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Stages of Attachment continued:

Stage 3: Specific (Discriminate) Attachment

- From 7 months, babies start to display anxiety towards strangers and become anxious when separated from one particular adult (biological mother in 65% of cases)

- Baby is now said to have formed a specific attachment

- The adult is termed the primary attachment figure, this is not necessarily the person spends the most time with but the one who offers the most interaction and responds to the baby’s ‘signals’ with the most skill

Stage 4: Multiple Attachments

- Soon after babies start to show attachment to one adult, they usually extend this attachment behaviour to multiple attachments with other adults with whom they regularly spend time

- These relationships are called secondary attachments

- S&E found that 29% of the children had secondary

attachments within a month of forming a primary

(specific) attachment

- By the age of 1 year, the majority of infants had

developed multiple attachments

Stages of Attachment:

Evaluation:

Schaffer and Emerson claimed that attachments develop in four stages:

Stage 1: Asocial (Pre-Attachment) Stage (first few weeks)

- Here the baby is recognising and forming bonds with its carers. However, the baby’s behaviour towards non-human objects and humans is quite similar

- Babies show some preference for familiar adults in that those individuals find it easier to calm them

- Babies are also happier when in the presence of other humans

Stage 2: Indiscriminate Attachment

- 2-7 months, babies display more observable social behaviour. They show a preference for people rather than inanimate objects, and recognise and prefer familiar adults

- Babies accept cuddles and comfort from any adult, they do not usually show separation anxiety or stranger anxiety

- Attachment behaviour is said to be indiscriminate because it is not different towards any one person

Evaluation Cont

Problem studying the asocial stage:

- S&E describe the first few weeks of life as the ‘asocial’ stage, although important interactions take place in those weeks

- The problem is that babies that are young have poor co-ordination and are generally pretty much immobile

- This makes it difficult to make judgements about them based on observations of their behaviour as there isn’t much observable behaviour

- This doesn’t mean the child’s feelings and cognitions are not highly social but the evidence cannot be relied upon

Conflicting evidence on multiple attachments:

- Although there is no doubt that children are able to form multiple attachments at some point, it is still not entirely clear when

- Some research seems to indicate that some, if not all, babies form attachments to a single main carer before they become capable of developing multiple attachments (Bowlby, 1969)

- Other researchers (particularly those that work in cultural contexts where multiple caregivers are the norm) believe babies form multiple attachments from the outset (van Ijzendoorn et al, 1993)

- Such cultures are collectivist because families work together jointly in everything – such as producing food or child rearing

Measuring Multiple Attachments:

- There may be a problem with how multiple attachments are assessed

- Just because a baby gets upset when a person leaves a room doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is a true attachment figure

- Bowlby (1969) – children have playmates as well as attachment figures and may get upset when a playmate leaves the room but this doesn’t signify an attachment

- This is a problem for S&E’s stages of attachment because observation doesn’t give us a way to tell the difference between behaviour shown towards secondary attachment figures and shown towards play mates

Schaffer and Emerson used limited behavioural measures of attachment:

- S&E carried out a scientific study of attachment development because they used simple behaviours (stranger anxiety and separation anxiety) to define attachment. Some critics argue these measures are too simple

KEY STUDY:

Schaffer and Emerson

Evaluation:

Findings:

- Between 25-32 weeks old, 50% of babies showed signs of separation anxiety towards a particular adult (usually the mother). This is called a specific attachment

- Attachment tended to be to the caregiver who was most interactive and sensitive to the infant signals and facial expressions (reciprocity). This was not necessarily the person who the infant spent the most time with

- By 40 weeks old, 80% of babies had a specific

attachment and 30% displayed multiple attachments

Aimed to investigate the formation of early attachments (the age they developed, the emotional intensity and whom they were with)

Method:

- 60 babies (31 male, 29 female), from Glasgow, from mostly skilled working class families

- Babies and mothers were visited at home every month for the first year and again at 18 months

- Researchers asked mothers questions about the kind of protest their babies showed in 7 everyday separations e.g adult leaving the room (separation anxiety)

- This was designed to measure the infant’s attachment

- They also assessed stranger anxiety – an infant’s anxiety response to an unfamiliar adult

Good External Validity:

Carried out in the families’ own homes and most of the observation (other than stranger anxiety) was done by parents during ordinary activities and then reported back to the researchers.

Means the behaviour was unlikely to be affected by the observer so behaviour will have been natural – therefore giving good external validity

Longitudinal Design:

The same children were followed up and observed regularly. It would’ve been quicker to observe different children at each age (cross-sectional design) however a longitudinal study has better internal validity because it does not have the confounding variable of individual differences between participants (participant variables)

Evaluation cont:

Limited Sample Characteristics:

60 babies and carers was a good sample size considering the large amount of data that was gathered on each participant

However, it is a limitation that all the families were from the same area and from the same social class in the same city and it was over 50 years ago

Child rearing practices vary from one culture to another and from one point in time to another. These results are therefore time and culture bound and so cannot be generalised

Schaffer's

Stages of Attachment

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