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Mother and child
'Attachment theory' is a descriptive and explanatory framework for discussion of affectionate relationships between human beings.
Most of attachment theory as we know it today is derived from the work of John Bowlby and stresses the attitudes and behaviors of young children toward their adult caregivers. However, a wide variety of social behaviors, occurring at all ages, is subsumed under the term "attachment". These behaviors can include care-seeking by children or others, peer relationships of all ages, romantic and sexual attraction, and responses to the care needs of infants or sick or elderly adults. Attachment behaviors are accompanied by emotional experiences that motivate the behavior, as well as by cognitive and memory functions.
Tenets of attachment theory
Attachment theory uses a set of assumptions to connect observable human social behaviors. As is the case for any theory, these assumptions are in themselves difficult or impossible to test, but form a coherent whole that fits with available data. The following is a list of the assumptions that form the theory:[1]
1.Adaptiveness. Common human attachment behaviors and emotions are adaptive. Evolution of human beings has involved selection for social behaviors that make individual or group survival more likely. For example, the commonly observed attachment behavior of toddlers includes staying near familiar people; this behavior would have had safety advantages in the environment of early adaptation, and still has such advantages today.
2. Brain functions. Specific structures and functions of the central nervous system underlie at least some of human attachment behavior. For example, the preference of infants for looking at faces and eyes is based on brain and sensory functioning as it exists in the early months. Such brain characteristics are genetically controlled and therefore can be shared by all, or almost all, human beings, thus establishing basic behavioral tendencies that need not be learned.
3. Developmental changes. Specific attachment behaviors begin with predictable, apparently innate, behavior in infancy, but change with age in ways that are partly determined by experiences and by situational factors. For example, a toddler is likely to cry when separated from his mother, but an 8-year-old is more likely to call out, "When are you coming back?" or to turn away and begin the familiar school day.
4. Experience as essential factor in attachment. Infants in the first months have no preference for their biological parents over strangers and are equally friendly to anyone who treats them kindly. Preference for particular people, and behaviors which solicit their attention and care, develop over a period of time.
5. Monotropy. Early steps in attachment take place most easily if the infant has one caregiver, or the occasional care of a small number of other people.
6. Social interactions as cause of attachment. Feeding and relief of an infant's pain do not cause an infant to become attached to a caregiver. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some time.
7. Transactional processes. As attachment behaviors change with age, they do so in ways shaped by relationships, not by individual experiences. A child's behavior when reunited with a caregiver after a separation is determined not only by how the caregiver has treated the child before, but on the history of effects the child has had on the caregiver in the past.
8. Critical period. Certain changes in attachment, such as the infant's coming to prefer a familar caregiver and avoid strangers, are most likely to occur within a fairly narrow age range. the period between about 6 months of age and 2 or 3 years is the time during which attachment to specific caregivers is most likely to occur.
9.Robustness of development. Attachment to and preferences for some familiar people are easily developed by most young humans, even under far less than ideal circumstances.
10. Internal working model. Early experiences with caregivers gradually give rise to a system of thoughts, memories, beliefs, expectations, emotions, and behaviors about the self and others. This system, called the internal working model of social relationships, continues to develop with time and experience, enables the child to handle new types of social interactions. For example, a child's internal working model helps him or her to know that an infant should be treated differently from an older child, or to understand that interactions with a teacher can share some of the characteristics of an interaction with the mother. An adult's internal working model continues to develop and to help cope with friendships, marriage, and parenthood, all of which involve different behaviors and feelings. The internal working model is likely to owe much to the individual's early experiences with caregivers, but it can and does change with both real and vicarious experiences.
Attachment is an affectional tie that one person or animal forms between him/herself and another specific one (usually the parent) — a tie that binds them together in space and endures over time.[2].
