However, only the first and second proposal is thought to be accustomed with the relationship viewpoint Sroufe, However, other socialisation practices may participate in determining attachment between infant and caregiver. For example, shared environmental influences of both infant and caregiver, are proposed to need exploring to explain infant temperament and hence attachment Goldsimth et al, , as it is noted temperaments of both are not single contributors Buss and Plomin, bb.
It has been suggested that, caregiver parenting styles and individual differences in infant temperament may contribute to how secure an infant is Goldsmith et al, Thus, it is proposed that maternal sensitivity and infant temperament are united in relation to attachment. The essay concludes [as Campos, suggested] that both caregiver and infant temperament are needed to determine attachment status. Blehar et al. Attachment classification from the perspective of infant-caregiver relationships and infant temperament.
Child Development , 56 , Durkin, K. Development Social Psychology: From infancy to old age. Great Britain: Blackwell.
Kohnstamm, G. K Eds. Buss, A. Temperament: Early developing Personality Traits. Campos et al. American Journal of Psychiatry, 10 Fox, N. McCall, R. Four approaches. Child Development, 58 , Goldsmith and Campos Cited in Sroufe, L.
Goldsmith, H. Developmental Psychology. Goossens, F. Quality of infants' attachments to professional. Child Development, 61 , Hart, D. Developmental Psychology, 33 2 , Notaro, P. Infant Behaviour and Development, 22 3 , Kagan Cited in Weber, R. Individual verification in attachment security and strange situation behaviour: The role of maternal and infant temperament. Child Development, 57, Kelly, S. Child Development, 71 4 , Lemery, K. Developmental Psychology, 35 1 , Lengue, L. Child Development, 69 1 , Lyons-Ruth, K.
Infants at social risk: Maternal depression and family support services as mediators of infant development and security of attachment. Child Development , 61 , Mangelsdorf, S. Infant proneness-to-distress temperament, maternal personality, and mother-infant attachment: Associations and the goodness of fit. Child Develepment , 61 , Children who are slow to adjust or are shy or irritable are likely to experience conflict with their parents and are likely to receive less parental acceptance or encouragement, which can make the children feel inadequate or unworthy.
However, the influence of children's temperament or other attributes may be mitigated if parents adjust their caregiving behaviors to better fit the needs of the particular child. Reflecting on these arguments and our childhood relationships with our own parents can help us develop the skills needed to provide effective guidance and nurturance. The birth of a child initiates a life-long process of mutual adaptation between the child and his or her caregivers and the broader social environment.
Relationships and patterns of interactions formed during the early stages of life serve as a prototype for many interactions later in life and might have life-long effects 1. Young children do not have the language ability to express to their caregivers what they need, so children often communicate through their behavior. Parents are often unaware of their child's feelings or the mental representations of their emotions.
Thus, attentive attunement to all aspects of a child is a very demanding task. Parents want their infants to grow up healthy and to develop behaviors that allow them to take charge of their own lives. Parents want to know how to provide the best parenting possible, especially when they do not want a mere repetition of their own individual family histories. A review of previous research findings will provide some guidelines to answer this question.
According to John Bowlby's theory 1 of attachment development, a child is "attached" to someone when he or she is "strongly disposed to seek proximity to and contact with a specific figure and to do so in certain situations, notably when he is frightened, tired or ill. The emotionally charged connection between caregiver and child ensures that the two will remain in physical proximity, especially when the child is between 8 and 18 months of age.
When the infant becomes more mobile, he will rely on the caregiver less often for proximity maintenance, although he does not abandon it altogether. Once the child experiences the security of this physical closeness, he will develop the courage to explore away from the caregiver. This fascinating paradox, the conversion from pursuing closeness to moving away from dependence, is the core of attachment theory.
In other words, when a child is securely attached to his mother and the feeling of closeness is restored, the seeking of proximity and closeness recedes and the child turns to other interests, comfortably using the caregiver as a base of operations from which to explore.
