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Cycle Of Attachment Theory Essay

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across time and space” (Ainsworth, 1973; Bowlby, 1969).
The process of attachment is based on connections that are often formed through a cycle of attachment. When a key person is constantly meeting a child’s emotional and physical needs, they are in other words promoting consistency in the relationship, which is the foundation for a good relationship in the child’s life and allows them to develop trust. A key person who doesn’t always meet the child’s needs may cause a change in the child behaviour and not allow them to gain the trust that they require to help the child develop and make constant progress, in other cases changing key person often can also break bonds and trust formed through attachment making the child break away from the cycle of attachment and it slows down their progress.
Attachment theory is based on results from research, from observational studies completed by theorist such as Bowlby, Ainsworth and James and Joyce Robertson; it’s a framework for understanding the nature of creating secure bonds that develop between children and those who care for them. The theory focuses majorly on relationships during early stages of a child’s life, and the impact the relationship bonds have on the emotional development and mental health of the child as …show more content…

This kind of behaviour is different in every environment and is developed according to the situation. Attachment theory explains how the parent-child/key person-child relationship develops and influences a progressive development. Over time the attachment allows the key person to develop a secure relationship with the child as they have allowed the child to speak to them with confidence and have made the setting environment a friendly place for them to learn in. They have given the child stability and allowed them to increase their self esteem and powered them

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Attachment theory is an emotional bond formed between children and their primary caregivers through close interpersonal contact. Some patterns of children formed with the mother are pivotal to the social, emotional, and personality development of an individual. There are 3 distinct responses when a child is separated from their primary caregiver. One is protest, crying, active searching, and resistance to the comforting of others. Two is despair and blatant sadness.

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Although we are studying theories, some of them appear to explain human behavior and personality with certain accuracy. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth theories of attachment can also explain what happens to people when attachment to their parents or caregivers is healthy or potential problems that could occur due to detachments. They suggest that individuals raised with secure attachments to their primary caregivers help them to feel secure; moreover, these children appear to be more socially skilled and less likely to experience major emotional disturbances. However, failure to form healthy attachments, especially mother-child, could serve as a descriptive mechanism for many negative psychological outcomes later in the life of an individual,

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Perhaps the most influential explanation of attachment was presented by John Bowlby who began developing his ideas in the 1940s. Bowlby presented two key theories, namely the maternal deprivation hypothesis and his theory of attachment, which we shall consider here. The ideas behind these theories are closely linked. Rather than locating the child's formation of attachment within the environment as learning theories do, Bowlby argued that attachment was an evolved mechanism that ensured the survival of the child.

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Attachment Analysis There are four main attachment theories according psychologists Ainsworth and Bowlby. These attachments are secure, insecure-resistant, insecure-avoidant, and disorganized-disoriented. In the prompt, there are two toddlers (Sam and Maria) that experience varying attachment qualities. These toddlers are put into the Strange Situation in which the researchers will observe how they act before, during and after the primary caregiver’s absence.

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Secured attachment is extremely important in the developmental stages of an infant. Secure attachment is when an infant feels distressed when they are separated from their caregivers and feels happy when their caregiver returns. Research from this article suggests that, when an infant does not receive the comfort they need from their caregiver for secure attachments, it can have a negative impact on their behaviour later on in their childhood and throughout life. Infants who have secured attachments tend to develop stronger self-esteem as they grow older, they also tend to be more independent and successful in socialising. Those children are also less likely to experience less depression and anxiety.

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In the mental health field, it is now widely accepted that the contribution of John Bowlby’s through attachment theory has been instrumental in our understanding of the impact of early childhood relationships (Karen, 1994). According to this theory, as infants, human beings depend “on a consistent nurturing relationship with one or more sensitive caregivers to develop into healthy individuals” (van Rosmalen, van der Horst, & van der Veer, 2016, p. 22). Bowlby believed that the relationship with the primary caregiver, usually the mother, determined the life-long well-being of the individual (Bowlby, 1940). In reviewing Bowlby’s contributions, the authors of the book Shattered States: Disorganised Attachment and Its Repair describe how Bowlby’s

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In 1969, John Bowlby made the connection that formed relationships and attachments to caregivers contributes to future development and growth. The attachment theory focuses on relationship association between caregivers and their children. Children who established a foundation with a caregiver despite their biological relation, gain much needed support. Establishing support, encourages a child’s development. The comfort of safety, allows children to feel secure in taking risks (Groman, 2012).

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Attachment Theory. Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby in the 1940s into the 1950s and then was then developed by Mary Ainsworth that worked closely with Bowlby when he was developing upon the attachment theory; they both looked at children in homes and then assessed there behaviour and compared them with their backgrounds. When Mary Ainsworth developed upon Bowlby 's assessment she came up with four categories that each child could be in, by looking at the children that were in the homes Mary Ainsworth came up with the sections and what sections mean what, by looking at the attachment theory the first category is Secure; Secure is a category that around 65% of children have, this section is when the caregiver give the child consisting parenting by interacting with the child and being there for them physically and emotionally when they need the support or rensurace by being in this

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In the opposite direction, insecure attachments, has negative impact on child overall development for instance they are be able to manage their emotions or engage in reciprocal relationships. In a longitudinal study by Waters, Merrick, Treboux, & Albersheim (2000), they monitored 50 individuals over a period of 20 years found that there is a stable secured attachment over that period, with a greater percentile for individuals without any major negative life events, and less stable (less than 50%) for those who had experienced a major negative

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Bowlby 's attachment theory had vast investigation done by Mary Ainsworth, who studied the interactions between mother and child, specifically, the theme of an infant’s investigation of their surroundings and the separation from their mother. This essay will focus on Bowlby’s attachment theory and Mary Ainsworth’s experiments and findings, discussing their views on the development and importance of attachment in early life. John Bowlby’s primary interest was in the relationship between child and mother or primary caregiver. Bowlby suspected that the earliest relationships formed by children and their primary parent or care giver, have huge impacts on the child’s later life. From this, Bowlby developed the attachment theory.

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Since the ‘50s, Bowlby worked alone and with distinguished colleagues such as psychoanalyst James Robertson, ethologist/zoologist Robert Hinde and psychologist Mary Ainsworth on several different studies. Bowlby suggested that due to the attachment between children and their carers, children suffer loss when they are separated. Bowlby’s study with the ethologist Robert Hinde, inspired the idea that certain attachment behaviours have evolved as a survival mechanism (Bergen, 2008). The core of the theory today is that the quality of close relationships affects personality, emotional and social development not only in childhood but throughout the life of the individual (Howe, 2001). This suggests that attachment theory is effectively a biological, psychological and social theory of human development.

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Attachment in early life is a fundamental aspect of child development and the establishment of intimate and reciprocal relationships with caregivers. Shaffer & Kipp (2007) define attachment as ‘a close emotional relationship between two persons, characterized by mutual affection and a desire to maintain proximity’. Contrary to the original view of infant attachment as a ‘secondary drive’ of the dependency on caregivers for physiological needs, such as hunger; Bowlby (1969, 1973) proposed that all infants are born with an innate bias to form an attachment to a primary attachment figure to whom they can seek comfort, or a ‘secure base’ during stressful circumstances. It is proposed by Ainsworth (1967) that parental sensitivity is crucial to shaping the security and development of the initial infant-parent attachment relationship, however the phenomenon of attachment requires both infants and caregivers to contribute in the formation of the attachment bond. Ultimately, the quality of attachment in early life shapes both the social and emotional

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