The Whole of AQA A-Level Psychology | Attachment | Revision for Exams

Summary

Highlights

• Attachment is tough to define but crucial for understanding early development 👶🧠.
• The video covers landmark studies like Lorenz's geese and Harlow's monkeys 🐒🕊️.
• Bolby's monotropic theory posits a single pivotal attachment, typically to the mother 📘👩.
• Experiments highlight how early attachments can shape adult behavior and relationships 🔄👪.
• Strange Situation research sheds light on attachment types and their implications 🔍👧.
• Cultural norms impact attachment styles across different societies 🌏📝.
• Attachment disruptions can lead to long-term social and emotional issues 🚫💔.
• Positive outcomes are possible even after early adversity, highlighting human resilience 🙌🏽⭐.

Key Takeaways

• Attachment is a complex topic in psychology, focusing on the bond between infants and caregivers 👶❤️.
• Several types of attachment exist, including secure, insecure avoidant, and insecure resistant 🤝📚.
• Key experiments in attachment involve Lorenz's geese, Harlow's monkeys, and Bolby's theories 🐒🕊️.
• Learning theory and Bolby's monotropic attachment theory provide frameworks for understanding attachment 📘🧠.
• Attachment styles can influence future relationships and behavior, forming a 'cycle of privation' if disrupted 🔄🚶‍♂️.
• Cultural studies show both similarities and differences in attachment across the globe 🌍📊.
• Despite challenges, some individuals exhibit resilience and go on to lead healthy adult lives 🙌✨.

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Attachment in Psychology The video titled 'Introduction to Attachment in Psychology' is a summary of the attachment unit for AQA A-level psychology presented by Tim. It suggests making notes along the way and highlights the necessity to memorize significant figures and timelines related to attachment studies. It also mentions additional resources available on a website for extensive revision questions to aid exam preparation.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Defining Attachment and Its Features This chapter delves into the complex concept of attachment in psychology, particularly focusing on the attachment that develops between children (or babies) and their primary caregivers, often the mother. The chapter highlights the challenges in defining 'attachment' due to the existence of various types, but narrows its focus to this specific bond for the context of A level psychology.
• 02:30 - 04:30: Stages of Attachment by Schaefer and Emerson Attachment is described as a strong emotional bond between an infant and their primary caregiver, who can be the mother or another significant adult figure like a father, grandparent, nanny, or sibling.
• 04:30 - 07:00: Lorenz's Imprinting Study This chapter discusses Lorenz's Imprinting Study, focusing on the interaction between infants and caregivers. It highlights three common features of this interaction. First is sensitive responsiveness, where the caregiver attentively reacts to the infant's signals. Second is imitation, where the infant mimics actions, noises, or facial expressions of the caregiver. Lastly, interactional synchrony occurs when the infant's reactions are timed to the caregiver's speech. These elements are integral to understanding the bonding process described in the study.
• 07:00 - 09:30: Harlow's Contact Comfort Study Harlow's Contact Comfort Study focuses on the importance of comfort and emotional connection between infants and caregivers. The chapter introduces concepts such as reciprocity, or turn-taking, which is the interactive back-and-forth communication between an infant and a caregiver. Another focus is on 'motherese,' a slow and sing-song way of speaking that caregivers often use with infants, akin to how many people speak to pets. Schaefer and Emerson's work from 1964 is also mentioned in relation to these topics.
• 09:30 - 11:30: Learning Theory of Attachment The chapter titled 'Learning Theory of Attachment' delves into landmark research concerning the attachment process in infants. This research identified and named several stages of attachment and is recognized for its excellence and reliability. However, a noted limitation is its lack of consideration for cross-cultural differences, as the study exclusively involved infants from Glasgow, thereby being restricted to a single cultural perspective. Four distinct stages of attachment were identified, with the pre-attachment phase as the initial stage.
• 11:30 - 14:00: John Bowlby and the Monotropic Theory Chapter "John Bowlby and the Monotropic Theory" discusses the earliest developmental stages of infants. It explains the first phase, known as the social phase, which extends from birth to about three months. During this time, infants learn to distinguish humans from inanimate objects and animals, but they do not show specific preferences for who fulfills their basic needs such as food. The second phase, termed the indiscriminate or diffuse phase, begins around six weeks and lasts until approximately seven months, during which infants continue to develop their social recognition skills.
