Attachment - Grade: A* PDF

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ATTACHMENT CAREGIVER INFANT-INTERACTION Reciprocity Babies have innate periodic ‘alert phases’ and signal that they are ready for interaction. Mothers typically pick up on and respond to infant alertness 2/3 of the time. Involves close attention to each other’s verbal signals and facial expressions. An interaction is reciprocal when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them.  Babies play an ACTIVE role. Brazelton et al (1975) described this interaction as a ‘dance’, responding to moves. Interactional Synchrony Unison; being in synchronisation. Actions and emotions mirror each other. Meltzoff and Moore observed the start of interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks. Adult displayed 1/3 facial expressions/gestures. Child’s response filmed and an association was found between the expression the adult made and the babies’ actions.  Believed to play a key role in development of attachment. Isabella et al observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed synchrony levels. Also assessed attachment quality. Found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachment. X - What is being observed is merely hand A03 movements or changes in expression. It is extremely difficult to be certain on what is taking place from the infant’s perspective. This Well controlled procedures, with both mother means we cannot really know for sure that the and infant being filmed, often from multiple behaviours seen in mother-infant interaction angles. This ensures that very fine details of have a special meaning. This makes it difficult behaviour can be recorded and later analysed. to establish a cause and effect relationship. There is good validity as babies don’t know or Lacks internal validity? care that they are being observed so their behaviour does not change accordingly (demand characteristics). ATTACHMENT FIGURES Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that the majority of babies did become attached to their mother first (7 months) and within a few weeks or months formed secondary attachments to other members such as fathers. 75% of the infants studied, an attachment was formed with the father by the age of 18 months. This was determined by the fact that the infants protested when their father walked away. ROLE OF FATHER; 

Grossman carried out a longitudinal study looking at both parent’s behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens. Quality of attachments with MOTHERS but not fathers was related to children’s attachments in adolescence – father’s less important.

However, the quality of father’s play with infants was related to the quality of adolescence attachments. Fathers have a diff role in attachment – more to do with play/stimulation, less to do with nurturing.

There is some evidence to suggest fathers do take on the role of being the caregiver similar to mothers. 

Tiffany Field (1978) filmed 4-month old babies in face-to face interaction with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers, and primary caregiver fathers. Primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers.

Thus, fathers can be the more nurturing attachment figure; the key to the attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness, not the gender of the parent.

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Research into the role of the fathers is confusing as diff researchers are interested in different research questions. On one hand, some psychologists are interested in understanding the role fathers have as secondary attachment figures, while others are more concerned with the father as primary attachment figure. The former have tended to see fathers behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role. The latter have argued that they can take on a ‘maternal’ role. This is a problem because it means psychologists cannot easily answer a simple question; what is the role of the father? Inconsistent findings.

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The study by Grossman found that fathers as secondary attachment figures had an important role in their children’s development. However, other studies (McCallum and Golombok 2004) have found that children growing up in single/same sex families don’t develop any differently to those in two parent heterosexual families. This would seem to suggest that the father’s role as a secondary attachment figure is not important.

The fact that father tend not to become the primary attachment figure could simply be the result of traditional gender roles, in which women are expected to be more caring and nurturing than men. Therefore fathers simply don’t feel they should act like that (nurture). On the other hand, it could be that female hormones (such as oestrogen) create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically pre-disposed to be the primary attachment figure. 

Research into mother-infant interaction is socially sensitive because it suggests that children may be disadvantaged by particular child-rearing practices. In particular, mothers who return to work shortly after having a child is born restricts the opportunities for achieving interactional synchrony which Isabella et al showed to be important in the developing infant-caregiver attachment. This suggests mothers should not return to work so soon and has socially sensitive implications....