Negative Life Events And Adult Attachment Interview example essay topic

This is a review of literature that covers five studies on attachment. In each study it was concluded that negative life experiences could affect an individual and possibly change the attachment style they have with their parents from infancy. The four different attachment styles are Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Resistant, and Insecure-Disorganized. From the studies presented it was shown that each attachment style a child had with their parents could change due to negative life experiences. While studies of the development of attachment among children have been helpful in understanding the young minds of children, ages varying from one to seven.

There are also studies of how certain kinds of attachment can affect you later in life especially if a negative life experience occurs. This paper will primarily discuss the effects of negative life experiences and how that affects an individual. Published data will be presented in this paper to show how a negative life experience can change an attachment style over a period of time (Infancy to adulthood). First, each attachment will be defined, attachment style will be discussed, and information about attachment will also be included.

Attachment can be defined as an emotional bond between a child and their caregiver that developed over time, it is the most important form of social development that occurs during infancy. The attachment is expressed in behaviors such as approaching, following, clinging, and signaling (smiling, crying, and calling). It is believed that attachment evolves in the first year of life. Studies of attachment development, using the Strange Situation, were administered to infants and their mothers primarily after birth. The Strange Situation is a procedure between the mother and the child where the mother leaves her child in a room by him / herself.

Depending on the child's reaction to this they are characterized under one of the attachment styles. There are four kinds of attachments; the child is either characterized as Secure, Insecure-avoidant, Insecure-resistant, or Insecure-disorganized depending on how they react during the strange situation. When the mother left in the Ainsworth Strange Situation it was found that children with secure attachments were able to explore the area around their environment while the mother was gone from the room. The infant showed no sign of distress when she left or upon return. Secure children also appeared to be confidant that their primary caregiver was available, responsive, and helpful should the infant or child encountered any adverse experiences or frightening situations if needed.

After a distressing or alarming event, securely attached infants also took great comfort in and are soothed by close body contact with their primary caregivers A mother who left the room in the Ainsworth Strange Situation made the child ignore the mother upon return was defined as Insecure-Avoidant. Insecure-Avoidant children demonstrated no confidence that they will receive care when it is wanted. They appeared to expect rejection when exhibiting attachment behaviors. The emotional conflict that these children demonstrated were more hidden than in the case of ambivalently attached children. These children exhibited considerable avoidance behavior, which is often incorrectly assessed as denoting detachment. Insecure-Resistant children got very upset when their mother left the room.

Upon the mother's return, the child was excited to see her but then pushed her away. Children appeared to be uncertain whether their primary caregiver would be available or responsive to their needs when attachment behavior is displayed. Such children alternated between seeking proximity and contact with their primary caregiver and resisted such contact and interaction. These children were not able to use their caregivers as a secure base from which to explore unfamiliar surroundings and strange situations.

These children demonstrated considerable emotional conflict. When the mother left the room during the Strange Situation the child who became disoriented when she returned to the room was defined as an Insecure-Disorganized. Children acted as though both the environment and the attachment figure were sources of threat to them. The dilemma resulted in a conflict between two incompatible behaviors: The first was to seek proximity to the attachment figure and the second was to avoid proximity with that same figure as if they posed a threat.

The behaviors demonstrated by infants appeared to be a contradiction or inhibition of action as it was undertaken. Therefore, when approaching the attachment figure, the child responded by freezing as though there was no other alternative solutions for him or her, or with some other behavior that was indicative of the fear and confusion experienced. Some researchers went beyond studying attachment among infants and followed them over a period of time into adulthood. They would do this to better understand how attachment can change over time from experiencing a negative life experience. To see if negative life experiences did change the attachment researchers interviewed the individuals again in adulthood to see if the specific attachment (Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Resistant, or Insecure-Disorganized) was affected in adulthood. This interview is known as the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview.