Attachment theory is that states that attachment is a developmental process based on the evolved adaptive tendency for young children to maintain proximity to a familiar person, called the attachment figure. Attachment and Loss: Vol I, 2nd Ed., , John, Bowlby, Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-00543-8 Attachment Theory has become the dominant theory used today in the study of infant and toddler behavior and in the fields of infant mental health, treatment of children, and related fields. Many evidence-based treatment approaches are based on applications of attachment theory.
History
The concept of infants' emotional attachment to caregivers has been known anecdotally for hundreds of years. Most early observers focused on the anxiety displayed by infants and toddlers when threatened with separation from a familiar caregiver. Freudian theory attempted a systematic consideration of infant attachment and attributed the infant's attempts to stay near the familiar person to motivation learned through feeding experiences.
As John Bowlby began to formulate his concept of attachment, he was influenced by case studies such as one by David Levy [3] that associated an adopted child's lack of social emotion to her early emotional deprivation. Bowlby himself was interested in the role played in delinquency by poor early relationships, and explored this in a study of young thieves
Other sources that influenced Bowlby's thought included ethological studies such as those discussed by Tinbergen [4]. Tinbergen and his colleague Konrad Lorenz had examined the phenomenon of "imprinting" and felt that it might have some parallels to human attachment. Imprinting, a behavior characteristic of some birds and a very few mammals, involves rapid learning of recognition by a young bird or animal exposed to a conspecific or an object or organism that behaves suitably. The learning is possible only within a limited age period, known as a critical period. This rapid learning and development of familiarity with an animate or inanimate object is accompanied by a tendency to stay close to the object and to follow when it moves; the young creature is said to have been imprinted on the object when this occurs. As the imprinted bird or animal reaches reproductive maturity, its courtship behavior is directed toward onjects that resemble the imprinting object. Bowlby's attachment concepts later included the ideas that attachment involves learning from experience during a limited age period, and that the learning that occurs during that time influences adult behavior. However, he did not apply the imprinting concept in its entirety to human attachment, nor assume that human development was a simple as that of birds. He did, however, consider that attachment behavior was best explained as instinctive in nature.
Bowlby's view of attachment was also influenced by observations of young children separated from familiar caregivers, as provided during World War II by Anna Freud and her colleague Dorothy Burlingham [5] Observations of separated children's grief by Rene Spitz were another important factor in the development of attachment theory.[6]
The important concept of the internal working model of social relationships was adopted by Bowlby from the work of Kenneth Craik, the philosopher [7]
The theory of control systems (cybernetics), developing during the '30s and '40s, influended Bowlby's thinking about attachment [8]. The young child's need for proximity to the attachment figure was seen as balancing homeostatically with the need for exploration. The actual distance maintained would be greater or less as the balance of needs changed; for example, the approach of a stranger, or an injury, would cause the child to seek proximity when a moment before he had been exploring at a distance.
The formal origin of attachment theory can be traced to the publication of two 1958 papers, one being John Bowlby's "the Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother", in which the precursory concepts of "attachment" were introduced, and Harry Harlow's "the Nature of Love", based on the results of experiments which showed, approximately, that infant rhesus monkeys spent more time with soft mother-like dummies that offered no food than they did with dummies that provided a food source but were less pleasant to the touch.[9][10]
Mary Ainsworth conducted research based on Bowlby's theory and devised the Strange Situation protocol, still used today to assess attachment style in children, as the laboratory portion of a larger study that included extensive home visitations over the first year of the child's life. This study identified three attachment patterns that a child may have with his primary attachment figure: secure, anxious-avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent.
Further research by Dr. Mary Main and colleagues (University of California, Berkeley) identified a fourth attachment pattern, called disorganized attachment, which reflects these children's lack of a coherent coping strategy.
Other recent research has followed children into the school environment, where securely attached children generally relate well to peers, avoidantly attached children tend to victimize peers and ambivalently attached children may be victimized by peers and be coy.[11]
[12]
[13]
[14] These early studies focused on attachment between children and caregivers.
