Attachment theory proposes that secure attachment to caregivers in infancy and early childhood is crucial for healthy social-emotional development. Research on institutionalization and deprivation found that lack of consistent caregiving can impair children's ability to form attachments and relate to others. Studies of daycare quality suggest that high-quality care with low child-to-staff ratios, consistent caregivers, and social stimulation can support children's peer relationships and development, while poor quality care with frequent changes in caregivers or more than 20 hours per week may increase behavioral issues.

1. Explanations of
Attachment
Learning Theory

2. Learning Theory
Classical conditioning
Classical Conditioning – (Learning through association)
Attachment is based on provision of food alone.
Before conditioning:
 The unconditioned stimulus (food) and unconditioned response
(happy baby/pleasure) are innately linked
During conditioning:
 The unconditioned stimulus (food) plus a neutral stimulus (mother)
causes an unconditioned response (happy baby/pleasure)
After conditioning:
 The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (mother) causes
the unconditioned response now the conditioned response (happy
baby/pleasure)

3. Learning theory
Operant conditioning
Operant Conditioning – Reward vs punishment
 When we perform a behaviour, the consequence which follows
will determine whether we perform the behaviour again
 A reward becomes a pleasure consequence and a punishment
becomes the unpleasant consequence
 Neutral operants: responses from the environment that neither
increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being
repeated.
 Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the
probability of a behaviour being repeated.
 Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the
likelihood of a behaviour being repeated.
 As a child we try out a number of behaviours and learn from their
consequences.

4. Learning Theory
Evaluation
Strengths:
 Dollard & Miller:
 When hungry, an infant feels uncomfortable and experiences a
drive state. This motivates the infant to find a way to lessen it,
therefore cries. Being fed satisfies the baby and its comfortable
again. This acts as the primary reinforce. The person feeding the
baby (mum) becomes the secondary reinforce as she is associated
with the food. Therefore the infant becomes attached.
Weaknesses:
 Harlow:
 Two wire mothers were created for monkeys. One with a feeding
bottle and the other with a blanket but no food. Monkeys were
left to select which monkey they spent more time on. When
offered with the choice of food or comfort, the monkeys chose
comfort.
 Schaffer & Emerson:
 Found that babies were not necessarily attached to the adult who
fed them, but by the adult who interacted with the child proving
interaction to be an important part in attachment.

5. Explanations of
Attachment
Evolutionary Theory

6. Evolutionary Theory
Bowlby
 Bowlby was created 5 main reasons why attachment is
evolutionary (ASMIC)
 He claimed attachment is adaptive and innate. We have
one primary figure and still make attachments with others
close to us.
 A – ADAPTIVE – He said that attachments are adaptive and
if we are adapted well we are more likely to survive.
 S – SOCIAL RELEASERS – Attachment behaviour has social
releasers which ‘unlock’ the innate tendency for adults to care
for them.
 M – MONOTROPY – Is a special attachment with there
mother. If the mother is not present then the infant will bond
with another present adult.
 I – INTERNAL WOKING MODEL – This is a mental
template for relationships. Children base how there
relationship is with there primary caregiver and use it as a
template to build new relationships with others.
 C – CRITICAL PERIOD – This is a time for birth to 2 and ½
in which a child will form an attachment with there caregiver.
If this does not happen then the child will be damaged
through PIES.

7. Evolutionary Theory
Evaluation
Strengths:
 Lorenz
 Lorenz separated eggs from a goose. Half stayed with their
mother and the other half stayed with Lorenz. The geese naturally
took Lorenz as the mother figure. They grew an attachment with
Lorenz as this is what they naturally assumed was there mother
figure.
 Hospital practises have since been changed in light of Bowlbys
theory recognising importance of avoiding separations from
parents
 Harlow
 Monkeys after Harlows research developed illnesses and some
went onto neglect their own infant monkeys proving after the
critical period you cannot form another attachment
Weakness:
 Lamb:
 Fathers are often preferred as playmates as their play is more
unpredictable and physical.
 Schaffer & Emerson
 Infants have multiple attachments, other figures in an infants life
also become equally as important. By 18 months, 87% of infants
had formed multiple attachments.

