Bowlby's theory of attachment

Bowlby argued attachment is an innate, adaptive system that keeps an infant close to a caregiver, promoting survival.

• Monotropy — one special attachment, usually to the mother-figure, is qualitatively different from all others.
• Social releasers (crying, smiling, clinging) elicit caregiving, and attachment is reciprocal.
• Critical (sensitive) period — attachment must form within roughly the first two to three years, or it may not form properly at all.
• Internal working model — the first relationship becomes a template for later relationships and for the person's own parenting (the continuity hypothesis).
• Maternal deprivation hypothesis: prolonged separation from the mother-figure in the critical period causes lasting emotional and cognitive damage.

Evidence and criticism: Bowlby's 44 thieves study (1944) found 14 of the 44 juvenile thieves were 'affectionless psychopaths', and 12 of those 14 had experienced prolonged early separation. But the study is retrospective, relied on Bowlby's own diagnoses (researcher bias), and shows a correlation, not a cause. Later work also shows children form multiple attachments, challenging monotropy.

The Strange Situation and attachment types

Ainsworth developed a controlled observation of the infant's use of the caregiver as a secure base. It has eight episodes of about three minutes each, including two separations and two reunions with a stranger present.

Behaviours coded: proximity seeking, exploration and secure-base behaviour, stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, and — most diagnostic — the response to reunion.

• Type B — secure (about 66% of Ainsworth's American sample): explores happily, distressed on separation, easily comforted at reunion. Linked with sensitive responsiveness from the caregiver.
• Type A — insecure-avoidant (about 22%): explores freely, little distress on separation, avoids the caregiver at reunion.
• Type C — insecure-resistant (about 12%): explores little, highly distressed, but resists comfort at reunion — clingy and angry at once.

Evaluate it: highly standardised, replicable and with good inter-rater reliability — but it may be measuring the relationship rather than the child, it is a stressful, artificial procedure, and it may be culturally biased (an imposed etic).

Which type?

Classic study: van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

Aim: to see whether attachment types are universal or culturally specific.

• Method: a meta-analysis of 32 Strange Situation studies across 8 countries, covering 1,990 classifications.
• Findings: secure attachment was the most common type in every country studied — support for the idea that attachment is innate and universal.
• But the distribution of the insecure types varied: insecure-avoidant was relatively more common in Western European samples such as West Germany, and insecure-resistant relatively more common in Japan and Israel — consistent with different child-rearing practices.
• Crucially: variation within countries was about one and a half times greater than variation between countries — so talking about 'a Japanese attachment type' is misleading.

Evaluate it: a very large pooled sample gives strong generalisability and statistical power. But the studies were not all equivalent, some countries were represented by a single study, and the Strange Situation itself is an imposed etic — a Western tool used to judge non-Western child-rearing, where avoiding the caregiver may indicate valued independence rather than insecurity.

Attachment behaviours and evidence

Tap a card, then tap the category it belongs to.

Deprivation, privation and reversibility

• Deprivation — an attachment was formed but is then disrupted (e.g. hospitalisation, a parent leaving). Short-term effects follow the PDD pattern: protest, then despair, then detachment. Negative effects can be reduced by a substitute attachment figure, familiar routines and objects, and by keeping the separation short.
• Privation — an attachment was never formed at all. This is far more damaging.
• Rutter's English and Romanian Adoptee study followed children adopted into UK families from Romanian institutions. Children adopted before about six months largely caught up with UK-adopted controls. Those adopted later showed persisting difficulties, including disinhibited attachment (over-friendly with strangers) and lower cognitive scores — and the later the adoption, the worse the outcome.
• Conclusion: effects are not always irreversible, but recovery depends heavily on the age of intervention and the quality of subsequent care — supporting a sensitive period rather than Bowlby's rigid critical period.

Deprivation or privation?

