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This is a review of literature that covers five studies on attachment. In each study it was concluded that negative life experiences could affect an individual and possibly change the attachment style they have with their parents from infancy. The four different attachment styles are Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Resistant, and Insecure-Disorganized. From the studies presented it was shown that each attachment style a child had with their parents could change due to negative life experiences. While studies of the development of attachment among children have been helpful in understanding the young minds of children, ages varying from one to seven.
There are also studies of how certain kinds of attachment can affect you later in life especially if a negative life experience occurs. This paper will primarily discuss the effects of negative life experiences and how that affects an individual. Published data will be presented in this paper to show how a negative life experience can change an attachment style over a period of time (Infancy to adulthood). First, each attachment will be defined, attachment style will be discussed, and information about attachment will also be included. Attachment can be defined as an emotional bond between a child and their caregiver that developed over time, it is the most important form of social development that occurs during infancy.
The attachment is expressed in behaviors such as approaching, following, clinging, and signaling (smiling, crying, and calling). It is believed that attachment evolves in the first year of life. Studies of attachment development, using the Strange Situation, were administered to infants and their mothers primarily after birth. The Strange Situation is a procedure between the mother and the child where the mother leaves her child in a room by him / herself .
Depending on the childs reaction to this they are characterized under one of the attachment styles. There are four kinds of attachments; the child is either characterized as Secure, Insecure-avoidant, Insecure-resistant, or Insecure-disorganized depending on how they react during the strange situation. When the mother left in the Ainsworth Strange Situation it was found that children with secure attachments were able to explore the area around their environment while the mother was gone from the room. The infant showed no sign of distress when she left or upon return. Secure children also appeared to be confidant that their primary caregiver was available, responsive, and helpful should the infant or child encountered any adverse experiences or frightening situations if needed. After a distressing or alarming event, securely attached infants also took great comfort in and are soothed by close body contact with their primary caregivers A mother who left the room in the Ainsworth Strange Situation made the child ignore the mother upon return was defined as Insecure-Avoidant.
Insecure-Avoidant children demonstrated no confidence that they will receive care when it is wanted. They appeared to expect rejection when exhibiting attachment behaviors. The emotional conflict that these children demonstrated were more hidden than in the case of ambivalently attached children. These children exhibited considerable avoidance behavior, which is often incorrectly assessed as denoting detachment. Insecure-Resistant children got very upset when their mother left the room. Upon the mothers return, the child was excited to see her but then pushed her away.
Children appeared to be uncertain whether their primary caregiver would be available or responsive to their needs when attachment behavior is displayed. Such children alternated between seeking proximity and contact with their primary caregiver and resisted such contact and interaction. These children were not able to use their caregivers as a secure base from which to explore unfamiliar surroundings and strange situations. These children demonstrated considerable emotional conflict. When the mother left the room during the Strange Situation the child who became disoriented when she returned to the room was defined as an Insecure-Disorganized.
Children acted as though both the environment and the attachment figure were sources of threat to them. The dilemma resulted in a conflict between two incompatible behaviors: The first was to seek proximity to the attachment figure and the second was to avoid proximity with that same figure as if they posed a threat. The behaviors demonstrated by infants appeared to be a contradiction or inhibition of action as it was undertaken. Therefore, when approaching the attachment figure, the child responded by freezing as though there was no other alternative solutions for him or her, or with some other behavior that was indicative of the fear and confusion experienced. Some researchers went beyond studying attachment among infants and followed them over a period of time into adulthood. They would do this to better understand how attachment can change over time from experiencing a negative life experience.
To see if negative life experiences did change the attachment researchers interviewed the individuals again in adulthood to see if the specific attachment (Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Resistant, or Insecure-Disorganized) was affected in adulthood. This interview is known as the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is structured entirely around the topic of attachment, principally the individuals relationship to mother and to father (or other caregivers) during childhood. The participants were asked both to describe their relationship with their parents during childhood and to provide specific memories. The interviewer asked directly about childhood experiences of rejection, being upset, ill and hurt as well as loss, abuse and separations. In addition, the subject is asked to offer explanations for the parents behavior and to describe the current relationship with their parents and the influence they considered their childhood experiences to have had upon their adult personality.
