4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
ATTACHMENT AND EMOTION
UNDERSTAND THE THEORIES AND MECHANISMS UNDERPINNING
PARENT-CHILD BONDING
Attachment
• Attachment is a strong emotional bond and psychological connection that forms in the
second half of the first year between an infant and one or more of their regular caregivers
o It provides the foundation for children’s relationships with their caregivers, and acts
as a framework for how we develop relationships later on
• Signs of attachment include the warm signals a child gives when their caregiver approaches
and an effort to stay near to them in an unfamiliar situation
o Later, it can be seen in distress when a child is separated from their caregiver
Bond Type Behaviours That Set Up and Maintain Bonds between
Age
Caregivers and Infants
• Show a preference for looking at faces over other stimuli
Newborn • They attend to human voices but do not show clear bonds to
< 6 months
specific people
No specific bonds
3 • Infants smile at people more
months • They still do not show specific bonds to particular individuals
6-7 months 6 • Infants have now formed bonds to specific individuals
Specific bonds months • They smile most in these individuals’ presence
8 months 8 • Most infants show separation distress when the individuals
Separation anxiety months with whom they have formed a specific bond with, leave
Separation Anxiety
• Distress caused by separation from caregivers, indicating a specific bond has been formed
• It is culturally universal
o Despite cultural differences in parenting behaviour, this behaviour is observed in
many different cultures
• As infants age, their display of separation of distress changes
o Young babies will cry, whereas crawling babies will begin to seek out their caregivers,
and talking infants will ask for them
THEORIES OF ATTACHMENT
Psychoanalytic Theory
• Freud emphasised the mother-child bond, suggesting babies become attached to caregivers
since they are associated with an innate drive to obtain pleasure through oral stimulation
o He argued that nursing provides the earliest form of pleasure or gratification which
acts as the driving force to inform the development of the ego
• However, this argument is not generally supported by research evidence
• Recent psychoanalytic theorists suggest there are different bonds to different parents
1
,4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
Neuroscience Approach
• Some associations have been found between some brain processes and adult attachment
styles (e.g. Birnbaum & Reis, 2019; Young & Wang, 2004)
o However, these may be illustrative of adult relationships orientations, rather than
showing developmental significance as the psychoanalytic approach would suggest
• The extent to which childhood experiences affect neural functioning, stressed by
psychanalysis to be important, are less understood
Learning Theory
• Learning theory is better supported by empirical evidence
• Traditionally, learning theory associated the formation of attachment with the mother’s
ability to reduce the baby’s primary biological drive of hunger
o The mother provides the child with food (primary reinforcer), thereby herself
becomes a secondary reinforcer
o The mother becomes linked with positive reinforcement, as the child is encouraged
to engage with her to have their needs met
• Recent research into learning theory challenges the idea that attachment is automatic,
suggesting that it develops over time through satisfying interactions with responsive adults
o Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that infants formed stronger attachments to
attentive and stimulating fathers than to unresponsive mothers even though they
provided physical care
• However, this theory doesn’t account for why attachment bonds continue even after the child
becomes more independent and self-sufficient
Cognitive Developmental Approach
• Suggests that before specific attachments can occur, the infant must be aware that people
exist even when they cannot be seen (object permanence; Piaget), and differentiate between
its mother and a stranger
• Gradual shifts in the expression of attachment are accounted for by cognitive development
o As children grow, they are better able to understand that separations are necessary
and usually temporary, and so are less upset by them
Ethological Theory of Attachment
• Emphasises the evolutionary and reciprocal nature of the attachment process
• Bowlby (1958, 1969, 1973) suggested that attachment is rooted in instinctual infant
responses that are important for protection and survival
o Crying, sucking, clinging, etc., to elicit parental care
• Infants and parents are biologically prepared to respond reciprocally and develop a mutual
attachment to each other through active processes (Cassidy, 1999; Thompson, 2006)
o Some argue that these behaviours are not biologically programmed as there is
evidence that behaviours like smiling has social as well as biological origins
• Bowlby emphasises the active role in the formation of attachment through the infant’s early
social signalling systems
Bowlby’s Internal Working Model
• Bowlby hypothesised that at the same time an infant is developing its external relationships
