How the Quality of Attachment Affecting Infants Development - Essay Example

TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE QUALITY OF ATTACHMENT AFFECTING INFANTS’ DEVELOPMENT? By Presented to The past decade has seen a rapid rise of attachment in childhood and how its quality can influence their adulthood. Attachment is defined as a child’s development of basic trust usually created by the primary caregivers who can in turn influence the child’s behaviour and knowledge about the world because knowledge plays an important role in children’s lives. This is because such knowledge may influence how they respond to other people and also if they are able to develop and maintain trusting relationships (Fraley, 2002). This essay is aimed at discussing how the quality of attachment affects infant development. It will introduce the concept of attachment according to different scholars, look at how cultural differences affect the quality of infant attachment and also how the strange situation experiment helps understand individual differences and the quality of attachment infants have under strange situations. The aim of this essay is to give a summary of the main topics and the thesis statement. Over the years, different theories of attachment have been suggested by scholars. One of them is the revisionist perspective which suggested that an infant’ early experiences of attachment could be seen through continued experience in that attachment could or could not influence infants in their later life (Fraley, 2002). According to attachment theorists, infant- care giver attachment is essentially learnt and the experiences provided by the care giver are the primary determinant of infant attachment patterns. Nevertheless, Bowlby’s work can be seen as the origin of attachment theory in modern psychology (Fraley, 2002). In his theory, Bowlby defined attachment as a deep and enduring emotional bond that connects one person to another and suggested that it is the primary drive in human being’ life span. For instance, attachment behaviour in adults towards children includes responding sensitively and appropriately to a child’s needs (Holmes, 1993). Bolby observed that children expressed intense distress when separated from their mothers and even if they were fed by caregivers in the absence of the mother, this did not diminish their anxiety levels. According to the attachment theory, the most important factor in the development of attachment patterns is an infant’s response in times of distress. Another important aspect of Bowlby’s work was the development of attachment through Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective about relationships and development. Freud’s theory was about the complexity of social, cognitive and emotional stages during childhood, analysing the differences and similarities between infancy and adulthood emphasized the importance of environmental influence on psychological development (Watters et al, 2000). Mary Ainsworth designed the Strange Situation Procedure which was a way of assessing individual differences in attachment behaviour when they were under stressing situations (Gossmann et al, 2013). Her research in Uganda revealed that maternal care could be a significant factor in an infant’s development of attachment. Consequently, the theory was a supportive feature in classifying the four basic dimensions of maternal care which are; sensitivity-insensitivity, cooperation- interference, acceptance-rejection and accessibility-ignoring or neglecting. These dimensions predicted the infants’ and maternal attachment through strange situations. The procedure involved observing a child playing for twenty minutes while care givers and strangers enter and leave the room. The aforementioned experiment indicated the monotropy assumption, which suggested that infants could be anxious when they interact with strangers whereas they turned to be calm in the presence of their primary caregivers, specifically their maternal caregivers. According to (Grossmann et al, 2013) parental attachment has a great influence in children development in that sensitive parents show affection and fulfil their children’s needs. Ainsworth came up with four types of attachment in children which are; avoidant- avoidant insecure attachment, secure attachment, anxious- resistant insecure attachment and disorganised/ disoriented attachment. Children who were securely attached to the mother would explore freely while the caregiver is present and fail to engage with the stranger when the caregiver leaves the room. Those with anxious- resistant attachment were anxious of exploration and of strangers even in the presence of the caregiver. They were extremely distressed when the caregiver departed the room. Children with avoidant- avoidant insecure attachment tended to ignore the caregiver and the strangers and did not explore very much while those with disorganised- disoriented attachment possessed no symptom of coping mechanism and appeared dazed and disoriented upon reunion with their caregivers. There is an increasing interest in the area of the quality of attachment and cultural differences. The cultural origin for attachment theory based on Mary Ainsworth’s, 1967 Uganda study, demonstrated that there were culture differences in the quality of attachment the infants’ have on the caregiver’s (Keller, 2013). It is clear that Ainsworth’s experiences from Uganda could be a guide