Research on attachment has been going on for a while. Researchers such as Mary Ainsworth and John Bowl are among the many who were interested in how attachment affects individual children. Before all of their work and other researchers work were done there was a researcher who began researching attachment with infant monkeys. Harry Harlow was one of the first investigators to demonstrate the importance and nature of attachment. In his study Harlow gave infant rhesus monkeys a choice of whether or not to cuddle with a wire monkey that provided food or, the other choice, cuddling with a soft terry cloth monkey. Harlow studied how the monkeys clung to the soft terry cloth monkey and occasionally to the wire monkey just to get food.
It was obvious that the cloth monkey provided greater comfort to the infants: food alone was insufficient to create attachment (Feldmen, 2000). Once Harlow became interested in attachment more researchers would begin with similar experiments but with human individuals. Research that was done on different kinds of attachment grasps the interest of researchers because it is important to determine what kind of attachment the child has with their caregiver. It will enhance the parents, and peers, ability to communicate with their child later on in life (http//: web). At infancy, the development of attachment begins.
They prefer certain figures for comfort, support, and nurturance. Infants begin to show distress in the presence of unfamiliar adults. Mary Ainsworth saw this in her studies involving the Strange Situation mentioned earlier. She saw that children acted differently when the mother left the room and only a stranger sat with the child for a while.
Ainsworth observed that in infants the attachment behavior evolves around the age of 1 year old. Schaffer and Emerson studied the development of attachment as well. With their studies they found that children differ in the age at which attachment occurs (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964). Within their studies they found that there are three different stages in development of infants. First, Schaffer and Emerson found that during the first two months of life, infants are aroused by all parts of their environment. Within the infants environment the child finds arousal equally from human and nonhuman aspects.
Secondly, around the third month the child shows indiscriminate attachment. The infant responds to stimuli that adults provided for the child. Also the child objects to any persons abandonment of attention even if the person with them is a stranger or known. The third stage that Schaffer and Emerson found while researching was that at about seven moths of age the child began to show attachment.
They showed preference to certain people and cling to those certain people in the next months to come. Schaffer and Emerson only studied infants in the first 18 months of life. There are researchers that determined what kind of attachment children would have with their caregivers. There are also studies that determined if negative life experiences affected the individual in later life.
I am now going to discuss some of these studies that show this. In these studies researchers watched to see how different attachment styles in childhood effects individuals in later life. Freud saw the childs relationship to the mother as having lifelong consequences, calling it unique, without parallel, establish unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest object and as the prototype of all later love relations for both sexes. (Zanden, 2000). This Freudian idea has set up much of the research on attachment behaviors, and drew much attention to the mothers connection and influenced her developing child.
Waters, Susan, Treboux, Crowell, and Albersheim did a study that looked at this and how negative experiences can change an individuals life. In this study Waters et al looked at how attachment at infancy affected the same individual in adulthood. By using the Strange Situation to study the individual at infancy the researchers determined what kind of attachment the child had with his or her mother (Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Disorganized, or Insecure-Resistant). The individuals in adulthood were interviewed by using the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview to determine if they were affected from negative experiences in life in childhood. Waters et al took a sample of sixty white middle class infants and studied them by using the Ainsworth Strange Situation at 12 to 18 months of age.
In each study the researcher counted the frequency of discrete attachment behaviors and rated key interactive behaviors (whether the child seeks closeness with the caregiver, maintained contact, avoiding the caregiver, or resisting contact with the caregiver) (Waters et al, 2000). After the children were...
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Research essay sample on Effects Of Negative Life Experiences On Individuals
