Baby Anxiety Experiment

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Recommended: Personal reflections on attachment theory

Schaffer and Emerson (1964) challenged some of Bowlby’s claims which believed that babies have some biological need to attach to their mothers, or at least to a permanent carer. Schaffer and Emerson carried out an ethological study in Scotland which consisted of 60 babies from a working-class sector of Glasgow during the first eighteen months of their lives. They interviewed the mothers every 4 weeks and asked them several questions related to their child’s reaction when faced with a separation distress, e.g. who they smile at, who they respond to, who affects the child most when they leave and so on. Schaffer and Emerson used the results of their interviews to measure separation anxiety. They also observed how the children responded to the presence of the researchers noting how close they could get to the child before causing sings of distress (when they begin to look for their mothers, whimpering). They used these findings to measure stranger anxiety. The research showed as well that many of the children were actually attached to several people. According to Schaffer and Emerson this occurs when there is more than one person in the child’s life who took an interest in them and the infants became attached to them. The results of the study claimed that the attachments developed over time and goes through four stages. From birth to six weeks it’s the Pre-attachment or Indiscriminate phase, the infants respond to all stimuli in the same ways and so does not have certain attachments or preferences about who they were with, towards the end of the stage the child begins to show a preference for social stimuli (e.g. smiling). Between six weeks to six months it’s the Discriminating phase, they become extremely sociable with anybody, cl... ... middle of paper ... ...ndly, children don’t have a specify person to whom they feel must attach. Rudi Schaffer states, ‘There is, we must conclude, nothing to indicate any biological need for an exclusive primary bond.’ (1994: 38). This means that we can be attached to several people. When the children were seven months, 17 (29 per cent) were attached to two people. After 10 months, 36 (60 per cent) had over one attachment. By 18 months, more than 50 (87 per cent) had over one attachment and 25 (30 per cent) had from three to five attachments. Thirdly, these attachments had no differences in any way. The children behave in the same way around each person it was attached to. With these findings Schaffer and Emerson concluded that attachments are most possible to be produced with those people who have a profound care for the baby’s needs, which they named this the sensitive responsiveness.

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