Child Psychology
Bowlby and attachment
Social and Emotional Development
in Infancy - ATTACHMENT
From birth…figuring things out
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjXi6XmoxE
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKvAo
FvMEF0
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4abi
HdQpc
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S5ub0
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Understanding Attachment
• How do babies and their care-givers form
attachments?
• The MOST important thing for babies to do
is to get their care-giver to love them
• They seem to be designed to do just that
• Consider the previous videos and your
reaction to them!!!
Why do we form attachments?
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Born unable to fend for ourselves
Innate – both infant and caregiver
Evolution – survival of species
“Internal working model” for later
attachments
• “Anti-incest” device
Who was Bowlby
• Bowlby was a psychoanalysis
• followed the ideas of Freud
• infant was strongly affected by the first few years
of his or her life.
• He was looked after by a nanny, sent to
boarding school and believed these experiences
influenced his views on attachment theory.
Quote from Bowlby
• “Mother love in infancy and childhood is as
important for mental health as are vitamins
and proteins for physical health.”
Bowlby, 1953
Attachment promotes survival:
• Babies’ smiles are powerful
things leaving mothers
spellbound and
enslaved. Who can doubt that
the baby who most readily
rewards his mother with a
smile is the one who is best
loved and best cared
for?’
How?
• Safety…mother and baby attached and
close to one another
• Safe base….baby can wander and explore
• Internal working model…. “prototype” for
later relationships
John Bowlby (1907-1990)
• Commissioned by the WHO to study the
children of post-war Europe
• Children:
– were evacuated for lengthy periods of time
– some lost parents during the war
– others were separated from their mothers
John Bowlby.................
• He interviewed and observed
children in hospitals and institutions to
understand the impact of parent-child separation
on children.
• Found:
– Child’s mental health was dependent upon a warm
and continuous loving bond between caregiver
and child.
– Children separated from their parents suffered
a broken attachment that caused depression
and difficulty forming close relationships with
others.
Evolutionary basis to
attachment
• Bowlby’s considered many other theories
in addition to psychodynamic ideas,
including Konrad Lorenz’s (1952)
ethological studies.
• Ethology is the study of animals in their
natural setting.
Lorenz’s findings about
imprinting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2
UIU9XH-mUI
Ethological studies
like Lorenz (1952)
showed how
animals use
imprinting as a
survival
mechanism. This
suggested to
Bowlby that at
attachment
process in humans
had the same
purpose and is
important for an
infant’s
development.
Lorenz had
noticed that
animals such as
ducks and geese,
when hatched,
followed the first
moving object they
saw, which was
usually their
mother. By
following their
mother, (called
imprinting) they
were more likely to
survive.
Imprinting
• Bowlby thought that human infants must
have a similar ‘attachment’ instinct that
would ensure survival, he proposed an
evolutionary basis of attachment.
• Any behaviour or characteristic that aids
survival will mean an organism survives to
reproduce its genes, so a behaviour or
characteristic will be passed on through
genes.
Evolution
• Any behaviour that goes against survival means
that an organism will not survive to reproduce its
genes and that behaviour will die out.
• This is SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
• Bowlby maintained that infants are biologically
programmed to form attachments.
• Separation, insecurity or fear would trigger the
instinct to keep a baby close to its
mother and the mother too has an
instinct to form an attachment with
the baby.
Main features of Bowlby’s theory of
attachment
A child has an innate need to form an attachment with one person.
This special attachment to one person is called monotropy.
This strong relationship with one person should continue unbroken for
the first two years of life if adverse effects are to be avoided.
The maternal deprivation hypothesis holds that a broken attachment
(or lack of an attachment) leads to problems for the child with
relationships on reaching adulthood.
Broken attachment leads to delinquency and affectionless
psychopathy.
Attachment provides a safe haven for when the child is afraid and a
secure base fro which to explore the world.
Separation distress/anxiety serves to draw the attachment figure back
to the infant and is a survival mechanism.
