Fear and Separation Evidence For and Against Bowlby Early Socialisation Fear and Separation Evidence For and Against Bowlby

Separation Unfortunately in the real world there are often circumstances that disrupt infants attachments or even prevent them from being formed in the first place e.g. Divorce Death of a parent

Spitz (1945) and Goldfarb (1947) Bowlby based his maternal deprivation hypothesis on the above studies. Spitz went to South America and visited several poor orphanages and other institutions Most of these children received little affection of warmth from the staff, as a result of which they became apathetic

Anaclitic depression Most of the children suffered from anaclitic depression This is a state that involved resigned helplessness and a loss of appetite

Goldfarb Compared two groups of infants from a poor and inadequately staffed orphanage One group consisted of those infants who spent only the first few months of their lives in the orphanage before being fostered The other group consisted of infants who spent three years at the orphanage before being fostered

Results These two groups were tested at various times up until the age of 12 Those children who had spent longest time in the orphanage did less well than the others on intelligence tests at all ages They were socially less mature Often loners More likely to be aggressive

Lack of support for Bowlby The findings of Spitz and Goldfarb provided less support for Bowlby than originally assumed. The institutions they studied were deficient in several ways; The children suffered from a general lack of stimulation and attention in addition to maternal deprivation It is not clear therefore that it is maternal deprivation itself that caused the negative effects on the children

Affectionless Psychopathy Bowlby (1946) presented evidence that maternal deprivation can have severe long term effects. He compared juvenile delinquents with other emotionally disturbed adolescents who had not committed any other crimes.

cont 32% of the juvenile delinquents but none of the emotionally disturbed adolescents showed affectionless psychopathy ( lack of guilt or remorse) Of the affectionless delinquents, 64% had experienced deprivation in early childhood, compared to 10% of the juvenile delinquents without affectionless psychopathy. These findings were not repeated in later studies

Table Juvenile Delinquents Emotionally Disturbed 32% showed Affectionless Psychopathy None showed Affectionless Psychopathy Of the 32% 64% had suffered privation or deprivation compared to those with AP

Schaffer Evidence against Bowlby’s monotropy theory is strong Schaffer and Emerson (1964) visited the homes of babies several times during their first years of life. They decided how attached the infant was to various adults on the basis of the level of protest when separated from each adult

cont 59% of infants had formed more than one attachment by 10 months of age This rose to 87% by the age of 18 months At the older age only about half the infants were mainly attached to their mother, with 30% being mainly attached to their father Thus the attachment to the mother is often of less central importance to young children than was assumed by Bowlby

Rutter (1981) Rutter has argued persuasively that the maternal deprivation hypotheses is over-simplified He pointed out that there is an important distinction between deprivation and privation Deprivation occurs when a child has formed an important attachment, but is then separated from the major attachment figure In contrast privation occurs when a child has never formed an attachment with anyone

cont Rutter applied the distinction between deprivation and privation to Bowlby’s (1946) affectionless psychopathy Many of the juvenile delinquents had experienced several changes of home and of who takes primary care of them in their early years This suggested to Rutter that their later problems were due to privation rather that deprivation as claimed by Bowlby

cont Rutter argued that the effects of privation were much more severe and long lasting than the effects of deprivation Rutter said privation often leads to ‘an initial phase of clinging, dependant behaviour, followed by attention seeking, uninhibited, indiscriminate friendliness, and finally a personality characterised by lack of guilt, an inability to keep to rules and an inability to form lasting friendships’

Reasons for separation Rutter (1981) suggested that the effects of deprivation depend on the precise reasons for the separation, rather than on the fact of separation itself as Bowlby had claimed. Rutter studied boys aged 9 -12 who had been deprived of their mothers for a period of time when they were younger Some of the boys were well adjusted and others were not

cont The well adjusted boys were separated because of factors such as housing problems or physical illness. In contrast the maladjusted boys had mostly been separated due to problems with social relationships within the family (e.g. psychiatric illness) Thus it is family discord rather than a separation as such that causes difficulties for children.

Tizard (1977) One of the main assumptions made by Bowlby is that the effects of maternal deprivation cannot be undone There are relatively few studies on this issue – because of the time factors Tizard studied children who spent the first two to seven years of their lives in an institution. On average each child was looked after by 24 different caregivers by the age of 2

Cont The lack of opportunity to form a strong, continuous relationship with one adult means that they had suffered maternal deprivation in Bowlby’s sense. In spite of this, the institutions studied by Tizard were markedly better than those studied by Spitz. At the age of 4 the children studied by Tizard had an IQ average of 105. Thus the children's cognitive development had not been held back by the institutions

Progress Tizard examined the progress of these children at the ages of 8 and 16 Some had returned to their own families, whereas others had been adopted Most of the adopted children had formed close relationships with their adopted families This was less true of those returned to their own families, because the parents were often unsure whether they really wanted their children back.

cont Both sets of children showed attention seeking behaviour at school, and were over-friendly This resulted in them being relatively unpopular

References Eysenck,M. (1996) Simply Psychology. Psychology Press, East Sussex