8. Differences in
Attachment
The strange situation

9. Types of attachment
The strange situation
Ainsworth & Bell
 Identified 3 main types of attachment after doing a controlled
observation for 100 middle class American infants and mothers
 Stages of experiment:
1) Parent and infant play
2) Parent sits while infant plays
3) Stranger enters and talks to parent
4) Parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comfort
5) Parent returns, stranger leaves, parent offers comfort
6) Parent leaves, infant is alone
7) Stranger enters, offers comfort
8) Parent returns, greets infant, offers comfort
 Findings of Ainsworth & Bells study was 3 main attachments:
Insecure
avoidant (22%)
(type A)
Secure
(66%)
(type B)
Insecure
resistant (12%)
(type C)
Exploring High High Low
Separation Not bothered Easy to
sooth
Distressed
Reunion Avoids contact Enthusiastic Seeks and
rejects

10. Types of attachment
Evaluation
Strengths:
 Efficient (time and money wise)
 Easy to replicate – good reliability
Weakness:
 Low generalizability – only 100 babies and mothers used aswell
as it only being Americans – might be different in other cultures
 Ethics for children – Need to ensure the children do not have any
long-term effects from taking part in the study
 Measures relationships with others, not the individuals
themselves – low validity

11. Differences in
Attachment
Cultural variation studies

12. Cultural Variations
 The culture variation studies examine if the strange situation can be
applied to another culture other than just the American one
 Takohashi – Japanese Strange situation:
 60 Japanese children and mothers were put in the strange situation.
 90% of the studies had to be stopped in the ‘left alone’ stage of the
experiment as the culture doesn’t include the baby being left alone
much.
 Findings:
 68% Securely attached
 0% Insecure Resistant (Japanese culture teaches that its rude to
ignore others)
 32% Insecure Avoidant
 Grossman et al:
 They did the strange situation in Germany:
 Findings:
 49% Avoidant
 33% Secure
 18% Resistant
 Two strange situation experiments were done in Germany, the two
had very different results. This shows cross-country differences.

13. Cultural Variations
 Ijzendoorn & Kroonberg
 They did a meta-anaylsis across 8 countries and 32 studies
 Securely attached was by far the most common type of
attachment but between the other two types the found that:
Western – Dominant type was avoidant (Most experiments were in this
area)
oNon-western – Dominant type was resistant
 The strange situation cannot be used across the globe as there
are cross cultural differences
 There are bigger differences within a culture than between
cultures
Evaluation:
 Cross culture differences can be explained by the media. The
media spreads ideas about parenting and countries with no media
have very different results to those that do.
 Cross-country differences like those found in Germany might
indicate invalid results
 Ethical problems of children being involved in the studies e.g- the
Japanese study, should ensure there are no long term effects on
the children.

14. Attachment Difficulties
MDH (Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis)
Disruption of attachment/Deprivation

15. Attachment difficulties
Maternal deprivation hypothesis
Bowlby – Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis (MDH) & 44
Juvenile thief's
 The MDH suggests that loss of attachment from the mum can
result in difficulties later in life.
 If a child does not have a continuous attachment they will find it
harder to form adult relationships
 The child therefore could be at risk of behaviour disorders and
find it hard to form adult relationships
 They must have a continuous relationship which is made in the
critical period with one main figure (monotropy)
 This comes under both Privation and Deprivation
 Bowlby extended the MDH by comparing thief's with normal
children and measuring emotional problems.
 44 children thief's and 44 children with emotional problems were
compared to see if being separated from your mother at a young
age resulted in problems later in life.
 32% of the thief group were classed as ‘affectionless psychopaths’
 86% the 32% had been separated from their primary caregiver
before 5 years old.
 This proves there's a link between juvenile behaviour and
abnormal emotional development.

16. Attachment Difficulties
Robertson
Robertson
 He studied children that were taken away from parents at a young
age for a short period of time
 He recorded the children in the institutions
Laura:
 Put in a hospital for 8 days
 She was visited occasionally by parents
 Alternated between calm and distress
 She begged to go home and became very distressed
John:
 He was put in a residential nursery for 9 days whilst his mum
gave birth
 His father tried to visit as often as he could though this wasn’t
often
 John struggled to compete for nurses attention and therefore
broke down refusing to eat, drink, play and cried a lot
 When his mum finally picked him up, he tried to get away from
her
 Months later he still had outbursts of resistance to his mum