Evidence for importance of
attachments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsA5Sec
6dAI
Harlow’s study of monkeys and
attachments
• Harlow and his colleagues studies rhesus monkeys.
• Harlow and Zimmerman (1959) infant monkeys who had been
removed from their mothers were the focus of the study.
• One set of infants was allowed access to a towel-covered wire
‘monkey’ as well as a food-giving wire ‘monkey’.
• Other monkeys could only access the food-giving wire ‘monkey’.
• Those monkeys who could get comfort from the towel-covered
‘monkey’ did so, and at the end of the study were better adjusted
physically and mentally.
• Harlow concluded that comfort was important for the developing
monkey and not food alone that connects mother and infant.
• His research linked to the idea that attachment was part of the
mother-infant relationship for monkeys.
• Bowlby used this as evidence that this was true for human children
as well.
Robertson’s naturalistic
observation
• 1948 – James Robertson was employed
by Bowlby to make careful observations in
hospitals or institutions.
• Robertson had worked with Anna Freud in
her residential children’s home taking
detailed notes about the children’s
behaviour.
A two year old goes to hospital
• If going to hospital means losing the care of the mother,
the young child will fret for her -- no matter how kind the
doctors, nurses, and play ladies. This film classic, made
in 1952, drew attention to the plight of young patients at
a time when visiting by parents was severely restricted.
• Laura, aged 2, is in hospital for 8 days to have a minor
operation. She is too young to understand her mother's
absence. Because her mother is not there and the
nurses change frequently, she has to face the fears,
frights and hurts with no familiar person to cling to. She
is extremely upset by a rectal anesthetic. Then she
becomes quiet and 'settles'. But at the end of her stay
she is withdrawn from her mother, shaken in her trust.
A two year old goes to hospital
• In recent years there have been great changes
in children's wards, partly brought about by this
film. But many young children still go to hospital
without the mother, and despite the “play ladies”
and volunteers the depth of their distress and
the risks to later mental health remain an
insufficiently recognized problem.
• This film study of typical emotional deterioration
in an unaccompanied young patient, and of the
subtle ways in which she shows or conceals
deep feelings of distress, remains as vivid and
relevant as when it was made
Observations
Robertson observed that children
deprived of their attachment figure went
through 3 stages:
1. Protest and crying (anger and fear
also)
2. Despair – more urgent crying
3. Detachment – stops protesting and
gives up crying
(Bowlby thought the initial protesting
might be a survival instinct)
Visiting times in the 1950s
Guy’s Hospital
Sundays 2-4pm
Westminster Hospital
Charing Cross Hospital
Wednesdays and Sundays 23pm
Sundays 3-4pm
St Bartholomew’s
Sundays 2-3:30pm
St Thomas’s
No visits for the first month,
but parents could see children
asleep between 7-8pm
Spitz’s study of children in
institutions
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvdOe1
0vrs4
• Rene Spitz had studied institutionalised
children in 1946
• A hospital, prison, orphanage or
residential home are all examples of
institutions, when children live in such a
place they can called institutionalised
Spitz
• He found that children deprived of their attachment figure
became depressed.
• If an infant had formed an attachment with his or her
mother for the first 6 months of life, development was good
• However, if the attachment was broken (e.g. child goes into
hospital), then over a 3 month period of being deprived of
the attachment figure the child became increasingly
depressed.
• At first the depression was partial but after a short time it
became severe – hospitalisation.
• Partial depression meant the child would cry and cling to
observers, but after 3 months, the child’s condition would
worsen and he or she would move into severe depression.
Spitz
• Children still in the partially depressed stage
when reunited with their mothers would readjust
after about 2-3 months.
• Children experienced weight-loss, insomnia,
illness and a lack of facial emotion.
• Refused to move and interact with their carers
(who were caring for their physical but not
emotional needs)
• As the years past, some children who remained
in the institution died.
Spitz
• Spitz found that separation and being deprived
of the main caregiver had extreme
consequences for the child.
• He suggested that the lack of stimulation in
institutions (children laying in cots with no
stimulation around them) was also to blame for
their decline.
