Fri Nov 26, 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobiusorg/5214988913/
The following is an excerpt from a paper on attachment behaviors in one-year-old human infants by Ainsworth and Bell.
Proximity and interaction-avoiding behavior in relation to the mother
is shown in striking form by some young children upon reunion after
separations lasting for weeks or months. Robertson and Bowlby (1952) and
Heinicke and Westheimer (1965) report that some children do not
seem to recognize their mothers upon reunion, and that for a longer or
shorter time they remain distant from her and treat her like a stranger.
Bowlby (1960) has termed this kind of distanciation "detachment."
During a prolonged separation, detachment tends to succeed protest and
despair reactions, and after reunion it may persist for a long time-even
in-definitely in cases in which separations have been very long and
depriving. Such behavior has not yet been reported in nonhuman
primates-perhaps because their experimental separations have been brief,
perhaps because of species differences. Avoidance responses of the kind
observed in the strange situation in relation to the mother-looking
away, turning away-may be detachment in the making and so constitute a
primitive kind of defense. The constellation of individual differences
in the strange-situation sample supports this hypothesis, although it is
impossible here to present detailed evidence.
It may be pertinent, however, to refer to a similar looking-away response found in two experiments on the conditioning and extinction of attachment behaviors.
Brackbill (1958) worked with the smiling response. During the
conditioning period she provided contingent reinforcement for smiling by
responding socially to the baby each time he smiled-and smiling
increased in frequency. During the extinction period she met the baby's
smile with an impassive face. Not only did the frequency of smiling
decrease, but when the experimenter failed to respond to a smile, the
baby fussed and looked away. It became increasingly difficult to catch
the baby's eye. He looked away from the person who had previously
rein-forced his attachment behavior but who no longer did so. Similar
results are reported for an experiment on babbling by Rheingold,
Gewirtz, and Ross (1959). These findings highlight the fact that
in extinction-as indeed learning theorists have often themselves
emphasized-there is an active process of blocking the response by
another, antithetical behavior, rather than or in addition to
the weakening of the strength of smiling (or babbling) be-havior itself.
This suggests that detached behavior may consist of responses,
incompatible with attachment behavior, which have, often temporarily,
gained the greater strength.
Mary D. Salter Ainsworth & Silvia M. Bell.
(1970). Attachment, Exploration, and Separation: Illustrated by the
Behavior of One-Year-Olds in a Strange Situation. Child Development,
Vol. 41, No. 1. pp. 49-67
