Psychology Blog » Attachment

Working mothers – does the separation have ill effects?

Cara Flanagan — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:40:08 +0000

A recent study by Brooks-Gunn et al. (2010) has concluded that the benefits related to going out to work may balance out any harm to children in such situations. The study analysed data from the American NICHD study, calculating the total effect of maternal employment – taking into account all factors related to being a working mother like income, qualities as a parent, and high quality child care. Taking the advantages and disadvantages into account, they found that the net effect is neutral. They looked specifically at maternal employment during a child’s first year and found that the more important factors are those related to the quality of parenting and children’s experiences of child care, rather than the absence or presence of a mother.

Early Relationships

Evie Bentley — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 07:11:04 +0000

Is it good for a baby to have a very young mother? And what about having a much older mother? We hear quite a lot about young girls getting pregnant, but there is also a small but increasing number of women giving birth aged 60+. For example, Rajo Devi had a baby at the age of 70. What are the psychological implications for attachment between a baby and much older parents, would the age difference matter? Might there be benefits to the attachment? And what are the psychological implications as the child grows up?

Rajo Devi and her baby

Happy Father’s Day

Adrian Frost — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:16:24 +0000

“given our rapidly evolving conceptions of “father” and “family,” fatherhood in the 1990s is probably tougher, psychologically, than at any other time in recent history”.

Hah…. I knew I needed some kip…

ah….cute….

Adrian Frost — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:05:09 +0000

“We are inherently attracted to a specific set of characteristics, including large, symmetrical heads, large eyes, small mouths and small noses,” according to Jeffrey Kurland, associate professor of biological anthropology and human development. But why do almost all humans find this particular set of features so appealing?”

Attachment types

Cara Flanagan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:13:51 +0000

Just a quick evaluation nugget for you. Fraley and Spieker (2003) have found that classifying infants by type may not be accurate. The researchers looked at data recorded for over 1000 children involved in the NICHD study. The data had been collected from observations made in the strange situation. The re-analysis showed that variations in patterns was largely continuous i.e. children didn’t possess a cluster of characteristics typical of one particular category. Instead they differed along various dimensions such as response to mother’s return.This challenges any research which has categorised children as secure, insecure-resistant or insecure-avoidant because such exclusive categories don’t represent reality, according to this research. Fraley, R. C., & Spieker, S. J. (2003). Are infant attachment patterns continuously or categorically distributed? A taxometric analysis of strange situation behavior. Developmental Psychology, 39, 387-404.

A small correction

Cara Flanagan — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:53:48 +0000

In the AS Complete Companion, the summaries at the end of chapter 2 (page 58), the text regarding the weaknesses of learning theory says that ‘Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found infants were most attached to the adult who fed them’. This is wrong, as the text earlier in the chapter states that they found that infants were not necessarily most attached to the person that fed them – a more important factor in the development of attachment was the responsiveness of the adult (see page 35).

As if you were interested …

Cara Flanagan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:56:12 +0000

We are now on our 3^rd reprint!! Which has given us the opportunity to correct a few more silly mistakes (some readers kindly write in and draw our attention to these – please feel free!)

Perhaps the most important error is on Page 45 , the bars on the graph have been mislabelled – the purple is resistant attachment and light blue/turquoise is secure attachment.

A few small typos:

Page 13 Can you 1.5 There is an error in question 1 – should say working memory model and not have a question mark.

Page 45 Research methods 2.2 should be 2.1

Page 60, activity 2, task 2, add another line to the box which says ‘Parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comfort if needed’

Page 76. The title on the left handside should read – Baddeley’s study of STM Encoding, not capacity.

And finally, the following note will now appear by the multistore model on page 8:

The original multi-store model, which was proposed in the 1960s, only identified ‘rehearsal’ as the means of retaining information in STM and transferring information to LTM. However, the diagram above shows a revised version which was changed in response to Craik and Lockhart’s criticisms (see page 10). The model can be revised to distinguish between maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal (Raaijmakers and Shiffrin, 2003).

Maternal love on the brain

Cara Flanagan — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:56:18 +0000

John Bowlby proposed, in his theory of attachment, that humans are ‘hardwired’ to respond to social releasers from infants – they can’t help but respond to an infant’s smiles or cries of distress and this responsiveness is in our genes. New research has provided evidence of the brain circuitry involved in this response. Dr. Madoka Noriuchi and his colleagues in Tokyo (2008, abstract) used a brain scanning technique (fMRI) to look at how mothers’ brains respond to infants who are happy or upset/crying. Certain areas were active when the mothers observed their own infant’s smiles and cries as opposed to other infants (in particular it was areas in the cerebral cortex and limbic system). Smiling and crying are attachment behaviours – they elicit caregiving from the infant’s mother figure and ensure safety for the infant. This research shows us the neurophysiological basis for the attachment response (maternal love) and supports the view that such a response is innate – because there is a specialised area in the brain that responds.