SAGE Reference

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Intellectual and

Developmental Disorders
Attachment Theory

By:Nancy Lundy
Edited by: Ellen B. Braaten
Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Intellectual and Developmental Disorders
Chapter Title: "Attachment Theory"
Pub. Date: 2018
Access Date: August 23, 2022
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Print ISBN: 9781483392295
Online ISBN: 9781483392271
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483392271.n40
Print pages: 102-104
© 2018 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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Attachment theory is one of the most important theories in modern developmental psychology. The theory
posits that emotional bonds formed early in life exert a strong influence over individuals’ development
and ability to form satisfying relationships later in life. As individuals mature, they develop internal working
models of attachment relationships that are activated when they are undergoing stress and influence how
they respond. This entry discusses the development of attachment theory, the theory’s emphasis on the
importance of early developmental experiences, and the identification of specific patterns of attachment.

Attachment theory grew out of the work of John Bowlby (1907–1990), a British psychoanalyst who sought to
understand the intense distress he observed in infants and young children who experienced separations from
their mothers. Bowlby grew dissatisfied with Freudian and learning theory explanations of the parent–child
bond as shaped primarily around the need for the reduction of the infant’s drives. His work with young
children led him to become interested in the relational aspects of the infant–caretaker bond and how these
relationships shape behavior. He saw childhood real-life experiences and relationships as important forces in
shaping relational patterns, a view that was revolutionary and controversial at the time because it challenged
the prevailing theories of behavior as motivated primarily by drive reduction.

Bowlby looked to the animal world in his search to understand the roots of infant–caretaker bonds. He
became interested in the work of ethologists who studied the ways in which young animals are born
predisposed to attach to adults of their species for caretaking and protection. Bowlby posited that human
infants also come into the world with built-in needs for a certain kind of relationship that will predictably provide
safety and security. Separations are disastrous because they thwart an instinctual need to keep the caretaking
figure close by to ensure survival.

Bowlby came to see the need to maintain proximity to the caretaking figure as an instinctual need that is the
fundamental determinant of infant behavior. He saw the infant’s proximity-seeking behaviors as selected by
evolution to preserve the species. The attachment system is a system of behaviors that makes the species
more likely to survive.

Bowlby saw the human infant as having inborn instinctual attachment behaviors that are designed to elicit
caretaking. Attachment behaviors provide the developing organism with a safe haven in times of danger,
a safe base from which to explore the world and elicit comfort in times of distress. Attachment behaviors
become organized into the attachment behavioral system, a repertoire of behaviors that can be flexibly
tailored to changing environmental circumstances. The attachment behavioral system is inherently motivating
and is not the result of any other drive.

Importance of Early Experiences

The attachment system is just one of a number of biologically based behavioral systems and can be modified
over the course of development and new experiences, but early experiences with caretaking are seen as
powerful forces in shaping later behavior. The goal of the attachment system is to promote a sense of felt
security, a sense that the world is a safe, predictable place in which one can count on protection from danger
and in which one can explore and engage with others. The experience of feeling safely held in an early
relationship with a caregiver provides the developing child with the confidence to go out into the world on his
or her own with the knowledge that he or she can return for protection, comfort, and safety in times of danger.
Subsequent research has shown that attachment behaviors can develop and change over the course of a
lifetime and that relationships other than just that between the infant and caretaker can modify and shape
the schemas developed earlier, but early attachment relationships are now widely seen as critically important
developmental experiences.

In the early months of life, relationship-seeking preattachment patterns of behavior develop. These early
attachment behaviors are not directed toward any one figure and include crying, sucking, and smiling. At
about the age of 2 to 6 months, infants begin to attach to specific people. New relational patterns such as
clinging and following appear. From the age of about 6 months to 2 years, infants develop attachments to
specific caregivers and behavior becomes more organized and goal oriented in order to maintain proximity. At

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about the age of 2 years, the child starts to see the caretaker as an independent person. By the age of 3 or 4
years, the child no longer experiences short separations as catastrophic. Although attachment needs change
with development, they persist throughout life.

Over time, experiences with attachment figures become organized into internal working models, which are
mental schemas or representations that allow for prediction of how interactions with others will unfold and
what strategies are effective for preserving important attachment relationships. There are two major forms of
internal working models: working models of self and of other. These unconscious internal models shape how
we think about ourselves and how we understand and interact with others.

Patterns of Attachment
Bowlby’s revisions of developmental theory received important empirical support in the work of Mary
Ainsworth (1913–1999), whose seminal work on patterns of attachment grounded attachment theory in
research. While working with Bowlby in London, Ainsworth began a program of observational research that
she eventually applied to the study of mother–child relationships in Africa and then later in the United States.

Ainsworth developed a paradigm for studying infant–caretaker relationships in the laboratory called the
strange situation paradigm. In her research, Ainsworth brought children between the ages of 12 and 18
months into the laboratory and exposed them to a sequence of eight different conditions in which they were
separated and reunited with caretakers. The infant’s behavior with a stranger was also studied. All interactions
were carefully coded and were compared with data gathered in 72 hours of observations of mother and infant
behavior in the home environment.

Ainsworth’s research revealed three distinct patterns of infant behavior. About two thirds of the infants
observed demonstrated what is called a secure attachment. These babies explored freely when the mother
was present, were often visibly upset when the mother left the room, but were happy and easily comforted
when the mother returned. About 25% of the infants demonstrated what is called an avoidant attachment,
which is characterized by little show of emotion on either separation or reunion. A third pattern that
characterized the attachment behaviors of approximately 10% of the infants studied was labeled ambivalent.
These infants were highly distressed when their mothers left the room and were hard to comfort in the reunion
with the mother.