with caregivers, they are also developing an internal model based on this experience
o Infants have one internal working model (template) which persists over time and is
shaped by the quality of early interactions
o This influences how they build expectations and relationships throughout life
2
,4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTACHMENT
Phases in the Development of Attachment
• Attachment emerges in a series of steps, moving from a baby’s general preference for human
beings to inanimate objects to a child’s real partnership with its parents
• Schaffer (1996) proposes four phases in the development of attachment
Phase Age Range Description
1. Pre-attachment 0 – 2 months • Social responses are relatively indiscriminate
• Learns to distinguish familiar from unfamiliar people
2. Attachment-in-
2 – 7 months • However, they do not protest when familiar caregivers
the-making
depart, meaning they are not truly attached yet
• Specific attachments develop, where the infant actively
3. Clear-cut 7 – 24 and intentionally seeks contact with this person
attachment months • Separation protest, only to specific attachment figures
• Wariness of strangers
• Goal-corrected partnership (Bowlby, 1969), where
4. Goal-corrected 24 months relationships are more two-sided
partnership onwards • Children understand others’ feelings, goals and plans,
considering them in their own actions
Role of the father
• Children can develop attachments to their fathers
• Anthropologists find that mothers are exclusive caregivers in only about 3% of societies, with
40% of them not even having a mother as a major caregiver (Wieisner & Gallimore, 1977;
Harkness & Super, 2002)
o In some cultures, such as hunter-gatherer societies where search for food requires
efforts of both men and women such as fathers are more likely to share childcare
(Hewlett, 2004; Morelli & Tronick, 1992)
o In countries such as Australia, Great Britain, and Israel, fathers engaging in more
unusual and physically arousing games, spending 4 or 5 times more time playing than
caring for their infant
• Men also experience hormonal changes such as a drop in testosterone after the birth of the
baby when they have the first chance to interact with the new infant (Storey et al., 2000)
o This prepares them to be more responsive to infant cues (Fleming et al., 2002)
o These changes were more likely for men who had intimate ties with their wives during
pregnancy, demonstrating the bidirectional interaction between social interactions
and hormones
Other Attachments
• Infants also form attachments with other important individuals who they regularly interact with
such as peers, siblings, and other relatives (Berlin & Cassidy, 1999; Smith & Drew, 2002)
• Field (1986) found that preschool children showed separation anxiety behaviours when
transferring to new schools, demonstrating the loss of familiar peer attachments
• As children reach adolescence, they develop attachment relationships with friends and with
romantic partners (Collins & Van Dulman, 2006; Furman et al., 2002)
3
, 4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
BASIS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION
Smiling
• Smiling is the earliest attachment behaviours
Contingent Responding
• Contingent responding is a process that encourages the
formation of attachment bonds
o The child’s behaviour elicits a positive response
from the caregiver, which in turn, elicits further
positive responses from the child and so on…
• This process works based on the child’s expectations of
how they think the caregiver is going to behave
• The child expects a rhythmic pattern of social interaction,
and if this isn’t met, this can lead to distress in the child
o For example, Tronick et al. (1978) found that 1.5-
month-olds get uneasy if their caregiver keeps a
still face and does not respond to their smiling
Social Referencing
• From around 7 months, children show more advanced social interaction
• Social referencing is when a child looks to others to see how they should react to a situation
o This is where a parent’s behaviour can impact a child’s social development
o For example, it can give rise to phobias such as by seeing a parent be afraid of dogs,
also making the child afraid of dogs
• Joint attention can develop through behaviours like gaze
following, where a child points to attract a caregiver’s attention
o The child typically looks at the caregiver, then follows
their gaze toward an object, and they may alternate
their gaze between the caregiver and the object
o This back-and-forth helps establish joint attention,
allowing the child to understand they are sharing a
social experience with a mutual focus
• Children with autism are less responsive to social referencing cues compared to children with
Down syndrome and typically developing children, showing reduced sensitivity to others’
emotional cues in guiding their behaviour (Sigman et al., 1992)
o This suggests that social referencing abilities are more significantly impaired in
autism than in other developmental conditions
Clinging
• Clinging is seen as a key evolutionary behaviour where one has to cling to their mothers in order
to survive during their early stages of life where they are dependent
4