Day care: advantages, disadvantages and quality

• Possible advantages: better social development — more time with peers can improve co-operation, negotiation and peer relations; cognitive and language gains, particularly for children from disadvantaged homes.
• Possible disadvantages: some large studies have found that long hours in day care from a very young age are associated with slightly raised aggression and non-compliance ratings — though the effect sizes are small and confounded with family factors.
• Quality is the key variable: good day care has a low child-to-staff ratio, consistent key workers (so a substitute attachment can form), well-qualified and sensitive staff, low staff turnover, and a stimulating, structured environment.
• Individual differences: temperament, age at entry, hours per week, and the quality of the home all moderate the effects — which is why simple 'day care is bad' claims are unsafe.

Contemporary study option — Li et al. (2013) examined the timing of high-quality child care and children's cognitive, language and pre-academic development, illustrating that when high-quality care is received, not just whether it is received, matters.

What makes day care good?

Autism: features and explanations

Features: persistent difficulties in social communication and interaction, together with restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities, including sensory sensitivities. It is a spectrum — presentation and support needs vary enormously.

• Biological explanation: strong evidence for a genetic component (much higher concordance in MZ than DZ twins; higher rates in siblings), plus differences in brain development and connectivity. Autism is not caused by vaccines — the study that claimed this was fraudulent and has been retracted, and large-scale studies have found no link.
• Other explanation — theory of mind: difficulty attributing mental states to others. Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith (1985) used the Sally-Anne false-belief task: only 4 of the 20 autistic children (20%) answered the belief question correctly, while most of the children with Down's syndrome and most of the typically developing children passed — even though the autistic children had higher mental ages. So the failure was not simply about general ability.

Therapies: behavioural approaches (e.g. applied behaviour analysis using operant reinforcement), communication systems such as PECS, and structured teaching. Evaluate them on effectiveness, intensity/cost, and ethics — including the criticism from autistic self-advocates that some interventions aim at appearing 'normal' rather than at the child's own wellbeing.

Match the term to its meaning

Tap a term on the left, then its correct definition on the right.

Researching with children

• Observation (as in the Strange Situation): use operationalised behavioural categories and tallying; check inter-rater reliability; beware observer bias. Types: participant/non-participant, overt/covert.
• Questionnaires and interviews with parents and teachers: quick and rich, but vulnerable to social desirability and demand characteristics — a parent is unlikely to report insensitive parenting.
• Cross-cultural research and meta-analysis (van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg) test whether findings are universal — the core of the nature-nurture argument in this topic. Watch for the imposed etic.
• Longitudinal designs (the ERA study) track the same children over years — powerful for development, but slow and vulnerable to attrition. Cross-sectional designs are quicker but suffer cohort effects.

Ethics with children

Nature, nurture and social control

• Nature-nurture: secure attachment being the most common type in every country (van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg) supports an innate basis; the variation in insecure types supports culture. The honest answer is interactionist.
• Culture and gender: the Strange Situation is a Western measure; 'sensitive responsiveness' is defined by Western norms. Bowlby's monotropy has been criticised as placing responsibility (and blame) disproportionately on mothers.
• Social control: attachment research has been used to advise mothers not to work, and day-care findings can be used politically in both directions. Ask who benefits from the advice.
• Socially sensitive research: studies of autism, adoption and privation involve vulnerable children and findings that can stigmatise families — the potential consequences must be weighed alongside the scientific value.

Interpreting cross-cultural data

Theory of mind

How Topic 7 is assessed

Child psychology is one of three options and, if you take it, is assessed in Section B of Paper 2, alongside the compulsory clinical psychology in Section A.

• Expect application to a novel scenario — a nursery, an adopted child, a child with autism.
• Be precise about deprivation vs privation, and about what the ERA study actually shows about reversibility.
• Know van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988) in detail — 32 studies, 8 countries, 1,990 classifications, secure most common everywhere, within-culture variation about 1.5 times the between-culture variation.

The strongest evaluation in this topic is the imposed etic: the Strange Situation was built in America, so 'avoidant' behaviour may be a valued independence elsewhere, not insecurity.

The big ideas to know

That is Topic 7 — remember it is one of three options for Section B of Paper 2. Press Finish to see your score.