Lecture 2: Temperament and Attachment Style

Question 1

What is emotional attachment, as defined by Bowlby? [5]

Answer 1

• The strong affectional ties we feel for key people in our lives.
  
  • Defined by mutual affection and desire for physical proximity.
  • Reciprocal relationships lead to synchrony: ability for the mother to be able to meet the infant’s actions or emotions, and sometimes mirror them.
• Sensitive period for emotional attachment: first 3 years of life.
  
  • Recent literature shows that it’s not just the first 3 years that defines attachment; experiences later on can influence this too.

Question 2

classical theories of emotional attachment [4]

Answer 2

• Classical theories: “I love you because you feed me.”
• Freud: oral stimulation through breastfeeding; infers biologically mother cares;
• Erikson: trust vs. mistrust forms through feeding when the infant is hungry;
• Sears: mother is a secondary reinforcer, reducing the drive for hunger every time she feeds him.

Question 3

Harlow & Zimmerman (1959) [4]

(hint: attachment, monkeys)

Answer 3

• Baby monkeys given an option of a wire mother that fed them vs. cloth mother that didn’t.
• How long would they spend on each mother?
• Babies spent 17-18 hours a day on the cloth mother, even though it didn’t give them food.
• Comfort is more important than feeding as an inducer of attachment.

Question 4

alternative theory of emotional attachment [6]

Answer 4

• Alternative theory: “I was born to love you, you were made to love me.”
• Attachment’s purpose is to promote survival; mother provides care to infant so that it survives.
  
  • e.g. Babies have a genetic profile that make them look and act adorable so that we’ll want to take care of them.
  • e.g. Imprinting in geese.
• Bowlby: attachment behaviour system; human beings are biologically prepared to form close attachments.
  
  • However, unless there’s learning of how to respond appropriately to one another (baby and mother), secure emotional bonds won’t develop.

Question 5

Robertson & Bowlby (1952) [8]

(hint: phases of separation)

Answer 5

• Observed 3-year-olds who were kept in the hospital for various time frames.
• Noted that there are different phases depending on how long they’ve been away from their mother.

1. Protest phase: happens within the first few hours; distressed, crying.
   
   • Reunited: punishes through silence or slight pushing, then settles shortly.
2. Phase of despair: a day to three days; longer separation, apathetic, withdrawn.
   
   • Reunited: clingy behaviour.
3. Detachment phase: after three days; independent behaviour, more curious, willing to explore (only demonstrated by some children).
   
   • Reunited: distanced from mother and didn’t go back to mother, perhaps untrusting—the point of no return, difficult to undo.

Question 6

Schaffer & Emerson (1964) [4]

(hint: 4-stage model of attachment)

Answer 6

• Proposed a four-stage model of attachment to immediate family members.

Question 7

the strange situation experiment [13]

Answer 7

• Created by Mary Ainsworth.
• Experiment which tests whether the mother serves as a secure base for the infant or a safe haven for the infant.
  
  • Secure base: infants need to rely on mother to feel comfortable about exploring the world.
  • Safe haven: infants need to know that they can return to the mother for comfort when afraid.
• Eight stages, each measuring different behaviours:

1. Experiment takes mother and baby to playroom, then leaves.
2. Mother allows baby to explore and play; mother as secure base.
3. Stranger enters room and is silent, then talks to mother; stranger anxiety.
4. Mother leaves and stranger interacts with baby; stranger anxiety, separation anxiety, soothed by stranger.
5. Mother returns and freets baby, stranger leaves, mother leaves again; reuinion behaviours.
6. Baby is alone; separation anxiety.
7. Stranger enters and interacts with baby; separation anxiety, soothed by stranger.
8. Mother enters and greets baby; reunion behaviours.

Question 8

Ainsworth’s attachment styles [5]

Answer 8

• Produced from the results of the strange situation experiment.
• Intrestingly, 5-10% of children weren’t able to be categorized.

Question 9

Main & Solomon (1990) [7]

(hint: insecure-disorganized attachment)

Answer 9

• Tried to account for the 5-10% of children uncategorized by strange situation experiment.
• insecure-disorganized attachment: A combination of insecure-resistant and insecure-avoidant characteristics.
  