• Bowlby drew on this evidence of depression for
his maternal deprivation hypothesis.
Goldfarb’s study of children in
institutions
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Goldfarb (1955) studied 15 children who
had stayed in an institution up to 3
months before being fostered. He
compared them with a group of children
fostered from 6 months.
The aim was to see if later fostering
would be successful.
He found that those adopted later
showed problems in adolescence more
than those who were fostered earlier.
Goldfarb (1955)
• Those fostered later were less emotionally
secure, intellectually behind the other
group and less mature.
• Godlfarb concluded that babies should
not be put into institutions and he thought
early deprivation would lead to later
problems.
• Bowlby also used this as evidence for his
maternal deprivation hypothesis.
Ainsworth
• Worked with Bowlby looking at different
types of attachment, as well as
considering issues such as sensitive
parenting.
Ainsworth’s work on attachments
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Ugandan studies
Ainsworth left London in 1954 to live in Uganda
where she studied mother-child interactions.
She noticed that there was a relationship between
the responsiveness of the mother and the
reactions of the child.
Some were secure and comfortable, others were
tense and full of conflict.
She found the type of interaction was related to how
responsive the parent was to the child’s needs.
She also noted that infants used their mothers as a
safe/secure base from which to explore.
Ainsworth
The strange situation test
• Ainsworth used a structured observation and
set up a test using standard procedures, so
that each mother and child had the same
experience and the child’s responses could be
carefully recorded for comparison.
• The strange situation – the significant period is
after the children are put into a situation that is
strange for them, and when they are
experiencing separation from their mother (or
main caregiver).
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU
Ainsworth
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Attachment types
Securely attached
Anxious avoidant
Anxious resistant
After Ainsworth: disorganised and
disorientated
Ainsworth – securely attached
• Children were distressed when their
mother left and wanted comfort from her
when she returned.
• The child uses the mother as a safe base
but returns to the mother.
• 70% of American children in 1978
according to Ainsworth’s study were
securely attached
Ainsworth – anxious avoidant
• Children who were not distressed when the
mother left and tended to avoid her when she
came back. (avoidant insecure)
• It could be that the mother is neglectful or
abusive and that the child has learned not to
depend on her.
• Ainsworth’s Baltimore (1978) study found
around 15% of the 26 families had anxious
avoidant babies.
Ainsworth – anxious resistant
• Children who stayed close to their mother
rather than exploring, and became
extremely distressed when she left.
• They went for comfort when she came
back but they rejected her comforting.
• Can also be called ambivalent insecure.
• 15% found in Ainsworth’s sample.
After Ainsworth – disorganised and
disorientated
• In 1986 Main and Solomon suggested that
there is a fourth attachment type –
disorganised and disoriented.
• This type of attachment is characterised
by the child both approaching the mother
on her return and avoiding her.
Links between attachment types
and mothering styles
• Ainsworth (also Ainsworth and Bell, 1969)
looked at the type of mothering that might
produce a certain type of attachment in a
child.
• They observed the children they used in
the strange situation before that procedure
was carried out.
• The observation was
for 3 months
Links between attachment types
and mothering styles
• They were able to draw conclusions about the
responsiveness of the mothering.
• A mother who was insensitive to her infant’s
responses during feeding and to the infant’s
physical needs, who showed little face-to-face
interaction and was less attentive when the
child was distressed did not have an infant who
was securely attached in the strange situation
procedure the child was likely to be insecurely
attached.
• Mothers who had responded to their infant’s
needs in the first 3 months of their life had
securely attached children.
Using the strange situation in
cross-cultural studies
Ainsworth’s work in Uganda
• Uganda, 1963, Ainsworth studied 26 families
and observed the interactions, watching motherchild relationships. She also interviewed mothers
about the mother’s sensitivity.
• She found that mothers who knew a lot about their
babies when interviewed were sensitive to their
infant’s needs.
• They tended to have securely attached children
who used their mother as a secure base from
which to explore.
