Chapter 4
Attachment: Learning to Love
Chapter Outline
4. ATTACHMENT: LEARNING TO LOVE
THEORIES OF ATTACHMENT
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
LEARNING THEORIES
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
ETHOLOGICAL THEORY
Insights from Extremes: Maternal Bonding
HOW ATTACHME NT DEVELOPS
FORMATION AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF ATTACHMENT
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ATTACHED
Learning from Living Leaders: Michael E. Lamb
ATTACHMENT TO WHOM?
Bet You Thought That . . . Babies Become Attached to Their Teddy Bears and Blankets
THE NATURE AND QUAL ITY OF ATTACHMENT
DIFFERENT TYPES OF ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIPS
Ainsworth’s Classification of Attachment Types
Beyond Ainsworth’s A-B-C Classification
Other Strategies for Assessing Attachment
Learning from Living Leaders: Everett Waters
Cultural Context: Assessing Attachment in Different Cultures
Attachment Types and the Brain
PARENTS’ ROLE IN INFANTS’ ATTACHMENT DEVELOPMENT
Biological Preparation
Link between Caregiving and Attachment
Research up Close: Early Experience, Hormones, and Attachment
Attachment in Family and Community Contexts
Continuity in Attachment from Parent to Child
Attachment of Children in Child Care
Real-World Application: Attachment When Mother Goes to Prison
EFFECTS OF INFANT CHARACTERISTICS ON ATTACHMENT
STABILITY AND CONSEQUENCES OF ATTACHMENT
STABILITY AND CHANGE IN ATTACHMENT OVER TIME
ATTACHMENTS IN OLDER CHILDREN
CONSEQUENCES OF ATTACHMENT
Associations with Exploration and Cognitive Development
Implications for Social Development
Learning from Living Leaders: L. Alan Sroufe
Consequences for Self-Esteem
Attachments to Both Mother and Father Are Related to Later Development
Attachment or Parenting: Which Is Critical for Later Development?
Into Adulthood: From Early Attachment to Later Romantic Relationships
Chapter Summary
KEY TERMS
At the Movies
Learning Objectives
1. Define attachment.
2. Understand the different theories of attachment (psychoanalytic, learning, cognitive, and
ethological).
3. Define concepts of imprinting, secure base, and maternal bond.
4. Describe the four phases of attachment development according to Bowlby (preattachment,
attachment in the making, clear-cut attachment, goal-corrected partnership).
5. Describe what it means to be attached (e.g., seeking of proximity, separation distress or
protest).
6. Explain why infants usually form their first attachment with the mother. Discuss the
necessary conditions for forming an attachment with others (e.g., familiar, frequent, positive).
7. Discuss the special role of father-infant attachments.
8. Describe the Strange Situation for assessing the nature and quality of attachment.
9. Describe Ainsworth’s categories of attachment (secure, insecure-avoidant, insecureambivalent).
10. Describe the insecure-disorganized attachment pattern.
11. Explain other strategies for assessing attachment (coding behavior in Strange Situation,
Attachment Q-Set, California attachment procedure).
12. Understand the links between attachment type and brain development
13. Understand the parents’ role in attachment (biological preparedness, caregiving patterns, role
of family and community contexts).
14. Define the internal working model and discuss continuity in attachment from parent to child
as assessed by techniques like the Adult Attachment Interview.
15. Discuss the role of child care in attachment. Provide possible explanations for the higher
rates of insecure attachments among children in full time child care.
16. Describe the effects of infant characteristics on attachment.
17. Discuss the stability in attachment over time and provide explanations.
18. Discuss attachment in older children and the changing relationships between parents and
children over time.
19. Understand the consequences of attachment for cognitive, social, and self-esteem
development.
20. Explain whether the consequences of attachment can be attributed to the attachment quality
itself or to ongoing parenting quality and parent-child relationships.
Student Handout 4-1
Chapter Summary

During the second half of the first year, infants form attachments to the important people in
their lives.
Theories of Attachment
 According to the psychoanalytic view, the basis for the infant’s attachment to mother is oral
gratification.
 According to the learning view, the mother becomes a valued attachment object because she
is associated with hunger reduction.
 According to the cognitive developmental view, before they develop an attachment, infants
must be able to differentiate between mother and a stranger and must be aware that the
mother continues to exist even when they cannot see her.
 Bowlby’s ethological theory of attachment stresses the role of instinctual infant responses
that elicit the parent’s care and protection and focuses on the way the parent acts as a secure
base.
