Unit one AQA A psychology

Attachment key study summary revision

Attachment key study summaries

The two theories of attachment to learn are

Bowlby’s evolutionary theory

Dollard and Miller’s learning theory

Bowlby

His theory consists of 4 main points

That attachments are innate That there is a critical / sensitive period Continuity Monotropy

Bowlby

Innate is proven by Lorenz’s imprinting geese, that followed and formed an attachment with Lorenz from birth, proving that attachment is in fact innate (we are born with it)

Although this was carried out on animals which could be tricky to generalise to humans

Bowlby

The critical period is under the age of 2 years old

It is proven in Rutter's Romanian Orphans study, in which the neglected children in the orphanage had problems forming attachments with their new adopted families if they were over the age of 2

Bowlby

Continuity is proven in Hazan and Shaver’s Love quiz

It showed that those whom had secure relationships with their parents when they were younger were able to create new relationships far more easier later in their adult lives, proving that childhood attachments do matter

Bowlby

Monotropy is putting attachments into a hierarchy with having one primary attachment (mum) and several others

This was proven in the study of Tronick’s Efe Tribe in Congo where all of the women breast fed each others children, but despite this the children still only formed on primary attachment, this disproves the learning theory of Dollard and Miller

Dollard and Miller

Learning theory consisted of two types of conditioning

Operant conditioning

Classical conditioning

Dollard and Miller

Classical conditioning can be seen in the example of Pavalov's Dogs

Dog is hungry Salivates when sees food Bell is run each time before food arrives Take food out of the equation And the dog still salivates when bell rings

Continued on next slide

Dollard and Miller

… so if a baby (like the dog) learns to associate Mother (like the bell) with food the baby will form an attachment to mother

Dollard and Miller

Operant conditioning is the association between a behaviour and a consequence to teach children how to behave through either reward or punishment

The next part of attachment is Privation

Deprivation studies:

Genie and Rutter’s Romanian Orphans

(you’ll find some studies can be related to more than one part of attachment, chose those ones to learn as you wont have as many to memorise)

Genie

She was kept in a room from being a baby Her parents neglected her, wouldn’t talk or

communicate with her She was taped to a commode for most of her

younger years She was beaten if she made noises Her younger brother was told to feed her

baby food as her diet

Genie

When she was found by social services it was reported that she looked like a 6 year old when her actual age was 13

She could only communicate through animalistic grunts

When taught how to speak by psychologists she couldn’t form whole sentences as she just didn’t understand how to

Genie

When se was found she started to form attachments with the psychologists as they spent a lot of time with her helping her

But when they were finished she was moved around short term foster families in which she was abused further

She was unable to form attachments in foster care

Genie

Unfortunately further research was cut off when genie’s mother regained custody of her, they moved away and nobody has heard of them since

Rutter’s Romanian Orphans

In an over crowded orphanage in Romania children were taken away and adopted into English families

The children were kept fed, clothed and warm in the orphanage but due to overcrowding it meant that thee children were unable to get attention from adults, or form attachments

Rutter’s Romanian Orphans

It was found that the children that were adopted under the age of 2 years settled in lovely into their new homes and formed attachments with their new parents with no problems

But those that were over the age of 2 were resistant and angry about moving, they had problems forming attachments

Short evaluation of the two

In the case of Genie, she is a case study, case studies are individual and unique therefore cannot be generalised or applied to other situations

The two studies are observations, meaning high validity as the experimenter did not manipulate any variables

The next section of attachment is Deprivation

Use the case studies of Robertson and Robertson

The first case study is of a 2 year old girl who was in hospital for 2 weeks

Her moods swung from being calm and being distressed, she would beg to go home, but in the end came to terms with staying

Robertson and Robertson

The next case study is of John While his mother was giving birth to his sibling he

was sent to stay at a 9 day nursery The nurses were too busy to give him the amount of

attention that he wanted So he cried and began to refuse food Once her went home her became very resistant to

his mother, he would kick and shout when she picked him up and reject her cuddles

Robertson and Robertson

Finally is the case study of Jane, Kate, Lucy and Thomas

They went into foster care for 2 weeks Their dad visits regularly They showed signs of distress at first, being

disobedient, crying, anger But when it was time to go home they seemed to

have formed a bond with the foster mother, and once home rejected cuddles from parents

The next part of attachment is Types

For this you will have to learn Ainsworth and Bell’s Strange Situation

They took 100 middle class American infants They then put them in a room with their mothers, then

observed their reactions when their mother left the room and when she came back

They observed how the child reacted when a stranger made contact with them both with and without their mother in the room with them

They also observed whether the baby was comfortable to explore the room using mum as a safe base to come back to if they get scared

Ainsworth and Bell’s Strange Situation

They then came up with 3 groups of attachment to put the infants into

A) Insecure- Avoidant B) Secure C) Insecure- Resistant

Ainsworth and Bell’s Strange Situation

They said that two things could effect the attachment type of the infant

Care giver sensitivity hypothesis

Or

Temperament hypothesis

Ainsworth and Bells Strange Situation

It isn’t ethically correct to make babies cry, it may cause them psychological distress

They only used Mothers in the experiment, assuming that not all primary care givers to children are their mothers this makes for less generalisability

This is a controlled laboratory observation, which as you will know lowers ecological validity

The last part of attachment is Cultural Variations

The studies you will need for this part are:

Van and Kroonenburg

Ainsworth and Bell

Tronick

Van and Kroonenburg

They carried out a meta analysis of 32 studies in different cultures

They found that over all Secure was the most common attachment type

But in Japan Insecure-Resistant seemed to be particularly high

And is Germany it was Insecure-Avoidant This is because in Japan infants rarely leave their

mothers sides and in Germany the children are more likely to be taught to be independent

Therefore, American attachment type groups cannot be generalised to other cultures as the ‘norm’ in one country may be different in another

Ainsworth

Ainsworth carried out a naturalistic observation in Uganda

Where she found that if a mother acts in a sensitive caring manner towards the infant then the attachment that will be formed is Secure

Tronick

Tronick observed the Efe tribe in Congo He found that despite every woman breast

feeding everyone's child, primary attachments were still made with the biological mother, which disproves the learning theory of attachment

Finally

You will be required to evaluate each of the key studies so consider:

Ethical issues Generalisability Reliability Validity Any bias