A large body of subsequent research has documented secure attachment in about two thirds of infants
studied across a wide range of populations. Research has shown that sensitive and responsive caregivers
promote secure patterns of attachment and that these patterns are correlated with many positive outcomes.
For example, the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which followed a cohort from infancy
through adulthood, found that secure early attachment classifications have both direct associations with
capacities for the emotional aspects of relating and indirect positive effects with regard to promoting positive
peer relationships that predict many favorable outcomes.

Further research conducted by Mary Main (1943– ) revealed a fourth pattern of attachment, called
disorganized, in which there is no consistent strategy for maintaining contact and which is characterized
by maladaptive and often counterproductive attempts to maintain connection. Disorganized attachment can
develop when the caretaker is a fear-inducing figure because the child is faced with the dilemma of needing
the protection of a caretaker who is also a source of fear. The child is then faced with the problem of
developing strategies for eliciting caretaking from a frightening figure. Disorganized patterns of attachment
have been correlated with emotional and behavioral problems. Main, along with Judith Solomon and Erik
Hesse, also added what is known as a move to the level of representation to the field of attachment research,
meaning that the focus of inquiry expanded beyond observation of behavior to include investigation of internal
mental representations of attachment experiences.

Research with mothers using a structured interview called the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) revealed
patterns of mental representations of the mother’s own early attachment experiences that parallel the
classifications of attachment patterns found in babies observed in the strange situation paradigm. These
patterns were called states of mind with regard to attachment. The secure-autonomous pattern was
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characterized by coherent, flexibly told narratives about one’s own childhood that included indications of
valuing of attachment experiences. One of the primary features of this secure pattern was the ability to
produce a coherent narrative about early attachment experiences whether these experiences had been
positive or negative. In other words, what characterized a secure state of mind as an adult was not necessarily
having had a happy childhood but rather being able to produce a clear and well-organized narrative about
early experiences.

Other patterns of attachment that emerged in adult narratives about attachment experiences were the
dismissive pattern, characterized by vague, simplistically idealizing narratives that minimized the importance
of attachment experiences, and the preoccupied pattern, characterized by narratives that were confused,
incoherent, and flooded with affect. The dismissive state of mind with regard to attachment experiences, with
its minimization of the importance of attachment experiences, parallels the behaviors observed in infants
classified as avoidant in the strange situation research who displayed apparent indifference to the presence
of attachment figures. The preoccupied state of mind with regard to attachment paralleled the behaviors
observed in the infants classified as ambivalent in the strange situation paradigm in that these narratives
reflected the tendency to become overwhelmed with affect and confused when processing experiences with
attachment figures.

A striking finding of AAI research was that the attachment patterns demonstrated by parents in the interview
most often matched the corresponding classification of their babies in the strange situation. The majority of
the adults who were classified as secure-autonomous in the AAI had babies who were classified as secure
in the strange situation. About three quarters of the adults characterized as dismissive had babies who were
classified as avoidant in the strange situations, and there was also a high correlation between preoccupied
adult AAI narratives and infant ambivalent behavior. These findings provided further documentation of the
power of early attachment experiences and revealed the intergenerational transfer of attachment patterns.
Later research even found that the AAI status of a pregnant woman could predict the strange situation
behavior of her as yet unborn child with 75% accuracy.

Attachment theory has informed a wide variety of forms of contemporary mental health interventions. In
the past several decades researchers have begun to study the potential for using attachment theory to
understand the psychological development and functioning of persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). Since
contact with an attachment figure is a primary means of regulating affect, analyzing the attachment patterns
of persons with ID is an important consideration in understanding behavior such as problematic attention
seeking and emotion regulation.

There has been some question as to whether or not the distribution of attachment style might be different from
the general population in people with ID. Research by Carlo Schuengel and Cees Janssen has found that
children with Down syndrome may have an unusually high proportion of disorganized relationships. Although
the reason for this finding is not clear, it has been hypothesized that ID may disrupt the caregiving system or
that the cognitive deficits in the ID population may make them more vulnerable to experience situations as
frightening and without solutions.

One of the challenges in assessing attachment in ID populations has been developing appropriate methods
of assessment. The standard methods of measuring attachment involve narrative interview or self-report
questionnaires. These methods require good verbal skills and the ability to reflect on experience, both of
which are areas of deficit for individuals with ID.

Research by Felicity Larson, Nadja Alim, and Elias Tsakanikos using a specially adapted self-report version
of attachment style with adults with mild to moderate ID has found the same range of attachment styles as
in the general population. Instruments such as the Secure Base Safe Haven Observation list (SBSHO) and
the Manchester Attachment Scale-Third Party Observational Measure (MAST) have shown promise. Both
the MAST and the SBSHO are third-party informant completed assessments in which attachment behaviors
are observed and rated using a Likert scale measuring observed behaviors such as soliciting comfort when
distressed and accepting caretaker attention to others. Both instruments have found support for test–retest
reliability, good internal consistency, and convergent reliability.

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Deanna Gallichan and Carol George demonstrated reliable and valid results in measuring adult attachment
status in ID individuals using the Adult Attachment Projective System, an instrument in which the task is to tell
a story in response to a standardized set of simple line drawings of attachment situations. There is still need
for further research in this area.

See also Ecological Systems Theory; Infancy; Parenting Style; Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Nancy Lundy
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483392271.n40
10.4135/9781483392271.n40

Further Readings
Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss: Vol. 3. Loss: Sadness and depression. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Basic Books. (Original work published 1969)
Cassidy, J., & Shaver, S. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of attachment (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Karen, R. (1998). Becoming attached. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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