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is structured entirely around the topic of attachment, principally the individual's relationship to mother and to father (or other caregivers) during childhood. The participants were asked both to describe their relationship with their parents during childhood and to provide specific memories. The interviewer asked directly about childhood experiences of rejection, being upset, ill and hurt as well as loss, abuse and separations. In addition, the subject is asked to offer explanations for the parents' behavior and to describe the current relationship with their parents and the influence they considered their childhood experiences to have had upon their adult personality. Research on attachment has been going on for a while. Researchers such as Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby are among the many who were interested in how attachment affects individual children.

Before all of their work and other researcher's work were done there was a researcher who began researching attachment with infant monkeys. Harry Harlow was one of the first investigators to demonstrate the importance and nature of attachment. In his study Harlow gave infant rhesus monkeys a choice of whether or not to cuddle with a wire "monkey" that provided food or, the other choice, cuddling with a soft terry cloth "monkey". Harlow studied how the monkeys clung to the soft terry cloth monkey and occasionally to the wire monkey just to get food. It was obvious that the cloth monkey provided greater comfort to the infants: food alone was insufficient to create attachment (Feldmen, 2000). Once Harlow became interested in attachment more researchers would begin with similar experiments but with human individuals.

Research that was done on different kinds of attachment grasps the interest of researchers because it is important to determine what kind of attachment the child has with their caregiver. It will enhance the parents, and peers, ability to communicate with their child later on in life (http//: web ). At infancy, the development of attachment begins. They prefer certain figures for comfort, support, and nurturance.

Infants begin to show distress in the presence of unfamiliar adults. Mary Ainsworth saw this in her studies involving the Strange Situation mentioned earlier. She saw that children acted differently when the mother left the room and only a stranger sat with the child for a while. Ainsworth observed that in infants the attachment behavior evolves around the age of 1 year old. Schaffer and Emerson studied the development of attachment as well. With their studies they found that children differ in the age at which attachment occurs (Schaffer & Emerson, 1964).

Within their studies they found that there are three different stages in development of infants. First, Schaffer and Emerson found that during the first two months of life, infants are aroused by all parts of their environment. Within the infants environment the child finds arousal equally from human and nonhuman aspects. Secondly, around the third month the child shows indiscriminate attachment. The infant responds to stimuli that adults provided for the child. Also the child objects to any person's abandonment of attention even if the person with them is a stranger or known.

The third stage that Schaffer and Emerson found while researching was that at about seven moths of age the child began to show attachment. They showed preference to certain people and cling to those certain people in the next months to come. Schaffer and Emerson only studied infants in the first 18 months of life. There are researchers that determined what kind of attachment children would have with their caregivers. There are also studies that determined if negative life experiences affected the individual in later life. I am now going to discuss some of these studies that show this.

In these studies researchers watched to see how different attachment styles in childhood effects individuals in later life. Freud saw the child's relationship to the mother as having lifelong consequences, calling it "unique, without parallel, establish unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest object and as the prototype of all later love relations for both sexes". (Zand en, 2000). This Freudian idea has set up much of the research on attachment behaviors, and drew much attention to the mother's connection and influenced her developing child. Waters, Susan, Treboux, Crowell, and Albersheim did a study that looked at this and how negative experiences can change an individual's life. In this study Waters et al looked at how attachment at infancy affected the same individual in adulthood.

By using the Strange Situation to study the individual at infancy the researchers determined what kind of attachment the child had with his or her mother (Secure, Insecure-Avoidant, Insecure-Disorganized, or Insecure-Resistant). The individuals in adulthood were interviewed by using the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview to determine if they were affected from negative experiences in life in childhood. Waters et al took a sample of sixty white middle class infants and studied them by using the Ainsworth Strange Situation at 12 to 18 months of age. In each study the researcher counted the frequency of discrete "attachment behaviors" and rated key interactive behaviors (whether the child seeks closeness with the caregiver, maintained contact, avoiding the caregiver, or resisting contact with the caregiver) (Waters et al, 2000). After the children were observed the researchers defined each child as secure, secure-avoidant, or secure-resistant. Twenty years later Waters et al would did a follow up study on these infants "to examine the extent of stability and change in attachment patterns from infancy to early adulthood and to stimulate research into mechanisms underlying these developmental trajectories" (Waters et el, 2000).

