5.0 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attachment theory | 3/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:31:31.580137+00:00 | kb-cron |
Bowlby held that over the first three years, human babies develop a feedback system (like a thermostat) with proximity to the mother or mother-figure as its "set-goal." Formation of this system has four phases. The raw materials for this system, first emitted (as Bowlby put it) over the two or three months after birth (which he called Phase One of attachment formation), Bowlby called "attachment behaviours": rooting, sucking, smiling, crying, reaching, clinging and looking. Even six-month-olds typically direct smiles, cries, and other attachment or proximity-seeking behaviours indiscriminately towards caregivers when more than one is available. According to the theory, a single figure will eventually become the focus of these behaviours. Where there is more than one caregiver, attachments to different caregivers are hypothesised to be arranged hierarchically, with the principal attachment figure at the top. The set-goal of the ABS is to maintain a bond with an accessible and available attachment figure. During the second phase of attachment-formation (three to six months), the infant is said to start the process of discriminating between familiar and unfamiliar adults, becoming more selectively focused on the person who will ultimately become their preferred mother-figure. Phase Three of attachment formation is said to last from around six or seven months of age to two or more years. Soon, following and clinging are added to the range of proximity-seeking behaviours. This is the start of the infant's behaviour toward the caregiver becoming organized on a goal-directed basis to achieve the conditions that make it feel secure. By the end of the first year, the infant will be able to display a range of attachment behaviours designed to maintain proximity. These manifest as protesting the caregiver's departure, greeting the caregiver's return, clinging when frightened, and following when able. With the development of locomotion, the infant is expected to begin to use the caregiver or caregivers as a "safe base" from which to explore. Infant exploration is expected to be greater when the caregiver is present because the infant's attachment system will be relaxed, making it freer to explore. If the caregiver is inaccessible or unresponsive, attachment behaviour should be more strongly exhibited. Anxiety, fear, illness, and fatigue are expected to increase a child's attachment behaviours. After the second year, Bowlby thought that a child begins to see the caregiver as an independent person. This is the beginning of Phase Four, and a more complex, goal-corrected partnership develops. Children begin to notice others' goals and feelings and plan their actions accordingly.
== Empirical research and theoretical developments ==
=== Attachment behaviours === The basic materials for the formation of a baby's hypothetical attachment behavioural system comprise a limited set of inborn proximity-promoting behaviours which Bowlby called attachment behaviours. Influenced by ethology, Bowlby asserted that the attachment behaviours babies emitted in their early months were fixed action patterns (FAPs). Fixed action patterns were first identified by ethologists in animals like stickleback fish and digger wasps. They were held to be reflexively triggered by a pre-ordained releasing stimulus and not to change in form or direction, whatever the circumstances in which the animal found itself. Bowlby translated this as meaning young babies' smiles, cries, looks, and sucks were "highly stereotyped" in form and "once initiated, follow their typical course to its completion almost irrespective of what is happening in the environment". Observational researchers soon refuted Bowlby's belief that babies' early smiles, looks, reaches, sucks, roots, cries—or, later on, their babbling and following—were fixed in form, triggered by only one releasing stimulus, or had only one evolutionary function (that of promoting proximity to mother). On the contrary, all these behaviours have many functions and vary subtly from occasion to occasion and adapt to the baby's current circumstances. A baby's cries are highly variable in duration, loudness, and continuity. And the smiles of even the youngest infant vary in intensity, direction, eliciting event (sometimes babies smile in their sleep) and duration. Looking is also a very flexible behaviour and accompanies any intentional action by an infant. Likewise with babbling, which Bowlby listed among attachment behaviours. The fact that the behaviours Bowlby called "attachment behaviours" vary in form and function from birth on means they cannot be signals encoded by evolution to promote proximity to a mother-figure, as he claimed. But they can function as if they are signals when they serve to trigger the caregiving behaviour of anyone in their vicinity, that is, what attachment theorists call the caregiving behavioural system.