unit one aqa a psychology attachmet key studies to know
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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