Compare And Contrast Bowlby And Ainsworth's Attachment Theory

Babies are born with an innate ability to learn and their brain to develop after birth. The neural pathways of a human’s brain are built based on their early experience in the world. A baby’s world is based on how they are treated by people in it therefore if the environment is scary then the baby will be reluctant to explore, as demonstrated n Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s attachment theory. The brain and body become wired enough to understand what is safe and what should be feared. The birth to 3 years of a child’s life is a critical period for the brain during child development and any deprivation during this will result in persistent deficits in cognitive, emotional and even physical health. During this stage, the child will develop from being

Institutionalisation can also severely affect a child’s development, but this can sometimes be recovered when the child is adopted. The child’s physical features like height, weight and head circumference can suffer during this time. Also, cognitively a child’s IQ can be off a normal range if adopted around their 3rd birthday but when it comes to school performance the cognitive performance can lag cognitive competence. Also, when it comes to emotional development, a study of Romanian adoptees demonstrated that attachment was affected if the child wasn’t adopted before they were 12 months old compared to secure attachments likely to be achieved before then, but babies adopted under 6 months showed normal attachment patterns during early childhood. Therefore, a child is more likely to be curious and explore the environment should there be a haven to return to which is given by the primary caregiver and by allow the child to do this, they will develop