 The maternal bonding theory suggests that the attachment the mother feels to her infant is
affected by early mother-newborn contact.
How Attachment Develops
 The first step in the development of attachment is learning to discriminate between familiar
and unfamiliar people. In the second step, babies develop attachments to specific people.
These attachments are revealed in the infants’ protests when attachment figures depart and
their joyous greetings when they are reunited.
 Most infants develop their first attachment to their mother and rely on her for comfort. Later,
infants develop attachments to their fathers and possibly with their grandparents and siblings.
 As children mature, they develop new attachment relationships with peers and romantic
partners. Adolescent attachment relationships coexist with the attachments already formed to
parents and siblings.
The Nature and Quality of Attachment
 Early attachments are different in quality from one relationship to another and from one child
to the next.
 The quality of an infant’s attachment can be assessed using observations of mother and infant
at home. Ainsworth developed a laboratory assessment called the Strange Situation in which
the child’s interactions with the mother are observed after the two have been briefly
separated and reunited.
 Typically, 60 to 65 percent of infants are classified as securely attached to their mothers in
the Strange Situation: They seek contact with her after the stress of her departure and are
quickly comforted even if they were initially quite upset.
 Securely attached infants are confident in their mother’s availability and responsiveness.
They use the mother as a secure base, venturing away to explore the unfamiliar environment
and returning to her as a haven of safety from time to time.
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Insecure-avoidant infants show little distress over the mother’s absence in the Strange
Situation and actively avoid her on her return. Insecure-ambivalent children may become
extremely upset when the mother leaves them in the Strange Situation but are ambivalent to
her when she returns; they seek contact with her and then angrily push her away.
Insecure-disorganized infants act disorganized and disoriented when they are reunited with
their mothers in the Strange Situation; they are unable to cope with distress in a consistent
and organized way even though their mother is available.
When parents are available, sensitive, and responsive to their infant’s needs and the two
interact in a synchronous way, the child is more likely to develop a secure attachment.
Contextual factors in the family and community are also related to attachment.
Infants reared in socially impoverished environments may have hormonal deficits that alter
their social responsiveness and lead to attachment problems.
A baby’s temperament may play a role in the quality of the infant-parent attachment but only
in combination with the caregiver’s behavior.
Stability and Consequences of Attachment
 The quality of attachment is relatively stable across time but may change if the environment
improves or deteriorates.
 Early attachments shape a child’s later attitudes and behaviors. Children who were securely
attached as infants are more likely to be intellectually curious and eager to explore, have
good relationships with peers and others, and view themselves positively.
 Children’s internal working models provide a mediating mechanism that serves as a link
between attachment and later outcomes.
 Parents’ internal working models of experience with their parents are likely to influence their
parenting behavior and their infant’s attachment. Mothers and fathers classified as
autonomous, dismissing, and preoccupied according to the Adult Attachment Interview
 (AAI) are likely to have infants who are secure, avoidant, and ambivalent, respectively.
 Insecurely attached infants are more likely to become secure than the reverse.
 Support has been found for two explanations of attachment stability: The “mediating
experiences” view suggests that continuity across time may be due to the stability of parents’
behavior and environmental conditions rather than the nature of earlier attachment patterns.
The “dynamic interaction process” view suggests that children’s attachment histories modify
how they perceive and react to changes in their family environment.
Student Handout 4-2
Key Terms
GLOSSARY TERMS
attachment
A strong emotional bond that forms between
infant and caregiver in the second half of the
child’s first year.
imprinting
The process by which birds and other
infrahuman animals develop a preference for
the person or object to which they are first
exposed during a brief, critical period after
birth.
insecure-ambivalent attachment
Babies tend to become very upset at the
departure of their mothers and exhibit
inconsistent behavior on the mother’s return,
sometimes seeking contact, sometimes pushing
their mothers away. (This is sometimes
referred to as insecure-resistant or anxiousambivalent attachment.)
insecure-avoidant attachment
Babies seem not to be bothered by their
mother’s brief absences but specifically avoid
her when she returns, sometimes becoming
visibly upset.
insecure-disorganized attachment
Babies seem disorganized and disoriented
when reunited with their mother after
separation.
internal working model
A person’s mental representation of himself or
herself as a child, his or her parents, and the
nature of his or her interaction with the parents
as he or she reconstructs and interprets that
interaction.
maternal bond
Feeling of attachment or bond by a mother to
her infant, perhaps influenced by early
postnatal contact.
secure attachment
Babies are able to explore novel environments,
are minimally disturbed by brief separations
from their parents, and are quickly comforted
by their parents when they return.
secure base
A safety zone that the infant can retreat to for
comfort and reassurance when stressed or
frightened while exploring the environment.
separation distress or protest
An infant’s distress reaction to being separated
from the attachment object, usually the mother,
which typically peaks at about 15 months of
age.