• 14:00 - 16:30: Types of Attachment During this phase, infants begin to distinguish between different people, although they do not yet show preferences for caregivers. Infants can display recognition signals for familiar individuals, but their feelings towards who provides care are not yet specific. The third phase, known as the discriminant or single attachment phase, typically occurs between 7 to 11 months of age, where preferences for specific caregivers begin to develop.
• 16:30 - 18:00: Ainsworth's Strange Situation and Cultural Norms The chapter discusses the development of infant attachment as described by Ainsworth. It highlights the phase where an infant forms a strong attachment with one primary caregiver, usually the mother. During this stage, the infant often shows fear or hesitance towards strangers and exhibits recognition signals in the presence of the primary caregiver. The chapter also covers the multiple attachment phase that typically begins around nine months, where infants form attachments with more than one person.
• 18:00 - 19:50: Separation, Deprivation, and Maternal Deprivation This chapter discusses the concept of attachment in infants, highlighting that they can form multiple attachments concurrently with different individuals, each varying in strength and purpose. It also references the work of psychologist Lorenz, a pioneer in attachment psychology, noting the controversial use of animals in such research.
• 19:50 - 23:00: Deprivation vs Privation and Case Studies The chapter discusses the ethical debate surrounding the use of animals in scientific research, especially psychology. It acknowledges the valuable insights gained from animal studies that are not possible with human subjects, but also highlights the ethical concerns like the lack of informed consent and potential harm to the animals.
• 23:00 - 25:00: Effects of Disrupted Attachments The chapter titled 'Effects of Disrupted Attachments' explores the concept of imprinting as discovered by Lorenz in 1935. He studied the behavior of goslings and found that they formed attachments to the first moving object they saw upon hatching. Lorenz termed this process as imprinting. His study involved two groups of goslings: one born naturally and the other incubated without the presence of certain natural elements, which were key to understanding attachment and its disruptions.
• 25:00 - 27:30: Internal Working Model and Adult Attachments The chapter discusses the concept of imprinting, using Lorenz's research on goslings as an example. Lorenz observed that goslings incubated by adult geese would follow them around, leading him to conclude that imprinting occurs very swiftly after birth, within a window of 6 to 12 hours. He also determined that after this brief period, imprinting was no longer possible. Although this research sheds light on imprinting, its practical applications are considered slightly limited.
• 27:30 - 28:30: Cycle of Privation and Its Impact The chapter "Cycle of Privation and Its Impact" begins by exploring the concept of imprinting, contrasting it between humans and geese. Unlike geese, where imprinting happens quickly, human development involves a longer process that's more influenced by the quality and quantity of care received. It emphasizes that human attachment isn't just about connecting with the first object seen, but is more complex. The chapter also references a crucial animal study conducted by Harlow in 1959, which, while pivotal in understanding attachment, also presented significant ethical challenges.
• 28:30 - 29:30: Historical Studies and Positive Outcomes The 1959 study, often referred to as the contact comfort study, aimed to determine whether infant monkeys preferred a source of nourishment or a source of physical comfort. In the laboratory experiments, rhesus monkeys were raised in isolation without contact with other monkeys. They were provided with two surrogate mothers: one made of hard wire mesh that contained a food source.

