Changing the way you learn

EWT & Attachment

Eye Witness Testimony
1. Leading Questions
  1. Loftus and Palmer - Asked university students to watch 7 clips of a staged car accident and rate how fast the cars were going. In each group the speed estimate question were differently phrased, the verbs were : smashed, contact, hit, bumped, collided. Each group recalled the crash at different speeds.
2. Age
  1. Dodson and Krueger (2006) - showed a video to older and younger adults who later did a questionnaire that misleadingly referred to events in the video. The older adults were more likely to be effected by misleading information and were also more confident about their judgments.
3. Anxiety & EWT
  1. Peters (1988) - gave students an injection while taking their pulse and then took their pulse 2 mins later. He formed two groups from this. Group A had the dame pulse during the injection as they did later (low reactive sample) and Group B had a high pulse during the injection (higher reactive sample). They were asked to identify the nurse who had given them the injection. The low reactive group had 59% accuracy whereas the high reactive group had 31% accuracy.
4. Weapon Focus & EWT
  1. Loftus (1979) - Subjects sat outside of a room in which they overheard a conversation between 2 people. In condition 1 the conversation was a hostile argument in which one person then walked out the room carrying a letter opener covered in blood. In condition 2 they heard a harmless conversation followed by someone walking out the room with a pen. They were then given 50 photographs to try and identify the person who walked out the room. In condition 1 only 33% of ptps could identify the culprit, in condition 2 49% could.
Attachment
1. Attachment is a long lasting, strong, emotional bond between a child and a caregiver. It is demonstrated through: seperation anxiety, stranger anxiety and seeking proximity.
2. Types of Attachment- Secure, Insecure Avoidant, Insecure Resistant
3. Mary Ainsworth 'The Strange Suituation' (1978) - Wanted to see how young infants between 9 & 18 months behaved under conditions of mild stress and novelty and to investigate the different types of attachment. She did a series of 8 episodes involving the caregiver leaving and returning to the room and also the child experiencing a stranger present in the room. Ainsworth found in general the babies explored the room and toys more enthusiatically when just the mother was present than either A. after the stranger entered or B. when the mother was abscent. 15% (A) were insecure - avoidant, ingnoring the mother and showing indifference towards her. 70% (B) were securely attached, playing happily when the mother was present. 15% (C) were insecure resistant, being fussy and wary, even when the mother was present in te room and crying more the types A and B.
4. Bowbly 'Cupboard Love Theory' (1951) - Cupboard Love theory is based on behaviourism, where the belief is all behaviour is learned. Therefore attachment has to be learned. So attachments are formed based on operant conditioning learned through reinforcements. For a baby food is a reinforcement, so the child associates food with the person that feed them and so they form an attachment to that person. This can have positive implications for children that become adopted but Lorenz (1934) found attachment is not learned but innate, he called it imprinting.
5. Lorenz (1951) - He had 2 sets of Goose eggs and he half of the eggs in an incubator and the other half with the mother. When the gosslings hatched, they saw Lorenz first so they were imprinted and followed him around not the mother.
6. Harlow (1959) - Wanted to see if attachment was more than just based on food. So he had 8 baby monkeys and two fake mother monkeys, one was made of wire with food and the other was made of cloth without food. He then divided the monkeys into two seperate groups and gave each monkey either a wire mother and soft mother. He then would frighten the monkeys and see if they ran to the mother whether it was wire or cloth. He found that all babies ran to the cloth mother when scared as they formed a attachment and that attachment is formed on more than just food.
The Effects of disruption of Attachment (short term seperation)
1. Negative Effects - John - The case off 18 month old john seperated from his mother when she went to have a baby, had permenant effects on him psychologically from being attached to her. John tried to attach himself to a nurse: he was not mothered or protected from attacks by other children. John becomes increasingly distressed , and eventually sank into hopeless apathy. At the reunion he rejected his mother. Evaluation - Study was only done on one child so cannot generalise it to the population.
2. Positive Effects - Jane - Jane who is 17 months is cared for by a foster mother to whom she makes a close relationship.Her good development continues and at reunion she goes warmly to her mother. Evaluation - Substitute care cab have positive effects on the child as shown by Robertson & Robertson.
Effects of failure to form attachment (privation)
1. Negative Effects - Genie - She was strapped to s potty until she was discovered at 13, during that time she was beaten and dined human interaction. She completed tests and score as low as a 1 year old, poor linguistic abilities, only understood her name and sorry, she couldn't stand up and spent most of her time spitting. She moved back with her mother at 18 but then moved onto 6 different foster homes where she recieved further abuse and then went on to live in a home of learning difficulties. Genie had formed no attachments and this could have resulted in little progress.
2. Positive Effects - Czech Twins - In 1976, Koluchova two identical male twins lost their mother at birth so they had a variety of carers from an aunt, childrens home and then on to live with their dad and step mother. The step mother was extremely cruel and the father unintelligent. The step mother locked the twins in a dark, cold and small cupboard/cellar, this resulted in the boys being malnourished and lacking vitamin D. The twins were found at age 7 and they were both very fearful and could hardly walk or speak. They were then taken to the hospital and fostered by two sisters who were brilliant carers who had experience with abused children. Thsi led to the twins acheiveing really well in school and by their 20's the both had successful jobs and families.
Effects of institutional care
1. Negative Effects - Goldfarb - In 1943 he studied two groups of children, one in complete isolation and the other in foster care. The institution lagged behind the foster group on all measures, including IQ, abstract thinking, social maturityand rule following. The effects were permenant because many of the children lagged behind their peers in IQ, social etc.
2. Positive Effects - Hodges & Tizard - Investigated the permenant effects of privation on behaviour and test the material deprivation hypothesis. They followed 65 children that were less than 4 months old when they had been placed in intuitional care (experience early privation). By aged 4 24 had been adopted, 15 restored to their natural homes and the rest remained in the institute. At aged 8 and 16 they were assessed using interviews and questionnaires on behaviour and attitudes. They found at age 4 children who remained in the institute were attention seeking and clingy, They exhibited argumentative styles of interaction and had problems relating to peers. Children who were adopted were indiscriminate and excessively clingy to strangers. At aged 8 children who had been adopted had formed close attachments to their adopted parents. Restored children exhibted the worst behaviour with only some of them becoming attached.
  1. (carrying on from last sentence) Parents believed ex- intituitionalised children had no more problems than the control group. However, teachers thought they were attention seeking, restless, disobedient and had poor peer relationships. At age 16 adopted children were mostly similar to the control group in relationships. Restored children often had poor family relationships. Outside of family life, the ex- instutuitionalised children are more likely to seek adult approval and affection and have difficulties with peer relationships. To conclude all ex-intituitionalised children have difficulties with peer relationships which shows that early privation does have negative effects. However children can still form attachments later on as the adopted children formed close attachments to their adopted parents.

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EWT & Attachment

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	Created by erica28 almost 11 years ago