Although research on attachment behaviors continued after Bowlby's death, there was a period of time when attachment theory was considered to have run its course. Some authors argued that attachment should not be seen as a trait (lasting characteristic of the individual), but instead should be regarded as an organizing principle with varying behaviors resulting from contextual factors[15]. Related later research looked at cross-cultural differences in attachment, and concluded that there should be re-evaluation of the assumption that attachment is expressed identically in all humans [16]
Interest in attachment theory continued, and the theory was later extended to adult romantic relationships by Cindy Hazen and Phillip Shaver.[17]
[18]
[19]
Peter Fonagy and Mary Target have attempted to bring attachment theory and psychoanalysis into a closer relationship by way of such aspects of cognitive science as mentalization, the ability to estimate what the beliefs or intentions of another person may be.
A "natural experiment" has permitted extensive study of attachment issues, as researchers have followed the thousands of Romanian orphans who were adopted into Western families after the end of the Ceasescu regime. The English and Romanian Adoptees Study Team, led by Sir Michael Rutter, has followed some of the children into their teens, attemtping to unravel the effects of poor attachment, adoption and new relationships, and the physical and medical problems associated with their early lives. Studies on the Romanian adoptees, whose initial conditions were shocking, have in fact yielded reason for optimism. many of the children have developed quite well, and the researchers have noted that separation from familiar people is only one of many factors that help to determine the quality of development. [20]
Basic attachment theory
Main articles: Attachment in children
Children develop different styles of attachment based on experiences and interactions with their primary caregivers. Researchers have developed various ways of assessing attachment in children, including the Strange Situation Protocol developed by Mary Ainsworth and story-based approaches such as Attachment Story Completion Test. Four different attachment styles have been identified in children: secure, anxious-ambivalent, anxious-avoidant, and disorganized. (For research purposes, Avoidant, Secure and Resistant are called A,B and C respectively. Group D, Disorganized/dioriented insecure attachment was added later when it became apparent some infants did not fit A,B or C. Main,M and Soloman,J. (1986)'Discovery of an insecure disoriented attachment pattern: procedures,findings and implications for the classification of behavior.' Affective Development in Infancy, ed. T. Braxelton and M. Youngman, Norwood, NJ: Ablex.)
★ 'Secure Attachment' - The child protests the mother's departure and quiets promptly on the mother's return, accepting comfort from her and returning to exploration.
★ 'Avoidant Attachment' - The child shows little to no signs of distress at the mother's departure, a willingness to explore the toys, and little to no visible response to the mother's return.
★ 'Ambivalent Attachment' - The child shows sadness on the mother's departure, ability to be picked up by the stranger and even 'warm' to the stranger, and on the mother's return, some ambivalence, signs of anger, reluctance to 'warm' to her and return to play.
★ 'Disorganized Attachment' - The child presents stereotypes upon the mother's return after separation, such as freezing for several seconds or rocking. This appears to indicate the child's lack of coherent coping strategy. Children who are classified as disorganized are also given a classification as secure, ambivalent or avoidant based on their overall reunion behavior.
Additionally, the attachment patterns observed in children are correlated with certain behavior patterns and communication styles in the attachment figure:
★ 'Secure Attachment' - The attachment figure responds appropriately, promptly and consistently to the emotional as well as the physical needs of the child. She helps her child to transition and regulate stress, and as a result, the child uses her as a secure base in the home environment.
★ 'Avoidant Attachment' - The attachment figure shows little response to the child when distressed. She discourages her child from crying and encourages independence and exploration. The avoidantly attached child may have lower quality play than the securely attached child.
★ 'Ambivalent Attachment' - The attachment figure is inconsistent with her child, at times be appropriate and at other times neglectful to the child. The child raised in an ambivalent relationship becomes preoccupied with the mother's availability and cannot explore his environment freely or use his mother as a secure base. The ambivalently attached child is vulnerable to difficulty coping with life stresses and may display role reversal with the mother.
★ 'Disorganized Attachment' - This can be associated with frightened/disoriented behaviour, intrusiveness/negativity and withdrawal, role/boundary confusion, affective communication errors and child maltreatment.