The Whole of AQA A-Level Psychology | Attachment | Revision for Exams Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello lovelies in this video tim is going to be summarizing the whole unit on attachment of your aqa a level psychology now make notes as you're going along in this and you'll notice that there is a lot for you to remember a lot of who did what when to help you with all of those remembering bits that you need to do so you're ready to apply in your exam over my website there is a massive course of loads and loads of questions to help you revise [Music]
• 00:30 - 01:00 as with many key terms in psychology attachment is a surprisingly difficult word to define there are actually many different types of attachment but for the purposes of as a level psychology we focus on the attachment that forms between children our babies and their primary caregiver most often but not always that will be the mother
• 01:00 - 01:30 we can therefore define attachment as a strong emotional bond that forms between an infant and their primary caregiver as we said this primary caregiver can often be taken to be the mother of the infant but this is not always the case especially in the modern world and a primary caregiver can be a father grandparent nanny older sibling or even just another adult caregiver infant interactions have
• 01:30 - 02:00 several common features the first is sensitive responsiveness the caregiver responds to signals given from the infant the second is imitation the infant copies and mimics the actions of the caregiver as the caregiver makes a noise or facial expression the infant will often mimic it the third is interactional synchrony the infant's reactions are in time to the speech of the caregiver
• 02:00 - 02:30 the fourth is reciprocity often known as turn-taking that is that there is a back and forth interaction between the infant and the caregiver and the fifth is mother ease the caregiver adopts a slow sing-song way of speaking to the infant something which incidentally many of us do with our pets in 1964 two psychologists called schaefer and emerson carried out
• 02:30 - 03:00 landmark research into attachment through this several stages of attachment were identified and named this research is considered excellent and extremely reliable but it didn't take into account cross-cultural differences all of the infants studied were from glasgow they were therefore all isolated to one culture in total four stages were identified the first stage is the pre-attachment or
• 03:00 - 03:30 a social phase which for most infants lasts from birth through to about three months old during this phase the infant learns to separate humans from inanimate objects and other animals but has no obvious displayed feelings about who provides for its basic physical needs like food for example the second phase is the indiscriminate sometimes known as the diffuse phase which usually lasts from about six weeks old to about seven
• 03:30 - 04:00 months during this phase the infant is able to distinguish between different people to an extent the infant can also display recognition signals to certain people it sees on a regular basis but there's still no displayed feelings about who provides care and the infant is effectively indiscriminate the third is the discriminant or single attachment phase which for most infants lasts from 7 months to 11 months old
• 04:00 - 04:30 in this phase the infant becomes able to form a single strong attachment with a single specific person usually the mother the baby is likely to also be very hesitant around all very scared of strangers and the infant will usually show recognition signals when this single caregiver is present the fourth and final phase is known as the multiple attachment phase which is from usually about nine months onwards
• 04:30 - 05:00 during this phase the infant can form several concurrent attachments at the same time with several different individuals these varying attachments may have different strengths and they have different purposes but the number of possible attachments at least in theory is infinite a psychologist called lorenz was a pioneer in the field of attachment psychology but like many experiments done in this area this particular piece of research controversially used animals
• 05:00 - 05:30 the use of animals in all science but especially in psychology was and remains today a topic of high feeling and intense debate on the one hand it can provide useful insights which can't be gained from human studies the issue however is that on the other hand it raises severe ethical issues animals can never give informed consent and they may well be harmed physically or mentally by the process
• 05:30 - 06:00 in 1935 the wren studied geese and he found that newly born geese or goslings formed an attachment to the very first moving thing they saw upon hatching and they then followed it around apparently endlessly lorenz called this process imprinting lorenz used two separate groups of goslings one group was born entirely normally and naturally but the other group was incubated without the presence of an
• 06:00 - 06:30 adult goose lorenz noticed that the incubated goslings still followed adult geese around he concluded therefore the imprinting happened very swiftly after birth roughly between 6 and 12 hours lorenz concluded that after this tiny period that elapsed imprinting couldn't happen while this research is very interesting it is also of slightly limited use it's extremely likely that any kind of
• 06:30 - 07:00 imprinting like this could take place in humans unlike geese our development takes a much longer time but it tends to be based more around the quality and quantity of care we receive rather than just latching on to the first moving thing another key study done into attachment was done by harlow in 1959 as we'll see this animal study also has extremely severe ethical issues
