Attachment

This Friday, most of the students majoring in psychology didn’t come to the lecture because they had another exam I think. So we did a short lesson and talked about attachment. I had been to the conference by Alan Sroufe last month so I had already known a bit about this topic.
We said that attachment is the bond between a child and the primary caregiver. It can be emotional or cognitive.



Functions of attachment:
• Aids survival - All children develop attachment to survive.
• Provides confidence for children - The child uses this person, the attachment figure as a secure base. If they don’t have this, they don’t have the confidence to go out and explore.
• Close contact/comfort

Then we watched a video with the monkey and saw how the mother becomes the secure base. It was very interesting.

Attachment styles: They have very important influences o the rest of your life.
1) Secure Attachment: Has the most positive attachment. Children are willing to take chances and they are much more confident.
2) Insecure Attachment:
• Ambivalent
• Avoidant/Resistant
• Disorganized



Then we watched a video about the experiment called the “Strange Situation”. We looked at the attachment relationships between some children and their mothers. I think watching these videos really helped me understand the attachment styles. But I also felt very bad for the children when they were crying. It upset me a lot.

We also said that attachment can change if:
• Caregiver changes (sometimes insecure attachments can become secure attachments)
• Environmental changes

Another interesting thing I learned was that a person’s relationship with God can either be secure or insecure depending on that person’s attachment to their primary caregiver.

Lastly we talked about the theories of attachment.
Theories of Attachment:
1) Cognitive
2) Learning
3) Ethological
4) Psychoanalytic