  • When reunited: contradictory behaviours, rapid shifts between resistance and avoidance, fearful of mother.
• Suggested this was because the kids were afraid of the mom and didn’t know whether or not they could trust the mom.
• Applies to 80% of maltreated infants; parents may be abusive, neglectful, frightening.
  
  • Since parents can’t be frightening the whole time, they’re caring sometimes, which leads to inconsistent parenting and thus a lack of knowing whether to trust or distrust.
  • Often have trauma of their own or attachment problems.

Question 10

What kind of parenting influences attachment? [6]

Answer 10

• Sensitive, responsive, insightful parenting → secure attachment.
  
  • Sensitive parents influence children to become more empathetic and have higher EQ.
  • Parents who can perspective-take and read into a child’s thoughts even though they can’t vocalize them.
• Impatient and rejecting parenting → avoidant attachment.
• Intrusive and overstimulating parenting → avoidant attachment.
• Inconsistent parenting → resistant attachment.

Question 11

What kind of temperament influences attachment? [2]

Answer 11

• Jerome Kagan: Proposed that the strange situation procedure measures difference in temperament, not attachment style.

Question 12

Kochanska (1998): integrative theory [7]

Answer 12

• Suggests that there’s a temperament-parenting interaction that determines how the infant will form an attachment.
• sensitivity: How parents are able to tailor their caregiving to an infant’s temperament.
• Amount of maternal sensitivity → level of secure attachment.
  
  • secure attachment: When there’s a good fit between the mother’s sensitivity and an infant’s temperament.
• But sensitivity didn’t determine the specific type of insecurity. If maternal sensitivity was low:
  
  • Fearful children → resistant attachment.
  • Fearless children → avoidant attachment.

Question 13

long term effects of secure attachment [6]

Answer 13

• Securely attached kids have:
  
  • Better developmental outcomes,
  • Better problem solving abilities,
  • More symbolic play,
  • More positive and fewer negative emotions,
  • Better social skills and perhaps are more popular.

Question 14

long term effects of insecure attachment [5]

Answer 14

• Insecurely attached kids generally:
  
  • Have worse developmental outcomes,
  • Are more socially withdrawn which can lead to peer rejection,
  • Are less interested in learning,
  • Show more socially deviant behaviours.

Question 15

internal working models [7]

Answer 15

• Cognitive representation of you and others, used to interpret events and form expectations about relationships.
• Your attachment style can inform your internal working models and schemas of self and relationships, whether they’re positive or negative.
• People with positive internal working models of self and others:
  
  • Have secure primary attachments;
  • Have the self-confidence to approach and master new challenges;
  • Are able to establish secure, mutual-trust relationships.

Question 16

What else impacts infants’ attachment? [4]

Answer 16

• Attachment in family and community contexts at large;
• Relationship between mother and father (discord);
• Lower socioeconomic status;
• Social support in the community.

Question 17

attachment across time [7]

Answer 17

• The attachment style you develop tends to be stable.
  
  • Mediating influence of environment (Waters, 2000); if your environment stays the same, then your attachment style will stay the same.
  • Dynamic interaction effect: attachment x perception of/reaction to your attachment → changes in your long-term attachment security.
• However, you can go from insecure attachment to secure attachment; earned secure.
  
  • Influenced by someone close to them like a teacher, or a therapist.
  • Or by changes in parenting behaviours or family situation.
• Adversity can also cause people to move from secure to insecure; sometimes may also cause people to go from insecure to secure.

Question 18

Adult Attachment Interview [6]

Answer 18

• Scoring based on qualitative responses to questions about early family life, parents, childhood, support systems, etc.
• Results in four different classifications:

1. Secure–Autonomous; Importance of attachment, coherent history, no idealization.
2. Insecure–Dismissing; Deny attachment importance, difficulty in recall, idealize parents/experiences, rejection.
3. Insecure–Preoccupied; Incoherent, anger or passivity, preoccupied with past.
4. Unresolved; Trauma of loss or abuse, not reconciled, difficult to code because interviewees haven’t fully internalized what happened.