• 07:00 - 07:30 often this 1959 study is called the contact comfort study the aim was to try and find out if infant monkeys preferred a source of nourishment or a source of physical comfort in a series of laboratory experiments a group of rhesus monkeys were raised in isolation they had no contact whatsoever with other rhesus monkeys but they did have two surrogate mothers one was made of a hard wire mesh but it contained a food source
• 07:30 - 08:00 the other was made of a soft and comforting cloth but did not contain a food sauce the infant monkeys spent the vast majority of their time with the soft cloth surrogate usually they only went near the hard wire surrogate in order to obtain food unfortunately as the monkey infants grew into adult monkeys they showed increasing signs of severe psychological disturbance any female infant monkeys became violent
• 08:00 - 08:30 parents themselves often this is known as a cycle of privation something which we'll look at slightly later on this study seemed to show that infant monkeys at least prefer a comforting attachment figure over one that meets their basic physical needs like food obviously there are huge ethical issues with this study infant monkeys were essentially subjected to sustained and deliberate psychological harm
• 08:30 - 09:00 it was a laboratory study done under laboratory conditions and there was excellent control over the many variables present because of this however there is very limited ecological validity and it can be said for sure that rhesus monkeys would behave in the same way in the wild the monkeys weren't in their natural environment the presence of psychologists and equipment is likely to have had some influence on their behavior so this experiment can't even be generalized out to all rhesus monkeys never mind being generalized out to
• 09:00 - 09:30 humans normally laboratory experiments would be repeatable but the extreme ethical issues present in this study mean that it hasn't been repeated and in all likelihood never will be there are many possible ways that the phenomenon of attachment can be explained but one of the most popular is through learning theory quite often learning theory is often known as behaviorism
• 09:30 - 10:00 according to learning theory attachments form through the process known as conditioning conditioning can occur in two ways classical conditioning and operant conditioning classical conditioning is the gradual process of making connections between two different things in our immediate environment like fire being hot water being wet home being safe and food being hopefully delicious as infants at least we all have very simple and straightforward basic
• 10:00 - 10:30 physical desires food water care sleep for example gradually we learn that food drink parents and beds fulfill these basic physical desires classical conditioning allows us to gradually make connections between our needs and our environment and we gradually form attachments to the caregiver in all likelihood the caregiver provides for these needs hence we make this
• 10:30 - 11:00 attachment operant conditioning is a very similar process but it operates in reverse we feel hungry when we don't have enough food without water we feel thirsty without sleep we feel tired for example we still make connections when our caregivers are present they relieve these discomforts the caregivers gradually become associated with the removal of discomfort and hence we form an attachment to an extent at least learning theory is
• 11:00 - 11:30 a little controversial it does have some support from some scientific studies but many people argue that it's reductionist in nature it tries to reduce the very complex way in which human infants form attachments down to simplistic processes it's also worth noting that the great deal of the evidence which backs up learning theory comes from the animal studies we've already seen unfortunately these always have ethical issues and they can't usually be generalized to humans
• 11:30 - 12:00 john bolby was an important and major figure in attachment psychology indeed sometimes bolby is described without evident irony as the father of attachment psychology he developed the monotropic theory of attachment as the first coherent explanation of how attachments form in 1951 bolby put forward the idea that a very sophisticated type of imprinting like lorenz's geese does occur in humans
• 12:00 - 12:30 we have an evolutionary need to form an attachment to our primary caregiver if infants don't form this attachment it becomes extremely unlikely that they survive for any significant length of time as a result therefore natural selection and evolution prefers infants who do form attachments over those that don't the idea of monotropy is that we form a single attachment as very young infants this is obviously usually but not always our biological mother
• 12:30 - 13:00 bulby's basic idea was that this very first single attachment gives us a template or model which we then roll out and use for all our future attachments a slightly older infants children or adults therefore if this very first important attachment is disrupted or abnormal we then form abnormal or disrupted attachments throughout our adult lives too there is a fair bit of evidence for bulby's ideas
• 13:00 - 13:30 that said however there is some experimental evidence against it like the experiment during 1964 by sheffer and emerson one thing worth noting and one illustrative point about the impact of psychology is that bulby developed his theory during the 1950s he was explained poorly by the media but very widely publicized it's been theorized that this contributed to a rapid increase in stay-at-home mothers during a socially conservative and very traditionalist era