Changes in attachment after the infant-toddler period
According to Bowlby's theory, the child's early experience of social interactions with familiar people leads to the development of an internal working model of social relationships, a set of ideas and feelings that establish the individual's expectations about relationships, the behavior of others toward him or her, and the behaviors appropriate for him or her to show to others. The internal working model continues to develop and become more complex with age, cognitive growth, and continued social experience. As the internal working model of relationships advances, attachment-related behaviors lose some of the characteristics so typical of the infant-toddler period, and take on a series of age-related tendencies.
Attachment in adults
Attachment in adults is commonly measured using the Adult Attachment Interview and self-report questionnaires. Self-report questionnaires have identified two dimensions of attachment, one dealing with anxiety about the relationship, and the other dealing with avoidance in the relationship. These dimensions define four styles of adult attachment: secure, preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant.
There are a wide variety of attachment measures used in adult attachment research. The most popular measure in the social psychological research is the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised scale. This scale treats attachment as two dimensions, anxiety and avoidance. The Adult Attachment interview is also commonly used to assess an individual's ability to discuss previous relationships with attachment figures. The interview consists of 36 questions, varying in detail from basic background information to instances of loss and trauma (if any). An independently trained coder determines the consistency of the individual's descriptions based on emotion regulation and content of information in the interview.
Developmental psychologists use the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George,Kaplan, & Main) or the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP; George, West, & Pettem). The AAI is an interview about attachment experiences that gets recorded and analysed for attachment status. The AAP is a guided interview which uses vague drawings about which the individual can tell a story. The story responses are recorded and decoded for attachment status.
Generally attachment style is used by social psychologists interested in romantic attachment, and attachment status by developmental psychologists interested in the individual's state of mind with respect to attachment. The latter is more stable, while the former fluctuates more.
Attachment in adult romantic relationships
Hazan and Shaver extended attachment theory to adult romantic relationships in 1987. It was originally characterized by three dimensions: secure, anxious/ambivalent and avoidant. Later research showed that attachment is best thought of as two different dimensions: anxiety and avoidance. These dimensions are often drawn as an X and Y axis. In this model secure individuals are low in both anxiety and avoidance. Thus, attachment can also be broken down into four categories: secure, anxious-ambivalent (preoccupied), avoidant (dismissive), and fearful-avoidant. However, people's attachment varies continuously so most researchers do not currently think in terms of categories.
Attachment research into romantic relationships has led to a wide variety of findings. Mario Mikulincer has shown through a wide variety of studies that attachment influences how well people are able to cope with stress in their life. Nancy Collins and colleagues have shown that attachment influences many kinds of care-giving behavior. Jeff Simpson and Steve Rholes have conducted a number of studies showing that attachment influences how people parent their newborn children and how well they are able to cope with the stress of having a newborn child.
Attachment theory in clinical practice
Attachment disorder
Attachment disorder refers to the failure to form normal attachments with caregivers during childhood. This can have adverse effects throughout the lifespan. Results of a study showed a positive and strong connection between the security of the child-mother attachment representation and the positiveness of self. It also showed significant and positive relations of the positiveness of self with competence and social acceptance, with behavioral adjustment to school, and with behavioral manifestations of self-esteem.[21]
Reactive attachment disorder
Reactive Attachment Disorder, sometimes called "RAD", is a psychiatric diagnosis (DSM-IV-TR 313.89, ICD-10 F94.1/2). The essential feature of Reactive Attachment Disorder is markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts that begins before age 5 years and is associated with gross pathological care. There are two subtypes, one reflecting the disinhibited attachment pattern and the other reflecting the inhibited pattern.