Another interest of Waters et al was if negative life events affected the individuals, this idea was supported by Bowlby's theory. Bowlby's idea was that the attachment theory predicted both stability under normal events and change when negative life events occurred that altered the caregiver's behavior. To test this hypothesis of negative life events changing attachment Waters et al looked at the AAI to note any negative events. The negative events classified as either loss of parent, parental divorce, life threatening illnesses of parent or child, parental psychiatric disorder, and physical or sexual abuse by a family member. After determining the negative events Waters et al found that infants whose mothers reported stressful events changed attachment classifications then those mothers who reported no stressful events. This study provided evidence for the value of the secure base concept as a conceptualization of attachment relationships in infancy to adulthood (Waters et al, 2000).

Along with this study Claire E. Hamilton studied attachment from infancy to adulthood as well. In Hamilton's study she reported relations among Ainsworth Strange Situation, negative life events, and Adult Attachment Interview. Hamilton examined the stability and continuity of attachment security from infancy through adolescence. This study was conducted to help researchers better understand children beyond adolescence when raised in different family styles. This study was also conducted to evaluate how life stressed and changed aid in children's development.

Hamilton wanted to study how an attachment style continues through adolescence. Also it looks at how negative life events influences development like Walters et al (2000) did. The participants in this study were taken from the Family Lifestyle Project that consisted of 205 American families (FLS). The FLS was a study that examined the influence of nonconventional family lifestyles on the children's development (Hamilton, 2000). At infancy the infants were classified as either secure or insecure by using Ainsworth's Strange Situation. Later Hamilton interviewed the adolescents by using an adolescent version of the Adult Attachment Interview.

In this study it was shown that negative life events were associated with the continuity of attachment (Hamilton 2000). Adolescents with constant insecure attachments were most likely to have experienced one or more negative life events. The negative life events had an effect and operated primarily in terms of maintaining insecure attachments. The negative life events consisted of parental divorce and parental substance abuse. The negative events were associated with the continuity of attachment. Knowing how to connect to the child between early and later development points to the important role of attachment in development.

This study showed how a relationship between the mother and the child is associated with attachment in adolescence. Hamilton (2000) found that change in attachment classification to an extent was related to the presence or absence of negative life events. It was shown that the individuals who maintained an insecure relationship were more likely to continue with the same classification and to have experienced negative life events. In another perspective, continuity was also looked at as if attachments were related to memories of childhood, divorce, and maladjustment. Lewis, Feiring, and Rosenthal looked at this.

Lewis et al indicated that the child's model of the attachment relationship was viewed as organized around the history of the caregiver's responses to the infant's actions (Lewis, 2000). As in the earlier studies mentioned Lewis et al discusses how negative life experiences affected the individual later in life. This study looked at how continuity in attachment classification from infancy to late adolescence is related to autobiographical memories of childhood, divorce, and maladjustment (Lewis, 2000). Eighty-four White middle-class children participated and were seen in Ainsworth's Strange Situation at infancy then later given the Adult attachment Interview. In the interview the individuals were asked to describe early relationships with their parents and to provide memories of their childhood. This provided information on if there was continuity in attachment between the child and the parent.

It was later determined if there was continuity in attachment after gathering information such as if there were negative life changes in their life between the parent and child. This study indicated that there is no continuity in attachment classification from 1 to 18 years of age and no relation between infant attachment status and adolescent maladjustment (Lewis, 2000). Also an important factor was that environment influences attachment. If divorce occurred in a family it could change the attachment the child has with their parents. If a child is securely attached then the parents got a divorce the child can change to insecurely attached and effect attachment later in life. This study showed that family environment is an important factor for the attachment a child has with his or her parents.