17. Attachment difficulties
Evaluation
Strengths:
 Lots of detailed information can be collected by using case studies
like Robertson did
 Bowlby found a strength of his own hypothesis
Weaknesses:
 Bowlbys MDH has high validity as it was a natural observation
not an experiment
 The theory cannot necessary be applied to other people individual
differences.
 Robertson's study used 2 case studies -> lacks generalizability
 Bowlbys strength of his MDH could be bias as it was conducted
by himself

18. Attachment Difficulties
Failure to form attachment – Privation
Institutionalisation

19. Curtis & Koluchova
Examined two case studies in failure to form attachments
Genie:
 Genie was found at the age of 13 when she was strapped to a potty
chair.
 Genie could barley speak, had animal like characteristics, and had
been beaten for making noise
 After being studied by a team of scientists and moving to foster
homes genie improved, however one of the foster homes abused
her by beating her for being sick
 Scientists claim she might have been mentally retarded from
birth
 Genie never made a full recovery and only learnt to speak around
100 words
Czech twins
 Cared for by dad and step mother after their mother had died
 The twins were kept in a small closet or cellar until discovered at
the age of 7
 When found, there speech was poor, they had rickets and could
not walk
 They ended up being adopted by 2 sisters and well cared for
 They made a full recovery with no long-term effects
Privation

20. Privation
 Hodges and Tizard – Institutionalisation
 65 Children were assessed over 16 years.
 The children had been placed in an institution since 4 months
 Some children were adopted, others fostered and some returned to
biological parents
 Those children who were adopted has a close attachment to their
parents
 However those returned to biological parents did not
 All the groups were not successful in peer relationship
 All groups were more likely to be bullies, less liked and described as
‘quarrelsome’
 No differences to normal children regarding boyfriend/girlfriends
 Rutter et al – Roman orphanages
 Romanian adoptive children were placed in an orphanage a two weeks
old
 Assessed children at the age of 4, 6 and 11 out of 100 children in
orphanages to see if they would end up forming a normal attachment
 The children who were adopted by families in three different age
brackets:
 6 months and below
 6 months – 2 years
 2 years +
 It was found that the later the adoption, the harder it was to form that
attachment

21. Privation
Evaluation
Strengths:
 MDH supports the case of Genie as she was never able to make a
proper attachment
 High ecological validity – both case studies were real
Weaknesses:
 Hodges and Tizard & Rutter used a longditutional study ->
Attrition
 The Czech twins had each other to form attachment with ->
disproves the MDH as they didn’t make the attachment with their
mother
 Hodges and Tizard used an interview (interviewer bias)
 Case studies cannot be generalised to other situations

22. Attachment in everyday
life
Positive and negative effects of Day Care
Implications

23. Attachment in everyday life
Quality of day care
General:
 From the age of 3, the government provides 15 hours of free day
care
 Staff – child ratios:
1:3 – aged 2 or younger
1:4 – aged 2-3
1:8 – aged 3-5
 Child-minders can only have a maximum of 6 children with no
more than 3 of those under 3 years old
Factors affecting the quality of day care:
 Time spent in day care
 Age you start day care
 Depends on attachment type of child e.g- securely attached is best
 Training of staff
 Staff to child ratios – size of group
 Simulative environment to improve cognitive skills
 Commitment to job
 Staff turnover – Consistency of staff

24. Day care
Positive and negative effects on day care
Peer relationships
Strength
 Clarke-Stewart – She found that children that attended day care
coped better in school situations and were able to negotiate better
with peers. Good day care can provide plenty of social
stimulation, independence and dinner time obedience.
Weakness
 Sammons et al – There is a risk of anti-social behaviour when
children spend more than 20 hours per week in nurseries
Aggression
Strength
 Shea et al – Children became more sociable the longer they were
at nursery. The amount of aggressive behaviour decreased. These
changes were more apparent for children attending 5 days a week
compared to those attending 2 days
Weakness
 NICHD - A longitudinal study between 1000 children and
parents. It was found that the more time a child spent in day care,
the more adults rated them as assertive, disobedient and
aggressive. The children also may develop behaviour problems
e.g. – arguing, lying and tantrums.

25. Implications
How has this affected real-life?
 Implications of attachment research:
 Visiting hours for hospitals
 Trying to avoid later adoptions
 Having a longer maternity leave of 9 months instead of 6
months
 Ofsted inspections for nurseries
 Implications of day care research:
 Low child to staff ratios
 Minimal staff turnovers
 Consistency of care
 Well trained staff
 Having legal expectations – ‘Sure Start’ Nurseries