Interestingly in the Rutter study those who were adopted before the age of 6 months tended to show a more marked improvement compared to their older counterparts. This seems to coincide with Schaffer and Emerson’s Glaswegian infant study which showed that children below the age of 6 months treat everything indiscriminately having not formed an attachment. So naturally by definition the Romanian infants below 6 months couldn’t and didn’t suffer privation and so therefore didn’t suffer the effects of it later. However with the Rutter study it is hard to establish cause and effect. Many of the children suffered cognitive deficits but this might have rather been a result of a lack of substantial intellectual stimulation within the institutions as opposed to privation.
They measured emotional and social competence at ages 4, 8 and 16. The study found that at the children who were restored to their real parents were less likely to have formed attachments with their original families, but adopted children were as closely attached to their adoptive parents as the control group. However both the groups of ex-institutionalised children had problems with peer relationships. These findings suggest that their early privation had a negative effect on the ability to form relationships. This supports bowlby’s theory that failure to form attachments has an irreversible effect on emotional development.
The researchers found children who were spanked as 1-year-olds tended to behave more aggressively at age 2, and didn’t perform as well as other children on a test measuring thinking skills at age 3. Children’s Hospital Boston’s Jayne Singer, PhD, clinical director of the Child and Parent Program and a clinical psychologist for the Brazelton Touchpoints Center says, “The results of the study make sense. Spanking a child does show the child that the parent is bigger and stronger and can take control of the child. But, it doesn’t show the child how to learn to develop control of themselves. Spanking may stop the child then and there, but there’s a cost emotionally and cognitively to a child, and over the long run, it doesn’t usually lead to the child learning not to repeat the behavior that resulted in the spanking in the first place.
This shows that privation had an effect on the children and had affected their ability to form attachments. Hodges and Tizard’s study suggests that privation has negative effects on people in later life; however there may be other factors that affect people. Privation is only one of these numerous factors and other studies have proven that children can recover from privation to form attachments in later life. Privation is more likely to cause damage when paired with other factors and therefore privation cannot be solely to blame for the inability to form attachments. In addition to this, the Hodges and Tizard study did not follow the participants into later life.
The child’s first bond, called attachment, is an enduring emotional tie that unites the child to one or more caregivers and has a far- reaching effects on the child’s development. Attachment is an emotional bond to another person. Psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, describing attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.” Bowlby believed the earliest attachments between children and their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. According to Bowlby, attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the chances for survival. The central idea of attachment theory is that mothers who are available and responsive to their infant’s needs establish a sense for security.
A person characteristically forms an attachment to their primary caregiver, in one of three ways that will affect their love relations. Secure attachment, as children the parents would be warm and responsive and secure children feel safe and comfortable, and are able to discover and build up new skills with minimum anxiety or concern (Bolt, 2004). A person with a secure style of attachment will have more pleasing and longer lasting relationships. Secure individuals are comfortable being close to their partners (Attachment Styles, or Comfort with Intimacy, Influence How People Behave, 2004). They are more accepting to depend on them, and they are comfortable being dependent on another individual.
and Q: Describe and Evaluate Bowlby’s theory of attachment (12): Bowlby’s theory consists of five different areas. First of all, there is ‘adaptive’. Bowlby believed that all attachments are adaptive and that it is an advantage in order to survive. This action promotes survival because it ensures safety and food for offspring, and individuals who are attached are more likely to survive and go on to reproduce. Secondly, he suggests that infants are born with innate social releasers, such as crying and smiling, and that they also have cute faces to elicit care-giving.
They believe that securely attached infants would become autonomous adults; these know the importance of their past relationships and can recall positive and negative experiences. Those that had insecure attachments would fall into the dismissing or preoccupied category. They would see their childhood experiences as either unimportant and dismiss them or as important but cannot resolve issues. Using the AAI, Hamilton (1994) studied 30 adolescents and found a strong correlation between infant attachment type and adult attachment type. Similarly Steinberg (1990) found that securely attached adolescents were more likely to maintain healthy relationships with their parents than those classified as dismissive or preoccupied.
When shown together there evidence provided a way of proving how levels of security in these relationships have substantial impact upon infants development. It is important to mention that the “strange situation” technique has received criticisms surrounding ethics with regards to intentionally inflicting distress upon infants by purposely separating them from their attachment figure however it has been argued that this situation is something that does occur naturally in an infants life. The ecological validity of the research and its ability to be generalised within different cultures has also been questioned as the study used only a sample of westernised participants. For Bowlby the IWM only had capacity to change in the period of infancy after this it is fixed for the rest of a persons life therefore a link should be able to be demonstrated between infant attachment classifications and adult attachment classifications. Continuing from the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth the adult attachment interview was developed by Main, here an adults ability to integrate childhood memories of relationships with attachment figures into working models of relationships was assessed identifying in accordance to Main three
It is a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings as described by a psychologist named John Bowlby. Attachment also is a learned ability where emotional connections between a parent and child are nurtured over time through mutual interaction, and is based on trust. Characteristics of attachment are the following: "Safe Haven" is when a child feels afraid or threatened in any matter, they will return to the caregiver for comfort and soothing. The second characteristic is "secure base". Secure Base is when a caregiver provides a dependable and secure base for the child to explore the world.