to the behaviour and emotions of Euro-American middle class families’ in Baltimore as a result of exposing infants to strangers in a laboratory setting. This could lead to development of high stress levels and activate their attachment systems, but this majorly depends on the quality of attachment. Nevertheless, the strange situation experiment which had been used in a different cultural setting by the Gusii people in Kenya and the Hausa in Nigeria was also used in Western and Non-Western middle class families. Consequently, they found out that there were no cultural adjustments in the quality of infants’ attachment to caregivers (Keller, 2013). However, the culture differences could be efficient to explain infant attachment systems though the dimensions which were used in Baltimore experiment (Keller, 2013). These dimensions were sensitivity-insensitivity, cooperation- interference, acceptance - rejection and accessibility- ignoring or neglecting (Grossmann et al, 2013). One instance which explained how culture differences affect attachment systems is in the experiment conducted in Northern Germany (Keller, 2013). The research was conducted using Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure. The findings of this experiment suggested that there were three different dimensions to infant attachment. The dimensions were; avoidant attached infants, resistant attached infants and secure attached infants. During the experiment, 52% the participants were found to be in the avoidant attached category, 32% were securely attached while 13% were in the resistant attached category. Compared to a study conducted in Japan, (Keller, 2013) this study did not find any significant differences between the results found in Japan and those found in Germany. The findings in Japan demonstrated that there were no major differences between the securely attached infants’ which were 68% while the insecurely attached were 32%. It is clear that enough research has not been done across Non- Western middle- class and Western middle class cultures. Such research would be used for attachment and its perspective in the development of psychological autonomy (Keller, 2013). However, autonomy, relatedness, social goals and care giving could have widespread differences (Keller, 2013). For instance, according to (Keller, 2013), in Japan the feature for attachment showed that infants could have closer relationships with the caregiver because people generally depend on each other. As a result caregivers in Japan do not promote psychological autonomy as is the case in western middle-class countries. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the sensitivity of caregivers and how this affects how children explore the environment and how they complete tasks. For example (Bernier et al, 2014) analysed the idea of responding to infant’s needs and how caregivers establish trust with their infants. As a consequence, infants could trust their parents and they were also able to explore their environment. The aspect of exploring leads to the assumption that autonomy helps infants to explore their environment. In Self- determination (Bernier et al, 2014) suggested that to understand parental behaviours we need to watch whether infants are autonomous or if they were able to explore their environment. Therefore autonomy could be efficient for the task because it involves parents in order to help their infants complete the tasks which could not be enjoyable (Bernier et al, 2014). If caregivers are supportive to their infants by involving their feedback, infants will be motivated in problem-solving tasks which distress them (Bernier et al, 2014). During the experiment, majority of the mothers with secure attachment were found to have a higher rate of instilling security in their infants because they tended to respond to the infant’s emotional safety needs (Bernier et al, 2014). There are various consequences of the quality of attachment by a caregiver to an infant. One is that there is a relationship between attachment and cognition. Previous research has pointed out that secure children are more capable and skilled to learn a new language. Therefore, the secure quality of attachment could make parents be more efficient in teaching their children a particular language and children on the other hand could have an increasing motivation to learn the language (Conor and Mc Cartney, 2007). Moreover, (Krochanska, 2001) conducted an experiment to investigate the relationship between attachment and emotion on infants aged nine, fourteen, twenty two and thirty three months by taking their doll away or leaving them distressed in a car seat. Kochanska’s findings in (2002) revealed that secure attached infants could be less distressed as compared to avoidant attached infants who were more fearful while resistant attached children were less joyful. Minneapolis research demonstrated that peer review was negative on infants who had low quality of attachment in play groups (Suess, Grossman and Sroufe, 1992). The findings of this study showed that infants with distressed attachment could have an interpretation that the social world is completely different and threatening and the result is that they are not able to respond to their social environment such as in school or in other life events. A considerable amount of research has been published on classification of attachment quality and infant’s behaviour to their