See also
References
1. Mercer, J. 2006 Understanding attachment. Westport, CT: Praeger
2. Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton (1974) "Infant-mother attachment". In M.P.M. Richards (Ed.) ''Integratin of a child into a social world.''. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
3. Levy, D. (1935). American Journal of Psychiatry, 94:643-x
4. Tinbergen, N., & Tinbergen, E. (1983) CITATION NEEDED]
5. War and children, Freud,A., & Burlingham, D.T., , , Medical War Books, 1943,
6. Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood, Spitz, Rene, , , , 1945,
7. Craik, K. (1943) The Nature of Explanation.
Cambridge: Cambridge university Press.
8. Robbins, P., & Zacks, J.M. (2007)"Attachment theory and cognitive science: Commentary on Fonagy and Target", Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 55(2):909-920.
9. The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds, Bowlby, J., , , Routledge Classics, 2005, ISBN 0-415-35481-1
10. The Nature of Love (1958) - Harry Harlow, ''American Psychologist, 13, 573-685''
11. Bowlby, J. (1969) Attachment , Vol. 1 of Attachment and loss. London: Hogarth Press. New York: Basic Books; Harmondsworth: Penguin (1971).
12. Bowlby, J. (1973) , Separation: Anxiety & Anger. Vol. 2 of Attachment and loss London: Hogarth Press; New York: Basic Books; Harmondsworth: Penguin (1975).
13. Bowlby, J. (1980) Loss: Sadness & Depression, in Vol. 3 of Attachment and loss, London: Hogarth Press. New York: Basic Books; Harmondsworth: Penguin (1981).
14. Bretherton, I. (1992). The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology, 28, 759-775.
15. Sroufe, L.A., & Waters, E. (1977). Attachment as an organizational construct. Child Development, 48:1184-1199
16. Tronick, E.Z., Morelli, G.A., & Ivey, P.K. (1992). "The Efe forager infant and toddler's pattern of social relationships: Multiple and simultaneous." Developmental Psychology, 28:568-577
17. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511-524.
18. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1990). Love and work: An attachment theoretical perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 270-280.
19. Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. R. (1994). Attachment as an organizational framework for research on close relationships. Psychological Inquiry, 5, 1-22.
20. Rutter, M. (2002). Nature, nurture, and development: From evangelism through science toward policy and practice. Child Development, 73, 1-21.
21. Verschueren, K, Marcoen A, Schoefs V (1996) "The internal working model of the self, attachment, and competence in five-year-olds", ''Child Development, vol 67'', No. 5, pp.2493-2511.
Further reading
★ Cassidy, J., & Shaver, P., (Eds). (1999) ''Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications''. Guilford Press, NY.
★ Greenberg, MT, Cicchetti, D., & Cummings, EM., (Eds) (1990) ''Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research and Intervention'' University of Chicago, Chicago.
★ Greenspan, S. (1993) ''Infancy and Early Childhood''. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. ISBN 0-8236-2633-4.
★ Holmes, J. (1993) ''John Bowlby and Attachment Theory''. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07730-3.
★ Holmes, J. (2001) ''The Search for the Secure Base: Attachment Theory and Psychotherapy''. London: Brunner-Routledge. ISBN 1-58391-152-9.
★ Karen R (1998) ''Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511501-5.
★ Parkes, CM, Stevenson-Hinde, J., Marris, P., (Eds.) (1991) ''Attachment Across The Life Cycle'' Routledge. NY. ISBN 0-415-05651-9
★ Siegler R., DeLoache, J. & Eisenberg, N. (2003) ''How Children develop''. New York: Worth. ISBN 1-57259-249-4.
★ Attachment & Human Development. This is a professional peer-reviewed journal.
★ Infant Mental Health Journal. This is a professional peer-reviewed journal.
External links
★ International Attachment Conference 2007
★ Relationship Advice: How Understanding Adult Attachment Can Help
★ Attachment theory in the classroom
★ Attachment Questionnaire
★ Attachment Diagnostics (German)
★ Details of authors, publications, measures and books on attachment psychology
★ A support forum for adults with attachment disorder or attachment related issues.. welcome!
★ Rene Spitz's movie "Psychogenic Disease in Infancy" (1957) showing examples of children with insecure attachments
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