• 13:30 - 14:00 there are three main basic types of attachment they are secure insecure avoidant and insecure resistant secure attachments are a strong and usually permanent bond between an infant and that infant's primary caregiver happily the vast majority of attachments are of this type if the caregiver is removed for any reason then the infant becomes distressed and unhappy but it's very easily calmed down when the
• 14:00 - 14:30 caregiver comes back insecure avoidant attachments are a far weaker type of attachment in these types the infant is usually not particularly distressed or dismayed by the removal of the caregiver often they can be easily comforted by a complete stranger insecure resistance attachments are much more complex and multifaceted around the caregiver the child is usually uneasy stressed or just apathetic but they do become even more distressed if they're
• 14:30 - 15:00 separated from that caregiver in this case however comfort cannot be given by strangers and the infant will then indeed often resist comfort when the caregiver comes back bolby's theories would suggest that insecure avoidant and insecure resistance attachments will carry on and continue to impact on all the various future attachments and relationships that this infant may form as they grow through childhood and into being an adult which may well cause them very
• 15:00 - 15:30 significant difficulties in later life several experiments that were all carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s have been classified under the general heading of strange situation research ainsworth working in 1978 developed the idea of the strange situation this is when an infant is placed in a situation which is new to them and usually their primary caregiver is removed as well
• 15:30 - 16:00 the theory is that the nature and strength of this infant caregiver attachment can be accurately judged from how the infant reacts to this new strange situation to the removal of their caregiver and finally how they react to the return of this caregiver working with a group of researchers in 1978 ainsworth found that roughly 70 percent or a little over two-thirds of infants were securely attached to their caregiver these group of infants were content with
• 16:00 - 16:30 the presence of their caregiver and very happy upon their return about 15 of the infants were insecure avoidant they ignored their mother and were completely indifferent or apathetic to the mother leaving them and then returning the final 15 were insecure resistant they were uneasy while their mother was present but they were upset when she left and they couldn't be comforted by strangers very similar studies to this have been carried out in a range of cultures all
• 16:30 - 17:00 over the world this allows psychologists to judge if they're are cultural norms in attachment a meta-analysis was done in 1988 by van genden and cronenberg a meta-analysis is a study of many studies and this one came to the conclusion that there are indeed cross-cultural similarities in how children are raised and how infants form attachment that is that there seem to be some trends present all across the world that said however some subsequent
• 17:00 - 17:30 research done later on has shown that there may be some cultural differences in how attachments form usually it's thought that these are a result of cultural norms in very specific areas like ideals of personal independence in germany and cultural norms of very strong family and religious ties in most arab nations it is generally thought that there are two main ways in which attachment can be broken or disrupted
• 17:30 - 18:00 separation and deprivation separation is commonly enough when a child is away from their primary caregiver for a relatively short period of time like a few hours maybe a day or two deprivation on the other hand is when something wanted or needed is removed on a permanent basis bulby studied and focused on maternal deprivation which is when an infant is deprived of maternal care for a long period of time during infancy
• 18:00 - 18:30 one landmark study was carried out by bolby in 1944 and is generally called the 44 juvenile thieves they study look at the backgrounds and specifically the infancy and childhood of 44 young delinquent criminals balbi found that there was indeed a link between childhood maternal deprivation and criminality slightly later on robertson and robertson in 1968 also carried out a naturalistic observation of a single
• 18:30 - 19:00 child named john who was separated from his mother for a total of nine days this study concluded that this very short separation may have actually had a permanent damaging effect on john's relationship with his mother when they were reunited after nine days john was extremely reluctant to be affectionate and pushed his mother away maternal deprivation therefore as put forward by bulby has some evidence to back it up in subsequent years however it's been
• 19:00 - 19:30 argued this is very reductionist bulby didn't consider other factors like poverty social deprivation or genetics an institution in the context of attachment psychology is any organization which takes care of children and infants in place of a normal family setting normally we're talking about an orphanage fortunately in britain today this is a very rare type of organization through history however it was a sad and
• 19:30 - 20:00 tragic reality for many children especially in urban areas working in 2007 rutter claimed that bolby had a very confused idea about deprivation ruta put forward definitions for deprivation and privation rutter suggested that deprivation is when a former attachment is broken but privation is when an attachment never forms at all sadly however the difference between the two is academic
• 20:00 - 20:30 in reality it's very hard to tell between them and they have very very similar consequences in 1981 rutter examined several case studies of privation in each of these case studies a secure attachment had never been formed by the child one case study was the very sad one of genie this was first outlined by curtis in 1977 and research actually continues to this day genie had been treated through her childhood with unimaginable cruelty