Strange Situation
A research scenario in which parent and child
are separated and reunited so that investigators
can assess the nature and quality of the parentinfant attachment relationship.
OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
Attachment Q-Set
autonomous attachment
California Attachment Procedure (CAP)
dismissing attachment
dynamic interaction process model of
attachment
earned secure attachment
extreme early effects model of attachment
goal-corrected partnership
interactive synchrony
mediating experiences model of attachment
narrative story method
oxytocin
parental insightfulness
preoccupied attachment
relationship representation
secondary drive
security object
Student Handout 4-3
Adult Attachment and Close Relationships
1. How is attachment style as defined by anxiety and avoidance similar or different from
assessment of attachment style in childhood in either the Strange Situation or one of the other
methods discussed in the chapter?
2. Do you think that your attachment classification is related to the attachment you had in
infancy and childhood? Why or why not? Cite evidence and theory as discussed in your text.
3. What does research and theory say about your attachment classification and relationships?
4. In what ways do you think your attachment classification might influence your parenting
behaviors?
5. Do you think attachment styles are transmitted across generations? Why or why not?
Practice Exam Questions
CHAPTER 4. ATTACHMENT: LEARNING TO LOVE
SAMPLE MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. The central point of Harlow’s experiments with “surrogate mothers” was that: (a) attachment
occurs in primates as well as humans (b) attachment is intrinsically tied to the feeding of the
infant (c) attachment is not limited to one “caregiver” (d) *none of the above
2. Birds and other infrahuman animals develop a preference for the person or object to which they
are first exposed during a brief, critical period after birth. This is referred to as: (a) attachment
(b) secure base (c) object permanence (d) *imprinting
3. Unique contributions of Bowlby’s theory include: (a) the active role played by the infant’s
smiling and crying (b) emphasis on the development of mutual attachments (c) the position that
attachment is a relationship not a behavior (d) *all of the above
4. The phase of attachment that is characterized by children understanding parents’ needs: (a)
*goal-corrected partnership (b) attachment in the making (c) clear-cut attachment (d)
preattachment
5. Babies who are able to explore novel environments, are minimally disturbed by brief
separations from their parents, and are quickly comforted by their parents when they return
have a: (a) parental bond (b) secure base (c) *secure attachment (d) positive attachment
6. 39. Reasons the Strange Situation reveals cultural differences in the proportion of children
exhibiting a secure attachment include the following: (a) *the degree to which the Strange
Situation stresses infants varies across cultures (b) the degree to which attachment exists varies
across cultures (c) the definition of a secure attachment varies across cultures (d) all of the
above
7. Over 80 percent of abused children form _______ to their caregiver(s): (a) an insecure-avoidant
attachment (b) an insecure-ambivalent attachment (c) *an insecure-disorganized attachment (d)
a secure attachment
8. If you were observing institutionalized young children living in poor quality orphanages, about
how many would you expect to be securely attached? (a) more than 85 percent (b) more than
65 percent (c) more than 55 percent (d) *none of the above
9. People’s mental representations of themselves in childhood, their parents, and the nature of
their interactions with their parents are referred to as: (a) intergenerational representation (b)
*an internal working model (c) both a and b (d) neither a nor b
10. Individuals who are able to overcome their early insecure attachments and develop secure
relationships with their spouses and offspring are referred to as: (a) recovered secure (b)
delayed secure (c) *earned secure (d) rediscovered secure
11. Researchers have found that at age 19 adolescents with a history of secure attachments are
more likely to have: (a) *long-term friendships (b) higher-paying jobs (c) more early adulthood
depression (d) children of their own
12. Rank the types of attachment relationships observed among U.S. infants from most frequent to
least frequent: (a) secure, ambivalent, avoidant (b) *secure, avoidant, ambivalent (c)
ambivalent, secure, avoidant (d) avoidant, secure, ambivalent
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Attachment is best viewed as a dyadic construct. Discuss.
2. Attachment is a universal process but there are differences in the distribution of attachment types
across cultures. Why?
3. What role does the feeding situation play in attachment development according to psychoanalytic
theory, learning theory, and ethological theory?