This document summarizes several key theories and studies related to attachment. It discusses: 1) Bowlby's evolutionary theory of attachment which posits that infants form attachments as a survival mechanism and these early attachments shape future relationships. 2) Ainsworth's Strange Situation study which identified secure, avoidant, and resistant attachment styles in infants. 3) Studies finding most children form secure attachments but cultural differences exist, with more avoidant attachments in individualist cultures. 4) Research on the effects of separation, deprivation, and privation on child development, finding long-term harm including emotional and cognitive impairments.

1. ATTACHMENT

2. EVIDENCE OF AN ATTACHMENT
• Proximity seeking
• Separation distress
• Joy on reunion
• General disorientation (for behaviour towards the
other person- interaction and engagement)

3. THE LEARNING THEORY
• Classical conditioning
– The person that feeds the infant becomes associated with
the food, bringing pleasure; association between the
individual and pleasure leads to an attachment bond
– Pavlov’s dog study
• Operant conditioning
– A type of learning that takes place because of actions and
rewards that would reinforce the behaviour
• Social learning
– Role models

4. BOWLBY’S EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
• Survival
– Babies form attachments in order to survive; infants require adults to
feed, care for and protect them, and humans have evolved so that
babies have innate tendencies to form attachments
• Monotropy
– A single attachment to one person who is most important to the baby
• Internal working model
– Attachments at a young age provide a template for all future
relationships
• Sensitive/critical period
– If attachments are not formed within the first 3 years of a child’s life, it
can have serious consequences for future relationships, as attachments
will not form outside of this period

5. AINSWORTH’S STRANGE SITUATION
STUDY
• 8 stages
– Mother and child introduced to the room
– Mother and child left alone to investigate toys
– Stranger enters and approaches child
– Mother leaves and stranger interacts with child
– Mother returns to comfort child
– Child left alone
– Stranger returns and tries to engage with child
– Mother returns to comfort child and stranger leaves
•  easy to replicate
•  low ecological validity
•  demand characteristics
•  ethical issue- psychological harm

6. AINSWORTH’S TYPES OF ATTACHMENT
• Secure (70%)
– Baby uses mother as a safe base and is happy to explore
– Gets distressed with mother leaves
– When mother returns, baby quickly settles down and plays again
• Insecure-avoidant (15%)
– Baby shows some distress when mother leaves
– Doesn’t seek comfort on reunion; can be comforted by strangers
• Insecure-resistant (15%)
– Easily distressed when mother leaves
– On reunion, baby alternates between seeking comfort and
rejecting it

7. COLLECTIVIST VS. INDIVIDUALIST
• Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg
– Most common = secure
– Non-Western countries- more collectivist
– Western countries- insecure-avoidant
– China- 50/50 split between two insecure types
•  based on strange situation study, so there is potential for having
all variables controlled in the same way, meaning that results can
be compared with other researchers
•  mixture of collectivist and individualist cultures
•  each study that was compared were slightly different to each
other, so comparisons may not be reliable
•  ethical issues- distress to infants
•  small sample- only one study in the UK, Sweden and China

8. DISRUPTION OF ATTACHMENT
• Separation- child is away from the caregiver they are
attached to for a relatively short time, just hours or days.
• Deprivation- the loss of something that is wanted or needed,
a long-term or even permanent loss
• Stages of disruption
– Protest- few hours, crying, panicking etc.
– Despair- day or two, withdrawn, eat/sleep less
– Detachment- alert, ‘recovered’, possible permanent damage to
attachment
• Robertson & Robertson
– Short term separation can have very bad effects or possible
permanent damage to an attachment

9. THE PDD MODEL
• PDD Model
– Separating a child from its caregivers should be avoided
– Children in foster care do better than those in an
institutionalised setting; they can cope with the
separation if they still receive one-on-one emotional
support
– Many factors influence a child’s reaction to separation
which might not necessarily produce the PDD effects

10. BOWLBY- 44 JUVENILE THEIVES
• Bowlby
– 44 teens who were convicted of stealing, 44 teens who
had never stolen anything but were still ‘emotionally
disturbed’
– 17 thieves had frequent separation before the age of 2
from the convicted group, but only 2 from the control
group
– Deprivation has harmful long-term consequences
•  cannot determine cause/effect or explain any
extraneous variables

11. LONG TERM EFFECTS OF SEPARATION
• Affectionless psychopathology
– As seen in the 44 juvenile thieves
• Anaclitic depression
– Appetite loss, sleeplessness, impaired social and
intellectual development
• Deprivation dwarfism
– Physically underdeveloped

12. PRIVATION
• Privation- never forming a bond with a caregiver
• Genie
– Never formed an attachment, discovered at 13- physically
underdeveloped
– After a lot of help, she learned some language, but her social
and intellectual skills never fully developed
• Czech twins
– Locked in a cellar, found at the age of 7 with rickets and very
little social or intellectual development
– They made lots of progress after being adopted, and had
above average intelligence and normal social relationships
by the time they reached adulthood.

13. GENIE VS. CZECH TWINS
• Length/Age
– Czech twins had more time to develop because they were found at a
younger age
• Experiences
– Twins were kept together so they became attached to each other but
Genie was alone
• Quality of care
– The twins were adopted but Genie was put in an institution so it would
have been harder to form attachments there
•  cannot generalise findings
•  mixed results
•  more controlled, scientific evidence needed, but ethically wrong
to put children in situations of privation

14. HODGES & TIZARD
• Hodges & Tizard
– 65 children in residential nursery before they were 4 months old
– They had no chance to form close attachments
– By the age of 4, some were adopted, some stayed at the nursery and
some were returned to their mothers
– Children can recover from early privation if they are in a good quality,
loving environment, although their social development is not as good as
children without privation
– The adopted children showed strong family relationships, where others
showed poorer relationships
•  natural experiment- high ecological validity
•  supported by Rutter (Romanian orphans)- adopted have a
better chance than those not adopted
•  small sample- hard to generalise results

15. THE EFFECTS OF DAYCARE
• Clarke-Stewart
– Peer relationship study- 2/3 year olds experienced daycare and
were good at coping in social situations
– Strange situation replication- 18 month olds with high intensity
daycare were found to have a direct relationship between distress
levels and their low intensity daycare
–  controlled, easily replicated
–  lacks ecological validity, cannot generalise
• Belsky & Rovine
– Children who received daycare were more likely to have insecure
attachments, and children with no daycare were more securely
attached
–  controlled, supported by other research in the area
–  lacks ecological validity

16. WHAT IS GOOD DAYCARE?
• Good staff training
• Adequate space
• Appropriate toys and activities
• Good ratio of staff to children
• Minimal turnover so that children form stable
attachments with the carers