Mary Ainsworth, a developmental psychologist who studied with Bowlby, developed a controlled laboratory situation called the "strange situation," so named because it is a novel experience for the child 2. Ainsworth had mother and month-old infant pairs play in a room with toys and observed the infant's reactions to several situations, including separation, for 20 minutes.
First, would the infants use the mother as a secure base to explore the room and the new toys when the mother sits in the playroom, or would they cling to their mother and refuse to explore? Second, what would happen if the mother was told to leave the room briefly and a stranger entered? Would the child be distressed but then comforted, or would they remain distressed for the entire period the mother was gone?
Third, what happened when the mother returned? Would the child be relieved, would they be indifferent, or would they be distressed? From the children's responses to these situations, Ainsworth found that most infants had secure attachments.
They played and explored comfortably when their mothers were present, became visibly upset when they left, and calmed quickly upon their return. Some infants, however, sought little contact with their mothers and were not distressed when they left. Ainsworth labeled these patterns avoidant attachment. Finally, some infants showed anxiety even when their mothers were near. Although they protested excessively when their mothers left, they were not particularly comforted when they returned, a pattern Ainsworth labeled ambivalent anxious-ambivalent, resistant attachment.
These three patterns are described according to the caregiver's style Fig. A fourth category, termed disorganized attachment, was subsequently identified by Main and Solomon and later added to Ainsworth's original tripartite classification 3 Table 1.
Although Bowlby acknowledged that feeding may facilitate mother-infant proximity, attachment is not merely a function of feeding 4. Harlow and Zimmermann's monkey study 5 and Bowlby's observation 1 in orphanages suggest that infants need emotional support and contact in addition to food and shelter. Ainsworth et al. The mother's reciprocal or contingent responses reinforcement depending on the behavior of the child by eye contact, cuddling, touching, or praise may reinforce the child's communicative attempts, such as babbling or laughing.
Responsive mothers also gave their children enough "space" when they were playing, crawling, or otherwise exploring their environment independently. The critical aspect of responsive caregiving is that the mothers are aware of their children's needs and wants and respond to that information. The responsive caregiver "resonates" with the child's messages even though they are difficult for others to decipher at first.
Traditionally, most Korean mothers practiced what pediatrician William Sears calls "attachment parenting" 6 ; they usually engaged in long-term breastfeeding, carried their infants in fabric slings on their backs while doing housework babywearing , and cosleeping an infant and mother sleeping side by side in the same room.
This close proximity of the infant to her mother could provide an optimal environment for better interactions and attachment. Longitudinal data using adult attachment interviews suggest that attachment insecurity does indeed serve as a risk factor for psychopathology 7 - Insecurely attached children are likely to develop fewer social skills and have lower levels of communication skills. An insecurely attached child may frequently become anxious, even in benign circumstances.
Chronic vigilance and anxiety will then increase the probability of a future anxiety disorder 7. Anxiety is a very powerful stimulus of emotional distress that puts a person in a high arousal state a state of hyper-responsiveness to sensory stimulation or excitability. Either too little arousal lack of sensory input or boredom or too much prolonged arousal is detrimental.
Consequently, optimal performance cannot be attained because of an inability to maintain an appropriate level of arousal. Indeed, the Adult Attachment Interview draws its validity from the high correspondence between the attachment classification of parents and their infants' classifications in the Strange Situation 8. Thus, "secure," "avoidant," "ambivalent anxious-ambivalent, resistant ," and "disorganized" infants tend to have primary caregivers who are "autonomous," "dismissing," "preoccupied," and "unresolved," respectively, with respect to attachment Categories of attachment behaviors of infants in the strange situation and corresponding attachment categories among adults are proposed in several studies 9 , 12 Table 1.
