Attachment Theory

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Section 2 The importance of early childhood - the early social and emotional development.

The early experiences of a human being are essential for the development of cognition, emotional stability, behaviour and social skills. Some developmental psychologists claim that early experiences predicate long-term outcomes and protect or make vulnerable against possible future negative experiences (Sroufe & Jacobvitz, 1989; Schore, 1994). In the first year of life human brain more than doubles in weight and is characterised by amazing plasticity (Bee and Boyd 2007). Some of the changes in this rapid development are driven by genes but the expression of genes, i.e.. how they produce an outcome, depends to a large extent on the environment. …show more content…
Attachment theory was developed by British psychologist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby. Bowlby (1969,1973,1980) worked with children from refugee camps and other institutional settings and observed that the children were very often listless, depressed or emotionally and mentally disturbed, and unable to develop normal emotional attachment with other people. He proposed that the experience with primary caregivers allows a child to build a set of expectations and beliefs about self, the world, and relationships, he called it an internal working model. IWM based on maladaptive relationships is likely to continue to impact an individual’s reaction to others throughout life ( Bretherton & Mulholland, …show more content…
A child securely attached is more likely to be confident, compliant, more enthusiastic, and very importantly, resilient to ordinary every day stress but also extreme stress throughout their life (Thompson, 2000). Several research studies confirm that children between ages 3 and 5 with secure pattern of attachment are more likely to be empathetic, self-confident, curious about the world and be better at forming close friendships (Elicker et al., 1992; Jacobson and Wille, 1986; Youngblade and Belsky, 1992). Children who experienced insecure attachment, on the other hand, might display anger, noncompliance and even physical aggression towards their mothers (Londervill and Main, 1981, Matas et al.,
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