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
ATTACHMENT AND EMOTION
UNDERSTAND THE THEORIES AND MECHANISMS UNDERPINNING
PARENT-CHILD BONDING
Attachment
• Attachment is a strong emotional bond and psychological connection that forms in the
second half of the first year between an infant and one or more of their regular caregivers
o It provides the foundation for children’s relationships with their caregivers, and acts
as a framework for how we develop relationships later on
• Signs of attachment include the warm signals a child gives when their caregiver approaches
and an effort to stay near to them in an unfamiliar situation
o Later, it can be seen in distress when a child is separated from their caregiver
Bond Type Behaviours That Set Up and Maintain Bonds between
Age
Caregivers and Infants
• Show a preference for looking at faces over other stimuli
Newborn • They attend to human voices but do not show clear bonds to
< 6 months
specific people
No specific bonds
3 • Infants smile at people more
months • They still do not show specific bonds to particular individuals
6-7 months 6 • Infants have now formed bonds to specific individuals
Specific bonds months • They smile most in these individuals’ presence
8 months 8 • Most infants show separation distress when the individuals
Separation anxiety months with whom they have formed a specific bond with, leave
Separation Anxiety
• Distress caused by separation from caregivers, indicating a specific bond has been formed
• It is culturally universal
o Despite cultural differences in parenting behaviour, this behaviour is observed in
many different cultures
• As infants age, their display of separation of distress changes
o Young babies will cry, whereas crawling babies will begin to seek out their caregivers,
and talking infants will ask for them
THEORIES OF ATTACHMENT
Psychoanalytic Theory
• Freud emphasised the mother-child bond, suggesting babies become attached to caregivers
since they are associated with an innate drive to obtain pleasure through oral stimulation
o He argued that nursing provides the earliest form of pleasure or gratification which
acts as the driving force to inform the development of the ego
• However, this argument is not generally supported by research evidence
• Recent psychoanalytic theorists suggest there are different bonds to different parents
1
,4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
Neuroscience Approach
• Some associations have been found between some brain processes and adult attachment
styles (e.g. Birnbaum & Reis, 2019; Young & Wang, 2004)
o However, these may be illustrative of adult relationships orientations, rather than
showing developmental significance as the psychoanalytic approach would suggest
• The extent to which childhood experiences affect neural functioning, stressed by
psychanalysis to be important, are less understood
Learning Theory
• Learning theory is better supported by empirical evidence
• Traditionally, learning theory associated the formation of attachment with the mother’s
ability to reduce the baby’s primary biological drive of hunger
o The mother provides the child with food (primary reinforcer), thereby herself
becomes a secondary reinforcer
o The mother becomes linked with positive reinforcement, as the child is encouraged
to engage with her to have their needs met
• Recent research into learning theory challenges the idea that attachment is automatic,
suggesting that it develops over time through satisfying interactions with responsive adults
o Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that infants formed stronger attachments to
attentive and stimulating fathers than to unresponsive mothers even though they
provided physical care
• However, this theory doesn’t account for why attachment bonds continue even after the child
becomes more independent and self-sufficient
Cognitive Developmental Approach
• Suggests that before specific attachments can occur, the infant must be aware that people
exist even when they cannot be seen (object permanence; Piaget), and differentiate between
its mother and a stranger
• Gradual shifts in the expression of attachment are accounted for by cognitive development
o As children grow, they are better able to understand that separations are necessary
and usually temporary, and so are less upset by them
Ethological Theory of Attachment
• Emphasises the evolutionary and reciprocal nature of the attachment process
• Bowlby (1958, 1969, 1973) suggested that attachment is rooted in instinctual infant
responses that are important for protection and survival
o Crying, sucking, clinging, etc., to elicit parental care
• Infants and parents are biologically prepared to respond reciprocally and develop a mutual
attachment to each other through active processes (Cassidy, 1999; Thompson, 2006)
o Some argue that these behaviours are not biologically programmed as there is
evidence that behaviours like smiling has social as well as biological origins
• Bowlby emphasises the active role in the formation of attachment through the infant’s early
social signalling systems
Bowlby’s Internal Working Model
• Bowlby hypothesised that at the same time an infant is developing its external relationships
