Download - Influences on Infant Attachment Security
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Influences on Infant Attachment Security
• According to attachment theory, the major influence is parental behavior (especially sensitivity)
– Sensitivity: Consistent, prompt, and appropriate responses to infant signals
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• Infants develop expectations about how caregivers are likely to respond to their signals
• Expectations form the basis of an internal working model
– IWM: Expectations about the nature of relationships and beliefs about the self
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• Expectations result from the quality of mother-infant interaction:
– Sensitive Care: Infants expect caregiver to be available and responsive
– Insensitive Care: Infants expect caregiver to be unresponsive/inconsistent or rejecting
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• Infants’ behavior in the Strange Situation reflects their expectations (early IWM)
– Secure infants expect caregiver to be responsive
– Insecure infants expect caregiver to be unresponsive/inconsistent or rejecting
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• Evidence for Parental Behavior as the Major Influence on Infant Attachment Security:
– Parental sensitivity is correlated with infant attachment security, but the correlation is not strong
• Disagreement about the importance of parental sensitivity in influencing attachment security
– Other factors also affect attachment security
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• Temperament and Attachment Security
– Some studies find that insecure infants are higher in distress during the first year of life
• Difficult to know if this reflects temperament or parental behavior
– In general, temperament is not strongly related to attachment security
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• Goodness-of-fit may be a better predictor of attachment security than either parental behavior or infant temperament alone
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• Study: Mangelsdorf et al., 1990
– 9-month-old infants: Measured “proneness to distress” (temperament dimension)
– Mothers: Measured personality characteristics
• “Constraint”: High scores indicate rigidity, inflexibility
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– If infants were high in proneness-to-distress and mothers were high in constraint, infants were more likely to be insecurely attached
– Other combinations did NOT increase the probability of insecure attachment:
• High constraint/low proneness-to-distress• Low constraint/low proneness-to-distress• Low constraint/high proneness to distress