Question 19

attachment across generations [3]

Answer 19

• Parents tend to recreate relationships with children based on their internal working models of their own relationships with own parents.
• Maternal attachment (prenatal) predicts attachment with infant after birth.
• Suboptimal maternal-fetal attachment predicts poor developmental outcomes.

Question 20

Benoit & Parker (1994) [11]

(hint: intergenerational attachment)

Answer 20

• Tested intergenerational attachment transmission with mothers and grandmothers.
• Mother given adult attachment interview (AAI) during pregnancy (T1) and when the child was 11 months old (T2).
• Child given strange situation test at 12 months old.
• Grandmother also given AAI.
• Overlap with attachment styles between all 3 generations.
  
  • Grandmother + Mother T1 = overlap in 75% of cases.
  • Mother T1 + Child = 81%
  • Mother T2 + Child = 82%
  • Across all 3 generations= 80%
• Mothers’ attachment styles didn’t change between the two time points.
• Tells us that attachment styles are stable throughout time, and there’s some continuity between generations/across time.

Question 21

effects of social deprivation [5]

Answer 21

• Social deprivation can have irreversible impact.
• Studies on Romanian children who were institutionalized had considerably lower IQs and cognitive functioning, as well as deficiencies in a number of other areas.
• Recall Robertson & Bowlby’s (1952) study on separation phases.
• Research suggests, if children are adopted after 3 (vs. before age 1), children see a lot of cognitive and social challenges (e.g. IQ, social skills, performance in school, aggression, etc.).
• Additionally, emotional deprivation can create an over-dependency on adults because they never figured out how to react to the world in an appropriate way.

Question 22

temperament [4]

Answer 22

• Individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation.
• Subset of personality; present early in life, earliest individual difference in personality.
• Not the same thing as personality.
• Because it’s present so early in life and can even be present in non-human animals, it can be said to be biological.

Question 23

New York Longitudinal Study [8]

Answer 23

• Interviewed parents about 3 to 6 month old infants’ reactions in everyday situations.
• Researchers rated 9 qualities of temperament, categorized infants and then followed them throughout life.
  
  • Activity level, rythmicity, intial reactions, adaptability, sensory sensitivity, intensity of emotion, mood, distractibility, persistence.
• Based on these qualities, participants were placed into 3 categories:

1. Easy (40%): friendly, happy, adaptable.
2. Slow-to-warm-up (15%): withdraw first, approach with repeated contact.
3. Difficult (10%): upset by new situations, withdraw, slow to adapt to changes, negative mood.

• The rest was mixed and uncategorizable! You can’t really fit people so neatly into these temperament styles—there are going to be a lot of factors and nuances.

Question 24

Bates (1980; 1983): criticisms of the New York Longitudinal Study [8]

Answer 24

• Are difficult kids bad? Who are they difficult for?
• Age effects? Children may grow up to be less difficult.
• But perhaps as moms get better at dealing with their kids, they’ll perceive their kids as less difficult.
• The difficult label is negative, which means that people might treat them as such.
• Inconsistent measurement of what is “difficult”; lots of external validity.
  
  • Cultural differences?
• Difficulty can even sometimes lead to positive outcomes; kids who withdraw from novel situations tend to be more conscientious.
• Different aspects of temperament; you can be different people in different situations, and being difficult in some situations doesn’t make you a difficult person.

Question 25

Rothbart (1981): criticisms of the New York Longitudinal Study’s categories [2]

Answer 25

• Questioned basis of the 9 categories; lack of consistency in contexts/responses in categories.
• Suggested temperament dimensions, rather than categories: 1) negative affectivity, 2) surgency, and 3) effortful control.

Question 26

negative affectivity [9]

Answer 26

• Extent of child’s shyness and emotional excitability.
  
