Attachment Between Infant and Caregiver

Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence, Apr 06, 2001 by Peter LaFreniere, Ph.D. University of Maine

Many developmental psychologists view attachment, the special relationship between infant and caregiver, as an important building block for later relationships and adult personality. Because of its central importance to theories of social and emotional development, the scientific study of attachment has remained in the forefront of developmental psychology for the past several decades, beginning with the pioneering work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.

Modern attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby as a variant of object-relations theory, itself a variant of Freud's theory that the infant's tie to the mother is the cornerstone of adult personality. While it is true that Bowlby's theory is sometimes referred to as an ethological theory of attachment, Bowlby was not an ethologist, but rather a psychoanalytically trained clinician who integrated a number of approaches, including systems theory and evolutionary theory in formulating modern attachment theory.

Prior to the general acceptance of Bowlby's attachment theory, psychologists viewed attachment as a secondary drive, derived from primary drives like hunger. It was thought that the infant became attached to the mother because she supplied food, and thus became the object of the infant's attachment through association with feeding and the reduction of other primary needs. Assessment of the infant's attachment was based on certain behaviors. A child was thought to be overly attached if crying and clingy behavior were high in frequency.

In contrast, Bowlby considered the attachment process to be an innate system that evolved in primates through natural selection. Abundant evidence supports this view, including a classic series of studies by Harry Harlow and colleagues during the 1950s and 60s. Using a method involving surrogate "mothers," Harlow was the first to empirically test the notion that attachment to the mother forms as a result of feeding. In one study, Harlow separated infant monkeys from their mothers at birth, then reared them with two surrogate mothers, one made of stiff wire equipped with a bottle for feeding, the other covered with soft terry cloth, but without the bottle. If an infant monkey became attached by associating the mother with food, we would expect to see attachment behaviors exhibited toward the wire surrogate with the bottle. Instead the infant monkeys all showed a clear preference for the soft, cuddly surrogate without the bottle, spending most of their time (when not feeding) clinging to it and leaping into its "lap" when frightened or distressed. While feeding may be an important context for the development of the mother-child bond in natural circumstances, contact comfort was shown to be more central than feeding per se.

Drawing upon classic ethology, Bowlby reformulated the concept of attachment as a dyadic, behavioral system that would be activated automatically when the infant perceived threat in the environment, and remained active until proximity with the caregiver was reestablished. The infant's repertoire of attachment behaviors gradually unfolded in the context of interaction with the caregiver according to a relatively fixed timetable. Initially, the infant is preadapted to engage the caregiver with innate behaviors, such as looking, smiling, crying, and clinging. In time, other behaviors, such as following and complex signaling, emerge with the same goal of remaining in contact with the caregiver. It is not necessary for the adult to specifically teach such behaviors. Rather, the interaction of the caregiver provides a sufficient context for the attachment behaviors of the infant to be expressed. Learning also provides an essential context for shaping the specific qualities of the infant's attachment to a particular caregiver.

The development of the attachment relationship must be distinguished from the appearance of attachment behaviors. Various behaviors can serve the function of attachment, but no particular behavior has primacy. Smiling, crying, or proximity-seeking are common behaviors employed in a variety of contexts to serve a variety of functions. They may be expressed in relation to strangers or even objects. This is one reason why counting the number of behaviors cannot measure an attachment. Attachment refers to how those behaviors are organized with respect to the specific caregiver and the context. The history of the infant's relationship with the caregiver, as well as the emerging cognitive and emotional capacities of the infant, provide the context for the development of this bond. Bowlby characterizes this development in four stages:

The preattachment phase, roughly the first six weeks following birth, is characterized by indiscriminate sociability. The key observation in this phase is the lack of differential responsiveness to the primary caregiver. The infant responds positively to a variety of cues regardless of the person providing them. Although there is some evidence that infants may recognize their mother's smell and voice, they do not yet demonstrate a consistent preference for her over others.