• 20:30 - 21:00 by her parents she never formed any kind of secure attachment and never had any kind of normal childhood genie was discovered by a complete accident when she was 13. when she was discovered she had almost no normal social skills whatsoever but gradually with competent care she gained a very basic level of function but she was never able to form any kind of normal relationships with anybody else today she remains in the care of the
• 21:00 - 21:30 state in the early 1990s the extremely brutal authoritarian communist regime in romania fell this allowed the world and the world's media to see the country's many overcrowded orphanages containing thousands of children all of whom needed a home many of these children were adopted by british families and this gave psychologists an opportunity to study the effects of the orphanage on attachment one landmark study was done by rutter
• 21:30 - 22:00 and a group of researchers in 2007 this was a longitudinal study done over several decades the children were assessed and examined at roughly six months old and then again at four years old six years old and finally at 11 years old it was found that the effects of privation can be reversed if the child is adopted at a young enough age it was identified that this age seems to be roughly six months old unfortunately however if the child is much older than this then it seems the
• 22:00 - 22:30 long-term effects of probation can never be fully reversed this study essentially examined about 50 case studies over a great many years it has huge levels of ecological validity on the other hand however it is only a very small case study with a very small sample size a very similar study was done by hodges and tizard in 1989 and this came to very similar conclusions but it also had a very small sample size
• 22:30 - 23:00 as we've seen a great many studies have been done on children in all villages and also on them as adults in later life these studies have suggested that there are five main possible consequences of children forming disrupted attachments at a young age the first is affectionless psychopathy the child will show little or no empathy and have almost no regard for how their actions impact upon others
• 23:00 - 23:30 the second is analytic depression generally the child will show slow and impaired social development this is usually combined with recurrent insomnia and inability to sleep properly and often a lack of appetite the third is deprivation dwarfism generally the child will be physically underdeveloped as a result of sustained emotional deprivation fourth and slightly controversially delinquency
• 23:30 - 24:00 generally children who've had disruptive attachments at a young age tend to end up carrying out a series of minor crimes on a regular basis as they grow older and fifth reduced intelligence generally the child's intellectual capacity will develop at a slower rate than normal as we've seen bulby developed the idea that our attachments as adults are guided by a template or model that we farm as infants if our infant attachments are disrupted or in some way
• 24:00 - 24:30 abnormal then it's likely our adult ones will be too bobby called this theory the internal working model our infant attachments form a model or template for how we will interact with our peers as adults if our infant attachments are secure happy and healthy then it's likely we'll go on to form normal healthy happy attachments as adults on the other hand however if we suffer insecure avoidant or insecure resistance attachments as infants
• 24:30 - 25:00 then these will form our model for our adult detachments which will also be resistant or avoidant a landmark piece of research into this area was done by hazan and shaver in 1987. they used a series of questions and questionnaires in local newspapers to examine how the relationships of 620 people with their parents influenced their later expectations of adult romantic relationships indeed they found a correlation between insecure avoidant and insecure
• 25:00 - 25:30 resistant childhood attachments and abnormal or disrupted expectations of adult relationships some studies have rather sadly suggested that children who experience disruptive or abnormal attachments will go on to have difficulties informal forming normal relationships with their own children if this is the case it would provide an explanation for a whole range of social problems like recurrent deprivation rising crime rates and
• 25:30 - 26:00 ingrained poverty and unemployment working in 1984 clinton and a group of researchers compared the parenting of two groups of fifty women the first group of fifty women had experienced institutional care as children themselves the second group of fifty women had experienced a perfectly normal family life as children it was found that the first group that's the ones who had experienced institutional care as children were far
• 26:00 - 26:30 more likely to encounter difficulties or problems as parents themselves the second group usually experience perfectly normal parenting attachments this would suggest that there is indeed a cycle of privation working in 1993 parker and forrest identified four symptoms experienced by individuals who tended to experience probation as children the first is an inability to give or receive affection
• 26:30 - 27:00 the second is constant or recurring dishonesty the third is poor or disrupted social relationships and the fourth is delinquency or involvement in criminal behavior however on a more positive final note freud and dan working in 1951 found that the majority of child refugees arriving in britain during the second world war went on to experience completely normal cognitive development and relationships as adults in the following decades so
• 27:00 - 27:30 it's not always all negative [Music] you