  • Develops around 2 months of age.
  • Marked by fear, anger, and frustration on a consistent basis.
• Kids high in negative affectivity:
  
  • Are slower to approach;
  • Show distress in response to expectations being blocked;
  • Withdraw from new, intense stimuli (shyness);
  • Anger—cope by externalizing, blaming outside factors;
  • Fear—cope by internalizing, blaming self.

Question 27

surgency [5]

Answer 27

• Tendency for positivity, impulsiveness, sensation-seeking.
  
  • Similar to extraversion.
  • Develops around 2-3 months
• Babies: smiling, laughter.
• Older children: externalizing issues (but not internalizing); e.g. dealing with peer pressure and getting into delinquency.

Question 28

effortful control [3]

Answer 28

• Involves inhibiting a dominant response to perform a subdominant response, which builds inhibitory control.
• Concentrated development around 2-7 years old.
• Those high in effortful control have higher focus, controlled attention, suppression of response, planning, and self-control.

Question 29

Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss (1972) [9]

(hint: marshmallow study)

Answer 29

• Study 1: Kids were either given a toy, told to think about something fun (e.g. singing, playing, fun thoughts), or no distraction.
  
  • Told to ring a bell once they felt like they couldn’t wait anymore.
  • Mean waiting time for no distraction was less than 1 min, toy distraction was 9 mins, and 12 mins for thinking fun thoughts.
  • Shows that the cognitive tool of thinking fun thoughts is able to aid them in suppressing their thoughts about the marshmallow.
• Study 2: Same as Study 1 but told to think about something fun, about the rewards they would get if they waited, or nothing. Were able to look at the marshmallow while waiting.
  
  • Thinking fun still produced the longest waiting times, but thinking rewards had slightly longer waiting times.
• Study 3: Same as Study 2 but the marshmallow wasn’t present.
  
  • No ideation and thinking fun produced almost the same amount of waiting time.
• Demonstrates that something about effortful control is related to having a cognitive capacity to inhibit undesirable behaviour.

Question 30

Moffitt et al. (2011) [9]

(hint: longitudinal, self-control)

Answer 30

• Measured self-control in the first 10 years of life and found that there’s a correlation between behavioural control and longitudinal outcomes.
• Followed 1000 people from birth onwards.
• Found a gradient effect of childhood self-control for health (mental & physical), single parenting vs. married parenting, externalizing vs. internalizing problems, and criminality.
  
  • Negatively related to physical health, substance dependance, and financial struggles in adulthood.
  • Positively related to SES, financial planfulness, and income.
• Adolescent (12-16) mistakes are important; smoking, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and leaving school were correlated with lower rates of self-control.
• What’s the impact of intelligence or SES on self-control?
  
  • The researchers only controlled for these two independent predictors, but there are probably many influencing factors.
• Also measured siblings’ self-control of same families; less self-control siblings had poorer outcomes, despite being from the same family.

Question 31

difficult temperaments [4]

Answer 31

• Generally, individuals with difficult temperaments will have difficulty adapting to environmental demands.
  
  • Perhaps influenced by adverse reactions from other people?
• Temperament interacts with environment.
  
  • vulnerability hypothesis (based on the stress-diathesis model): Some individuals, due to some innate characteristics, are more vulnerable to negative experiences and their adverse effects; others are more resilient.

Question 32

differential susceptibility: dandelion vs. orchid kids [4]

Answer 32

• Two different types of kids: dandelions vs. orchids, i.e. resilient vs. susceptible to stresses in environments.
• Dandelion children were more resilient in times of adversity because they would maintain stability, making them evolutionarily adaptive.
• Orchid children are adaptive because during times of flourishing they would be more likely to be adventurous.

Question 33

Does temperament remain stable through time? [6]

Answer 33

• Temperament may translate into characteristics later in life, but the results aren’t as consistent.
  
  • Perhaps negative affect → neuroticism and effortful control → conscientiousness.
• But change possible; literally just growing up (20-40 y.o.) → increases in agreeableness, consciousness, and openness, and decreases in neuroticism.
• Effortful control has major shifts from 2.5-4 yo and adolescence.
  
  • Neural pruning of underused synaptic links, myelination.
  • Maturation of PFC (higher order processing, etc.).