an internal working model of attachment:
a mental representation of the self, of attachment figures, and of relationships in general.
This internal working model is based on the young child's discovering the extent to which his or her caregiver could be depended on to satisfy the child's needs and provide a sense of security.
Bowlby believed that this internal working model guides the individual's expectations about relationships throughout life. If caregivers are accessible and responsive, young children come to expect interpersonal relationships to be gratifying and they feel worthy of receiving care and love.
As adults, they look for, and expect to find, satisfying and security-enhancing relationships similar to the ones they had with their attachment figures in childhood. If children's attachment figures are unavailable or unresponsive, children develop negative perceptions of relationships with other people and of themselves.
Thus, children's internal working models of attachment are believed to influence their overall adjustment, social behavior, perceptions of others, and the development of their self-esteem and sense of self.
-Two key measures provide insight into the quality of the infant's attachment to the caregiver: (1) the extent to which an infant is able to use his or her primary caregiver as a secure base, and (2) how the infant reacts to brief separations from, and reunions with, the caregiver. With these measures in mind, Ainsworth designed a laboratory test for assessing the security of an infant's attachment to his or her parent. This test is called the Strange Situation because it is conducted in a context that is unfamiliar to the child and likely to heighten the child's need for his or her parent.
-In this test, the infant, accompanied by the parent, is placed in a laboratory playroom equipped with interesting toys. After the experimenter introduces the parent and child to the room, the child is exposed to seven episodes, including two separations from, and reunions with, the parent, as well as two interactions with a stranger—one when the parent is out of the room and one when the parent is present. Each episode lasts approximately 3 minutes unless the child becomes overly upset. Throughout these episodes, observers rate infants' behaviors, including their attempts to seek closeness and contact with the parent, their resistance to or avoidance of the parent, their interactions with the stranger, and their interactions with the parent from a distance using language or gestures.
-In addition, children's behavior in the Strange Situation correlates with attachment scores derived from observing children's interactions with their mother over several hours
The first attachment category—the one into which the majority of infants fall—is secure attachment.
Babies in this category use their mother as a secure base during the initial part of the session, leaving her side to explore the many toys available in the room. As they play with the toys, these infants occasionally look back to check on their mother or bring a toy over to show her. They are usually, but by no means always, distressed to some degree when their mother leaves the room, especially when they are left totally alone.
However, when their mother returns, they make it clear that they are glad to see her, either by simply greeting her with a happy smile or, if they have been upset during her absence, by going to her to be picked up and comforted. If they have been upset, their mother's presence comforts and calms them, often enabling them to explore the room again.
About 62% of typical middle-class children in the United States whose mother is not clinically disturbed fall into this category; for infants from lower socioeconomic groups, the rate is significantly lower—slightly less than 50% for children under 24 months of age.
12-month-olds who are securely attached exhibit more enjoyment of physical contact, are less fussy or difficult, and are better able to use their mothers as a secure base for exploration at home (Pederson & Moran, 1996). Thus, they are more likely to learn about their environments and to enjoy doing so.
Infants in this category are often clingy from the beginning of the Strange Situation, staying close to the mother instead of exploring the toys. When their mother leaves the room, they tend to get very upset, often crying intensely.
In the reunion, the insecure/resistant infant typically re-establishes contact with the mother, only to then rebuff her efforts at offering comfort.
For example, the infant may rush to the mother bawling, with outstretched arms, signaling the wish to be picked up—but then, as soon as he or she is picked up, arch away from the mother or begin squirming to get free from her embrace.
About 9% of typical middle-class children in the United States fall into the insecure/resistant category, but the percentage appears to be somewhat higher in many non-Western cultures
The reason that developmentalists are so interested in children's attachment status is that securely attached infants appear to grow up to be better adjusted and more socially skilled than do insecurely attached children.
Consistent with these patterns, children who were securely attached in infancy or early childhood later seem to have closer, more harmonious relationships with peers than do children who were insecurely attached. For example, they are somewhat more regulated, sociable, and socially competent with peers. Correspondingly, they are less anxious, depressed, or socially withdrawn especially compared with children who had insecure/resistant attachments. as well as less aggressive and delinquent. They are also better able to understand others' emotions and display more helping, sharing, and concern for peers. Securely attached children are also more likely to report positive emotion and to exhibit normal rather than abnormal patterns of reactivity to stress. Finally, secure attachment in infancy even predicts positive peer and romantic relationships and emotional health in adolescence and early adulthood
To determine whether parental sensitivity is causally related to differences in security of attachment, researchers have designed special intervention studies. In these studies, parents in an experimental group are first trained to be more sensitive in their caregiving. Later, the attachment statuses of their infants are compared with those of children whose parents, as members of a control group, experienced no intervention (van IJzendoorn et al., 1995).
An intervention study of this sort was conducted in the Netherlands by Daphna van den Boom (1994, 1995). Infants who were rated as irritable shortly after their birth were selected for the study because some investigators (but not all) have found that irritable infants may be at risk for insecure attachment. When the infants were about 6 months of age, half of their mothers were randomly chosen to be in the experimental group for three months. These mothers were taught to be attuned to their infants' cues regarding their wants and needs and to respond to them in a manner that fostered positive exchanges between mother and child. The remaining mothers in the control group received no special training.
At the end of the intervention, mothers in the experimental group were more attentive, responsive, and stimulating to their infants than were those in the control group. In turn, their infants were more sociable, explored the environment more, were better able to soothe themselves, and cried less than infants whose mothers did not receive the intervention. Especially significant, the rates of secure attachment were notably higher for infants whose mothers were in the experimental group—62% compared with 22%.
In a longitudinal follow-up at 18 months of age, 72% of the children in the intervention group were securely attached, compared with 26% of the children in the control group. When their infants were 24 months old, mothers in the intervention group were, as earlier, more accepting, accessible, cooperative, and sensitive with their infants than were the control-group mothers, and their children were more cooperative. Similar findings were obtained when the children were 3½ years old.
In some of the most famous research in psychology, Harry Harlow and his colleagues reared infant rhesus monkeys in isolation from birth, comparing their development with that of monkeys reared normally with their mothers. The isolated babies were well fed and kept healthy, but they had no exposure to their mother or other monkeys.
When they finally were placed with other monkeys 6 months later, they compulsively bit and rocked themselves and avoided other monkeys completely, apparently incapable of communicating with, or learning from, others.
They also showed high levels of fear when exposed to threatening stimuli such as a loud sound.
As adults, formerly isolated females had no interest in sex. If they were artificially impregnated, they did not know what to do with their babies. At best, they tended to ignore or reject them; at worst, they attacked them.
This research, although examining the effects of the lack of all early social interaction (and not just that with parents), strongly supported the view that children's healthy social and emotional development is rooted in their early social interactions with adults.