Another study in South Korea by Jung 14 with dyads of preschool children and their mothers confirmed that children's attachment patterns were related to their mothers' attachment patterns to their own mothers. Parental insecure attachment styles also have a crucial impact on the development of psychiatric manifestations in school-aged children. Yoo et al.
The possibility that attachment security is partially influenced biologically in relation with temperament needs to be examined. Temperament can be described as a neurobiological element of the individual that differs from person to person in emotions, sociability, and self-control. Temperament is epigenetic, originating in genes but also affected by child-rearing practices. Although certain dopamine receptor D4 polymorphisms a 48 base-pair repeat in exon 3 of DRD4 are associated with low neuronal reactivity, increased exploratory behavior, and novelty seeking 16 , such associations require replication studies before they can be viewed as causative.
The concept of temperament can help parents understand and accept the characteristics of their children without feeling responsible for having caused them. Identifying children's temperaments may also allow for adjustment in parenting styles. This classic study of temperament traits in children followed individuals from 84 families, predominantly educated families in New York, from 3 months of age to adulthood, and observed how well they fit in at school, with their friends, and at home.
Results of the study revealed nine temperamental dimensions 17 , In addition to the nine dimensions, Thomas and Chess 17 also classified children's temperaments into three types. In contrast, caregivers of infants with insecurely attachment tend to be less responsive to their baby's signs of distress and needs for comfort and protection.
These caregivers are unavailable either physically, psychologically or emotionally and tend to be insensitive or unpredictable in their parenting style. In , Sylvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth carried out a study of maternal responsiveness to infant crying. Mothers who were more responsive to their infant's cries had babies who cried less and expressed more varied vocalizations and gestures.
Researchers have since tried to replicate these findings with mixed results. A review of 13 studies on maternal sensitivity and infant-caregiver attachment and a more recent review of 66 studies found a low to moderate effect of maternal sensitivity on attachment.
In general, the results are mixed and less compelling than the Bell and Ainsworth findings. This may be because of the way maternal sensitivity and attachment have been defined.
In many cases, the definition of attachment is broader and includes more aspects of the infant-caregiver relationship than the original conception of attachment as a protective phenomenon used in the study.
A few studies have examined maternal sensitivity specifically in protective situations. One found that low maternal responsiveness had a significant effect on attachment but only when social support was low. Others found significant differences in maternal soothing of infant fussing between mothers of babies classified as secure and resistant.
Another study found caregiver distress management predicted attachment security. Caregivers who promote disorganized attachment in their infants might have difficulty relieving infant distress because they are a source of fear to the baby. There is some preliminary evidence to support this theory. Frightening, frightened or extremely insensitive caregiver behaviours have been found to be elevated in caregivers of infants classified as having disorganized attachment in the Strange Situation Paradigm.
A more detailed discussion of parental influences on disorganized attachment will be included in Attachment part five: Attachment under adversity. As we have seen, parental attachment style predicts infant-caregiver attachment. There is little evidence that specific personality traits in the caregiver are associated with a particular pattern of infant-caregiver attachment.
Caregivers clearly have a role in the shaping of attachment patterns and behaviours. But can the same be said of infants? Do infant characteristics influence developing attachments? Some infant characteristics that have been studied by attachment researchers are infant temperament and the presence of a medical condition.
Temperament refers to those aspects of an infant's behaviour and emotional responsiveness which are genetically determined. It is impossible to get a pure measure of temperament since experience always has an influence on behaviour. But in general, infants tend to display noticeable differences in behaviour that are present immediately after birth that likely have a significant genetic influence.
Infant distress is a central component of attachment theory. It follows that infant temperament has a role in the development of attachment behaviours.
Temperament and attachment theorists agree that attachment is influenced by both infant and caregiver factors but they differ with respect to the emphasis they place on each of these variables. For attachment theorists, infant behaviour reflects the baby's expectations of the caregiver as a protector based on past experiences in times of stress. In contrast, temperament theorists believe that it is temperament and not history with caregivers which determines an infant's attachment classification.
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