with caregivers, they are also developing an internal model based on this experience
o Infants have one internal working model (template) which persists over time and is
shaped by the quality of early interactions
o This influences how they build expectations and relationships throughout life
2
,4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTACHMENT
Phases in the Development of Attachment
• Attachment emerges in a series of steps, moving from a baby’s general preference for human
beings to inanimate objects to a child’s real partnership with its parents
• Schaffer (1996) proposes four phases in the development of attachment
Phase Age Range Description
1. Pre-attachment 0 – 2 months • Social responses are relatively indiscriminate
• Learns to distinguish familiar from unfamiliar people
2. Attachment-in-
2 – 7 months • However, they do not protest when familiar caregivers
the-making
depart, meaning they are not truly attached yet
• Specific attachments develop, where the infant actively
3. Clear-cut 7 – 24 and intentionally seeks contact with this person
attachment months • Separation protest, only to specific attachment figures
• Wariness of strangers
• Goal-corrected partnership (Bowlby, 1969), where
4. Goal-corrected 24 months relationships are more two-sided
partnership onwards • Children understand others’ feelings, goals and plans,
considering them in their own actions
Role of the father
• Children can develop attachments to their fathers
• Anthropologists find that mothers are exclusive caregivers in only about 3% of societies, with
40% of them not even having a mother as a major caregiver (Wieisner & Gallimore, 1977;
Harkness & Super, 2002)
o In some cultures, such as hunter-gatherer societies where search for food requires
efforts of both men and women such as fathers are more likely to share childcare
(Hewlett, 2004; Morelli & Tronick, 1992)
o In countries such as Australia, Great Britain, and Israel, fathers engaging in more
unusual and physically arousing games, spending 4 or 5 times more time playing than
caring for their infant
• Men also experience hormonal changes such as a drop in testosterone after the birth of the
baby when they have the first chance to interact with the new infant (Storey et al., 2000)
o This prepares them to be more responsive to infant cues (Fleming et al., 2002)
o These changes were more likely for men who had intimate ties with their wives during
pregnancy, demonstrating the bidirectional interaction between social interactions
and hormones
Other Attachments
• Infants also form attachments with other important individuals who they regularly interact with
such as peers, siblings, and other relatives (Berlin & Cassidy, 1999; Smith & Drew, 2002)
• Field (1986) found that preschool children showed separation anxiety behaviours when
transferring to new schools, demonstrating the loss of familiar peer attachments
• As children reach adolescence, they develop attachment relationships with friends and with
romantic partners (Collins & Van Dulman, 2006; Furman et al., 2002)
3
, 4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 8
BSc Psychology Year 1 Attachment and Emotion
BASIS OF SOCIAL INTERACTION
Smiling
• Smiling is the earliest attachment behaviours
Contingent Responding
• Contingent responding is a process that encourages the
formation of attachment bonds
o The child’s behaviour elicits a positive response
from the caregiver, which in turn, elicits further
positive responses from the child and so on…
• This process works based on the child’s expectations of
how they think the caregiver is going to behave
• The child expects a rhythmic pattern of social interaction,
and if this isn’t met, this can lead to distress in the child
o For example, Tronick et al. (1978) found that 1.5-
month-olds get uneasy if their caregiver keeps a
still face and does not respond to their smiling
Social Referencing
• From around 7 months, children show more advanced social interaction
• Social referencing is when a child looks to others to see how they should react to a situation
o This is where a parent’s behaviour can impact a child’s social development
o For example, it can give rise to phobias such as by seeing a parent be afraid of dogs,
also making the child afraid of dogs
• Joint attention can develop through behaviours like gaze
following, where a child points to attract a caregiver’s attention
o The child typically looks at the caregiver, then follows
their gaze toward an object, and they may alternate
their gaze between the caregiver and the object
o This back-and-forth helps establish joint attention,
allowing the child to understand they are sharing a
social experience with a mutual focus
• Children with autism are less responsive to social referencing cues compared to children with
Down syndrome and typically developing children, showing reduced sensitivity to others’
emotional cues in guiding their behaviour (Sigman et al., 1992)
o This suggests that social referencing abilities are more significantly impaired in
autism than in other developmental conditions
Clinging
• Clinging is seen as a key evolutionary behaviour where one has to cling to their mothers in order
to survive during their early stages of life where they are dependent
4
