food, a powerful reinforcer that satisfies a biological need. Certainly, feeding is important for infants’ health and well-being and offers opportunities for the close contact needed to develop attachment bonds, but feeding itself does not determine attachment. In one famous study, baby rhesus monkeys were reared with two inanimate surrogate “mothers”: one made of wire mesh and a second covered with terrycloth (see Figure 6.1). The baby monkeys clung to the terrycloth mother despite being fed only by the wire mother, suggesting that attachment bonds are not based on feeding but rather on contact comfort (Harlow & Zimmerman, 1959). So how does an attachment form, and what is its purpose?
Figure 6.1 Harlow’s Study: Contact Comfort and the Attachment Bond
This infant monkey preferred to cling to the cloth-covered mother even if fed by the wire mother. Harlow concluded that attachment is based on contact comfort rather than feeding.
Source: Harlow, H. F. (1958); Photo Researchers Inc.
Bowlby’s Ethological Perspective on Attachment
John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, posed that early family experiences influence emotional disturbances not through feeding practices, conditioning, or psychoanalytic drives but via inborn tendencies to form close relationships. Specifically, Bowlby (1969, 1988) developed a theory of attachment that characterizes it as an adaptive behavior that evolved because it contributed to the survival of the human species. Inspired by ethology, particularly by Lorenz’s work on the imprinting of geese (see Chapter 1) and by observations of interactions of monkeys, Bowlby posited that humans are biologically driven to form attachment bonds with other humans. An attachment bond between caregivers and infants ensures that the two will remain in close proximity, thereby aiding the survival of the infant and, ultimately, the species. From this perspective, caregiving responses are inherited and are triggered by the presence of infants and young children.
Infants’ Signals and Adults’ Responses
From birth, babies develop a repertoire of behavior signals to which adults naturally attend and respond, such as smiling, cooing, and clinging. Crying is a particularly effective signal because it conveys negative emotion that adults can judge reliably, and it motivates adults to relieve the infants’ distress. Adults are innately drawn to infants, find infants’ signals irresistible, and respond in kind. For example, one recent study found that nearly 700 mothers in 11 countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Cameroon, France, Kenya, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) tended to respond to their infants’ cries and distress by picking up, holding, and talking to their infants (Bornstein et al., 2017). Infants’ behaviors, immature appearance, and even smell draw adults’ responses (Kringelbach, Stark, Alexander, Bornstein, & Stein, 2016). Infants, in turn, are attracted to caregivers who respond consistently and appropriately to their signals. During the first months of life, infants rely on caregivers to regulate their states and emotions—to soothe them when they are distressed and help them establish and maintain an alert state (Thompson, 2013). Attachment behaviors provide comfort and security to infants because they bring babies close to adults who can protect them.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans support a biological component to attachment as first-time mothers show specific patterns of brain activity in response to infants. Mothers’ brains light up with activity when they see their own infants’ faces, and areas of the brain that are associated with rewards are activated specifically in response to happy, but not sad, infant faces (Strathearn, Jian, Fonagy, & Montague, 2008). In response to their infants’ cries, U.S., Chinese, and Italian mothers show brain activity in regions associated with auditory processing, emotion, and the intention to move and speak, suggesting automatic responses to infant expressions of distress (Bornstein et al., 2017).
Phases of Attachment
Bowlby proposed that attachment formation progresses through several developmental phases during infancy, from innate behaviors that bring the caregiver into contact to a mutual attachment relationship. With each phase, infants’ behavior becomes increasingly organized, adaptable, and intentional.
Phase 1: Preattachment—Indiscriminate Social Responsiveness (Birth to 2 Months): Infants instinctively elicit caregiving responses from caregivers by crying, smiling, and making eye contact with adults. Infants respond to any caregiver who reacts to their signals, whether parent, grandparent, child care provider, or sibling.
Phase 2: Early Attachments—Discriminating Sociability (2 Through 6–7 Months): When caregivers are sensitive and consistent in responding to babies’ signals, babies learn to associate their caregivers with the relief of distress, forming the basis for an initial bond. Babies begin to discriminate among adults and prefer familiar people. They direct their responses toward a particular adult or adults who are best able to soothe them.
Phase 3: Attachments (7–24 Months): Infants develop attachments to specific caregivers who attend, accurately interpret, and consistently respond to their signals. Infants can gain proximity to caregivers through their own motor efforts, such as crawling.
Phase 4: Reciprocal Relationships (24–30 Months and Onward): With advances in cognitive and language development, children can engage in interactions with their primary caregiver as partners, taking turns and initiating interactions within the attachment relationship. They begin to understand others’ emotions and goals and apply this understanding through strategies such as social referencing.
Secure Base, Separation Anxiety, and Internal Working Models
The formation of an attachment bond is crucial for infants’ development because it enables infants to begin to explore the world, using their attachment figure as a secure base, or foundation, to return to when frightened. When infants are securely attached to their caregivers, they feel confident to explore the world and to learn by doing so. As clear attachments form, starting at about 7 months, infants are likely to experience separation anxiety (sometimes called separation protest), a reaction to separations from an attachment figure that is characterized by distress and crying (Lamb & Lewis, 2015). Infants may follow, cling to, and climb on their caregivers in an attempt to keep them near.
Separation anxiety tends to increase between 8 and 15 months of age, and then it declines. This pattern appears across many cultures and environments as varied as those of the United States, Israeli kibbutzim, and !Kung hunter-gatherer groups in Africa (Kagan et al., 1994). It is the formation of the attachment bond that makes separation anxiety possible, because infants must feel connected to their caregivers in order to feel distress in the caregivers’ absence. Separation anxiety declines as infants develop reciprocal relationships with caregivers, increasingly use them as secure bases, and can understand and predict parents’ patterns of separation and return, reducing their confusion and distress.
The attachment bond developed during infancy and toddlerhood influences personality development because it comes to be represented as an internal working model, which includes the children’s expectations about whether they are worthy of love, whether their attachment figures will be available during times of distress, and how they will be treated. The internal working model influences the development of self-concept, or sense of self, in infancy and becomes a guide
