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Influences on Infant Attachment Security

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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Influences on Infant Attachment Security

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  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. Goodness-of-fit may be a better predictor of attachment security than either parental behavior or infant temperament alone

  8. 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

  9. 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

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