Influences on Infant Attachment Security According to attachment theory, the major influence is parental behavior (especially sensitivity) Sensitivity: Consistent, prompt, and appropriate responses to infant signals

Expectations form the basis of an internal working model Infants develop expectations about how caregivers are likely to respond to their signals Expectations form the basis of an internal working model IWM: Expectations about the nature of relationships and beliefs about the self

Expectations result from the quality of mother-infant interaction: Sensitive Care: Infants expect caregiver to be available and responsive Insensitive Care: Infants expect caregiver to be unresponsive/inconsistent or rejecting

Infants’ behavior in the Strange Situation reflects their expectations (early IWM) Secure infants expect caregiver to be responsive Insecure infants expect caregiver to be unresponsive/inconsistent or rejecting

Evidence for Parental Behavior as the Major Influence on Infant Attachment Security: Parental sensitivity is correlated with infant attachment security, but the correlation is not strong Disagreement about the importance of parental sensitivity in influencing attachment security Other factors also affect attachment security

Temperament and Attachment Security Some studies find that insecure infants are higher in distress during the first year of life Difficult to know if this reflects temperament or parental behavior In general, temperament is not strongly related to attachment security

Goodness-of-fit may be a better predictor of attachment security than either parental behavior or infant temperament alone

Study: Mangelsdorf et al., 1990 9-month-old infants: Measured “proneness to distress” (temperament dimension) Mothers: Measured personality characteristics “Constraint”: High scores indicate rigidity, inflexibility

If infants were high in proneness-to-distress and mothers were high in constraint, infants were more likely to be insecurely attached Other combinations did NOT increase the probability of insecure attachment: High constraint/low proneness-to-distress Low constraint/low proneness-to-distress Low constraint/high proneness to distress