Ainsworth – the Baltimore
Project
• Ainsworth followed the 26 families from birth of the
child – end of first year
• Naturalistic observations in the family home took
place looking at face-to-face interactions,
responsiveness to crying and physical needs,
feeding and close bodily contact.
• The final observation was the strange situation
procedure.
• Main focus was the pattern of interactions in the
home and conclusions about the sensitivity of the
mother related to the attachment type of the child.
Comparing Uganda and
Baltimore
• There were many similarities in the
attachment types and types of mothering
in the two cultures.
• General conclusion = securely attached
infants used their mothers as a secure
base from which to explore and had
sensitive mothers, whereas insecurely
attached infants cried more, explored less
and had less sensitive mothers.
Comparing Uganda and Baltimore
• If this was found in two cultures perhaps there
was a biological basis for attachment types
when linked to parenting style and maybe this
was true of all cultures.
• If there were differences in attachment types
linked to parenting styles
in different cultures, then the
links may have come from
nurture and the differences
in the environment.
Other cross-cultural studies of
attachment types
• In Germany Grossman et al. (1985) found
more avoidant attachment types
• In Japan (Miyake et al., 1985) and Israel
(Sagi et al., 1985) (in the Kibbutzim) there
were more ambivalent types.
• Jin Mi Kyoung’s (2005) Korean study
looked at 87 Korean families and 113
USA families and used the strange
situation to look for cultural differences in
attachment types.
Other cross-cultural studies of
attachment types
• There were a greater number of securely
attached infants, which reinforces that idea that
attachment types are found in similar
proportions across cultures and countries.
• There were some differences between
Western and Eastern cultures e.g. Korean
infants stayed less close to their mothers and
explored more but when their mothers returned,
the mothers were more likely to get down on the
floor and play with them.
Research into privation
• Privation – a child who has not formed
any attachment and will lack almost all
types of socialisation.
• The case study of Genie led to the
conclusion that early privation leads to
irreversible problems.
• However no one knows if Genie had
problems anyway.
Koluchova (1972) the Czech
twins
• Jarmila Koluchova studied identical twin
boys who were born in Czechoslovakia in
1960. (see information sheet)
• At first their development was relatively
normal but their mother died and they were
institutionalised for a year, then brought
up by an aunt for another 6 months.
• The twins father remarried and they went to
live with their father, stepmother and her 4
children.
Koluchova (1972) the Czech twins
• Their stepmother often locked them away in a
room and beat them.
• This carried on for over 5 years until they were
found and rescued at the age of 7.
• They suffered from rickets (lack of vitamin D in the
bones), were small for their age, could not talk or
recognise pictures so an IQ test was not possible.
• They were frightened of the dark and had only
developed to a normal 3 year old level.
• It was predicted that they would not develop
normally and would remain well behind in
intellectual development.
Koluchova (1972) the Czech twins
• They were placed in a school for children
with severe learning difficulties where they
began to catch up with children of their
age and went on to a normal school.
• By 11 their speech was normal, by 15
their IQ was normal for their age.
• They went on to train in electronics and
later married (women, not each other),
had families and a normal life.
Freud and Dann: children in
Terezin
• Anna Freud and Sophie Dann (1951) studied 6
children who were kept in the ghetto of Terezin,
Czechoslovakia.
• The children were looked after by the adults
who were ‘passing through’ on their way to the
extermination camps such as Auschwitz.
• The children did not have a
chance to form an attachment
so therefore suffered privation.
Freud and Dann: children in
Terezin
• When the camps were liberated the children were
brought to Britain, fostered and followed up to
see how well they recovered from their early
privation.
• When found they couldn’t speak much but were
strongly attached to one another, showing
separation anxiety/distress when separated.
• They developed normal intelligence, although
one sought psychiatric help and another
described feeling isolated and alone.
• It seems the effects of privation can be reversed,
although problems may occur in adulthood.
Are the effects of privation
reversible?
• Koluchova and Freud and Dann
conclude that it is.
• Curtiss’s study of Genie, however, shows
that she did not recover from her early
privation.