toys (2) reactions to
strangers and to separation (3) behaviours when reunited with close
companions, that made it possible to characterize the attachment of infants
below 2 years old into any of these four:
■ Secure attachment
- welcomes contact with a close companion and uses this as a secure
base from which to explore the environment
- actively explores while alone with the mother
- visibly upset by separations
- greets the mother warmly when she returns, and often seeks
physical contact when distressed
- outgoing with strangers while the mother is present
■ Resistant attachment (insecure attachment)
- stays close to their mother, and explores very little
 - strong separation protest and a tendency of child to remain near her
but resist contact initiated by the caregiver, particularly after
separation
- wary of strangers even when the mother is present
■ Avoidant attachment (insecure attachment)
- little separation protest and a tendency to avoid or ignore caregiver
- rather sociable with strangers, but sometimes avoid them just like
they interact with their mother
■ Disorganised attachment (most insecure attachment)
- combination of the previous two
- reflects confusion about whether to approach or avoid the caregiver
- dazed appearance on reunion or tendency to seek and then abruptly
avoid the caregiver
■ Attachment Q-Set (AQS)
■ for ages between 1 and 5
■ an alternative method of assessing attachment security based on the
observations of the trained observers or parents, to a set of 90 descriptors of
attachment-related behaviours , in which the responses range from most like
to least like.
■ Secure attachments vary from culture to culture, i.e. Japanese mothers strive to
anticipate and satisfy all their babies' needs rather than react and satisfy, which is
what Americans do. Japanese seek to promote amae or total dependence on
mother, their hallmark of attachment security, which is contrary to Americans that
have these style as insecure attachment.
■ for many infants, fathers play the role of special playmates, and a secure attention
with them also displays better emotional self-regulation, greater social competence
with peers, and lower levels of problem behaviours and delinquency.
■ Children who are securely attached to both parents are less anxious and socially
withdrawn, and make better adjustments to the challenges of attending school. This
contributes the most to a child's development.
■ Factors that Influence Attachment Security
■ Mary Aisnworth believes that the quality of an infant's attachment to their
caregiver depends on the attention she has received.
■ caregiving hypothesis - mothers of securely attached infants are
sensitive, responsive caregivers from the very beginning.
- Sensitivity: Responding promptly and appropriately to the infant’s
signals
- Positive attitude: Expressing positive affect and affection for the
infant
- Synchrony: Structuring smooth, reciprocal interactions with the
infant
- Mutuality: Structuring interactions in which mother and infant attend
to the same thing
- Support: Attending closely to and providing emotional support for
the infant’s activities
- Stimulation: Frequently directing actions toward the infant
■ Quality of Infant's Attachment
 ■ Secure Attachment - derived from a caregiver's positive attitude towards
the infant, usually them being sensitive, and having interactional
synchrony, and their ample stimulation and emotional support.
■ Resistant Attachment - derived from inconsistent caregiving, in which
the infant copes with this through vigorous attempts to gain emotional
support.
■ Avoidant Attachment - derived from either rigid, self-centered caregivers
who are likely to reject their babies being impatient and unresponsive, or from
overzealous parents who bombards them with unwanted high levels of
stimulation. The infants here have learned to get by without emotional
support.
■ Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment - derived from cycles of
acceptance and abuse most likely from severely depressed mothers, who
may be inclined to mistreat or neglect their babies.
■ Who is at risk of becoming an insensitive caregiver?
- depressed parents
- unloved and neglected caregivers
- parents whose pregnancy are unplanned
- parents with ecological constraints like health, financial and marital problems
or stormy marriage.
■ Jerome Kagan's (Infant) Temperamental Hypothesis
■ infants are the primary architects of their attachment classifications, and
that the attachment behaviours or what a child displays reflects their
temperament.
■ claimed that what Strange Situation really measures is the infant's
temperament (easy temperament - secure attachment , difficult - resistant,
slow to warm-up - avoidant) but later got falsified.
■ Grazyna Kochanska has revealed based on his integrative theory of infant-
caregiver attachment that:
1. Quality of caregiving predicted whether it is under secure
attachment or not
2. Infant's Temperament or Fearfulness predicted the type of insecure
attachment ( temperamentally fearful - resistant, temperamentally fearless -
avoidant attachment)
■ Thomas and Chess's Goodness Fit Model: secure attachments evolve from
relationships in which there is a good fit between the caregiving a baby receives
and his or her own temperament, whereas insecure attachments are likely to
develop when highly stressed or otherwise inflexible caregivers fail to
accommodate their infant's temperamental qualities.
■ Those that have established secured attachments are more likely to display
favorable developmental outcomes. So, why might attachment quality forecast
later outcomes?
■ Attachments are often stable over time
■ According to Bowlby and Inge Bretherton, as infants interact with primary
caregivers, they develop internal working models.
internal working models - cognitive representations of
themselves and other people used to interpret events and form
expectations about the character of human development.
 - a working model of the self largely based on their
ability to elicit attention and comfort when they need
it.
- i. e. sensitive and responsive caregiving gives an idea
to the infant that people are dependable, while
neglectful and abusive caregiving may lead to future
insecurity and a lack of trust.
■ Secure Primary Attachment: Positive Self + Positive Others =
Secure, mutually trustful relationships
■ Avoidant Primary Attachment: Positive Self + Negative Others =
Dismissing emotional attachments
■ Resistant Primary Attachment: Negative Self + Positive Others =
Preoccupied with achieving and wanting secure emotional ties
■ Disorganized/Disoriented Primary Attachment: Negative Self +
Negative Others = Fearful
■ Securely attached children expect positive encounters in
their life and excel at remembering the positive events,
whereas insecurely attached children are better at
remembering the negative ones.