It showed that negative experiences could change the individual in later life. Weinfield, Sroufe, and Egeland also felt that family environment is a factor in the continuity of attachment. In their study they looked at if attachment would change in the child if they were born into low-income families, which is a negative life experience. Weinfield et al's (2000) study examined continuity and discontinuity in attachment from infancy to age 19 in a sample at high risk for poor developmental adaptation. Weinfield et al's study looked at if being in a high-risk environment such as being born into a single mother home or a low-income family it might effect the attachment classification between the caregiver and the child in later life. Sixty white middle-class infants were seen in this experiment.

Among these individuals selected in this study each one was examined in the Strange Situation and later interviewed in adulthood with the Adult Attachment Interview. This study emphasized the nature of risk in the lives of children who grew up in poverty and chaotic environments. Weinfield et al showed that there is a discontinuity in attachment depending on the family environment. This study showed that attachments are at risk to change since they are venerable to difficult and chaotic life experiences. The last study that I reviewed looked at maltreated children in families and how this maltreated affects the children. Ricky Finzi, Orna Cohen, Yafa Sapir, and Abraham Weizman studied children who were treated badly by their mother or their father.

It was shown that the emotional impact of bad treatment could affect the child in later life. Negative experiences such as neglected children, fathers who used drugs, physically abused children, and were studied then compared to a control group that was not abused or neglected in childhood. Seventy-six children were studied that had a drug-user as a father, forty-one who were physically abused, and thirty-eight children that were neglected. The control group consisted of thirty-five children. More than half of the children were characterized as securely attached who had a drug-user as a father and a little less then half were characterized as insecurely attached. The physically abused children were labeled to be insecure-avoidant, neglected children had an insecure-disorganized attachment.

It was found that after comparing the experimental groups to the control group that the maltreated children were at risk later in life. It was shown that physically abused children were at risk of antisocial behavior. Neglected were at risk for lack of communications towards others and social rejection. Children who had a drug-user for a father were shown to have risks to be a drug-user also in later life. These studies provided information that negative life experiences can affect attachment relationships and / or affect the individual's life. Negative experiences such as sexual and verbal abuse towards the child, being born into a low-income family, parents who abuse drugs and alcohol, divorce of parents, and death of parents can all effect attachment in children.

This in turn effects development and later relationships with the parents in later life. The continuity of attachment throughout life is important for later relationships, so it's best if nothing negative occurs in the family, which is impossible. Negative experiences occur not to effect the attachment but it does. Although Mary Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation to determine what kind of attachment style a child has with his or her caregiver it is not always conclusive because things change. That is why the Berkley Adult attachment Interview was developed. Experiences happen in life whether it's negative or positive, it can effect the attachment and change it.

Now thanks to these studies and many others the psychologists who are interested in attachment styles, we now have a better understanding as to how attachment styles can change.

Bibliography

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A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Attachment Disorganization / Disorientation. Journal of Child Development, 69, 1107-1128 Feldmen, S., Robert (1999).
Understanding Psychology. 122 Finzi, Ricky, Orna Cohen, Sapir, Yafa, & Weizman, Abraham (2000).
Styles in Maltreated Children: A Comparative Study. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 31,113-128 Hamilton, E., Claire (2000).
Continuity and Discontinuity of Attachment from Infancy through Adolescence, Journal of Child Development, 71,690-694 Http//: web (1999) The Bond Between other and Child Lewis, Michael, Feiring, Candice, and Rosenthal, Saul (2000).
Attachment over Time, Journal of Child Development, 71,707-720 Schaffer, H. R, &Emerson P. E (1964), The Development of Social Attachment in Infancy, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 29, 3 Waters, Everett, Merrick, Susan, Treboux, Dominique, Crowell, Judith, & Albersheim, Leah (2000).
Attachment Security in Infancy and early adulthood: A twenty- year Longitudinal Study, Journal of Child Development, 71,684-689 Weinfield, S., Nancy, Sroufe, Alan, L., Egeland, Byron (2000).
Attachment from Infancy to Early Adulthood in a High-Risk Sample: Continuity, Discontinuity, and Their Correlates. Journal of Child Devleopment, 71,695-702 Zand on, Vander, W., James (2000).