maternal care based on Ainsworth’s strange situation procedure. In one experiment which was conducted using group A, B, C, D and F infants, group B infants were found to have secure attachment behaviours where they expressed themselves positively towards their mothers as compared to group A and C infants. They expressed warm behaviours because their mother’s were around and so they felt secure able to explore the environment. Those who showed distress when their mother’s left the room were capable of being calmed and continue playing. In addition they had the ability to moderate to high levels of proximity seeking. Infants in Group A had insecure and avoidant behaviours which resulted from high levels of exploration which remained the same after separation from their mothers’. However, they demonstrated minor anxious levels and insecurity when they were separated from their mother’s. When the mother’s came back, the infants showed reunion but were less positive to their mother’s as compared to secure infants. They also had low contact maintenance and proximity seeking during reunion. Infants in group C who had insecure and resistant behaviours were less positive to the interactions with their mother’s, but they were distressed when they were separated from the mother. They would seek the mother when she came back and also showed high contact maintenance and proximity seeking in both reunions. However, they would not easily calm down and return to the level of playing. In group F, infants had a disorganised and disoriented insecure attachment and as a consequence they did not demonstrate any form of behaviour. They were distressed when separated from their maternal care (Grossmann et al, 2013) and (Prior and Glaser, 2006). According to (Prior and Glasser, 2006), these infants had disorganized behaviour patterns. For example, they could show high attachment levels and at the same time avoid the caregiver. They could also show escapism behaviour from the caregivers who were looking after them. Therefore it is clear that the secure children have a completely different attachment quality and also different response to the presence of their maternal care or to a stranger as compared to the other groups where infants demonstrated anxious attachment levels and also showed disorganized behaviour patterns. To conclude with, the main points will be summarized and the thesis explained and stated. It is clear that Bowlby’s attachment theory can be a baseline for the modern research of the attachment perspective. Furthermore, Bowlby’s theory suggested that the attachment quality of a caregiver (either being affective or dismissive) could directly influence the child’s behaviour and well- being, and also their perspective to the social world. In addition, when infants’ portray dismissive attachment, they are less likely to have positive social interactions. The “Strange Situation Experiment” method was a significant method which led to the discovery of how the quality of an infants’ attachment to the caregiver led to a comfortable social interaction with the social world in case of potential absence of the care giver. Grossman looked at the role of parental care giving as crucial enough when it comes to emotional attachment. In other words, the emotional stability of an infant is influenced by both parents. Furthermore, strange situation procedure was an efficient method to measure the attachment quality of an infants’ development. As a result, previous research has indicated that there are infant attachment differences across cultures. For example, Japan being a country with collectivist culture, people have closer relationships. As a result they do not develop autonomy and psychological independence. However, western cultures such us Euro- American middle classes are dominated by individualistic cultures which promote self – autonomy and individuality. For majority of the mothers who demonstrated security and sensitivity to their infants, they developed secure attachments. It is clear that the quality of attachment of an infant to a primary caregiver has a crucial role in the infants’ development during their life span. This is due to the fact that attachment may have either positive o negative consequences in their life. For instance, secure infants have more ability to explore their environment and the social world around them than those who are unsecure. As a result, it is clear that secure children will have more abilities to respond to the social world, acquire a new language and be outspoken in all spheres of life. References Bernie, A., Mathe-Gagne, C., Belanger, M.E. and Whipple. 2014. Taking stock of two decades of attachment transmission gap: Broading the assessment of maternal behaviour. Child development. 85: 1852-1862. Conor, O. E. and McCartney, K. 2007. Exampling teacher- child relationships achievement as part of an ecological model of development. American education research journal. 44: 340-369. Fraley, C. R. 2002. Attachment stability from infancy to childhood: Meta analysis and dynamic modelling of developmental mechanisms. Personality and social psychology review. 6: 123-148. Grossmann, K. E., Bretherton, I., Waters, E. and Grossmann, K. 2013. Maternal sensitivity: Observational studies honouring Mary Ainsworth’s 100th year. Attachment and human development. 15: 443-447. Keller, H. 2013. Attachment and culture. 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