3.3.3 The Concepts of a Critical Period and an Internal Working Model

Bowlby's Monotropic explanation of attachment contains several ideas which have become crucial to our understanding of how early attachments can impact later relationships.

These are:

• The Critical Period
• The Internal Working Model (IWM)

The critical period

• This is the idea that an attachment has to take place within a certain time scale, otherwise, it will never happen for the infant
• It is based on the biological idea of time scales in the physiological development of a fetus
• For example, the limbs of a fetus need to be shown to be developing in the fourth week of pregnancy: After day 28 if this has not happened then it will not
• Bowlby believed the same could be true for psychological development, hence the critical period for attachment
• Bowlby strongly felt that an infant needed an attachment to develop in the first 2.5 years
• If it did not it would be very difficult, if not impossible for it to develop afterward, leading to problems in later childhood and adulthood

The issues with the critical period

• Rutter (1998) found, in his study of Romanian orphans that the children had been kept in horrendous conditions, with minimal contact with adults
• Their ability to form attachments had been limited as a result
• However, it was found that when they were adopted into stable homes, attachments did begin to form, even though some of these children were a lot older than the 2.5 years Bowlby discussed
• Rutter admitted that it took time and was more difficult the older the child was, however, attachments were still made with children as old as 7 or 8
• Bowlby's theory of the critical period was severely challenged

The sensitive period

• As a result of these controversies as well as other research indicating Critical was too strong a concept, Bowlby amended the theory
• He renamed it Sensitive Period
• The sensitive period means it is ideal to attach in the first 2.5 years but it is not essential
• It is possible to attach later, as Rutter demonstrated

The Internal Working Model (IWM)

• Bowlby was a Psychodynamic psychologist for most of his career
• Although his monotropic theory takes a lot from biology and evolutionary ideas, we can see traces of his background in his work on IWM and Continuity
• The notion that your early childhood has an impact on later relationships is highly psychodynamic in nature

The background-continuity

• Strongly linked to the idea of continuity and the fact that the early relationships that we have as an infant will have an impact on our later relationships
• It has already been shown that attachment Type B's tend to have the more secure and stable relationships whereas Type A tends to be aloof and Type C clingy, leading to problems in romantic relationships and friendships alike
• There is a wealth of evidence from Hazan and Shaver through to McCarthy
• This idea also has face validity as it seems to make logical sense

IWM

• The IWM is an internal representation of how we see ourselves as well as how we expect others to react to us
• It is like a schema of ourselves: A packet of knowledge on how we view ourselves, how worthy as a person we feel we are and how we expect others to see us
• These mental representations are formed in our early childhood, mostly through our interactions with our Primary Care Giver (PCG)
• It will impact how we interact with others and form relationships for the rest of our lives as well as explain why we all react and behave so differently to others: Our early experience shapes us

Secure attachment and IWM

• If an infant has a secure attachment, then they grow up feeling loved by their PCG and knowing they are worthy of love
• Their IWM will be positive and tells them they have worth and are lovable
• In later life they expect people to treat them well as this is what they experienced as an infant
• If someone treats them badly, they find it easier to cope with this as they can accept it may not be their fault
• They are worthy of love, and so if someone rejects them they can accept it and see that it may not be due to them: They can move on

Insecure Avoidant Attachment and IWM

• If an infant has had an insecure-avoidant attachment, then they will feel ignored by their caregiver and so will ignore them back as a means to protect themselves from getting hurt
• This will continue into adulthood
• Their IWM will lead them to expect that they will be rejected by others and they have little self-worth
• To protect themselves from hurt, they will remain aloof and not really be able to get close to others
• If they feel they are about to be rejected by someone, they will probably end the relationship first (reject first) so they can deal with the loss more easily: It was me not them
• As a result, the IWM makes it hard for them to have fulfilling relationships with others

Insecure Resistant Attachment and IWM

• If an infant has had an insecure resistant attachment then they will have grown up believing they had to make a fuss to get attention
• As they had a PCG that was ambivalent, one day loving and the next cold, they learned that crying and making a fuss was a good way to gain attention
• Their IWM will form so that they believe this is how they must be in later relationships: Clingy and possessive to keep the person interested, just as they behaved to get the PCG's attention
• This will make later relationships problematic as they will be too clingy and possessive and so likely drive people away from them
• Yet when they are 'rejected' their IWM will make them believe that they need to try harder to 'win' the person back: In reality, this will probably make things worse

Evidence for IWM

• This largely comes from the studies into continuity, which back up the issues that people have in later relationships
• Mary Main interviewed a lot of participants about their childhood and their later relationships
• From this, she developed a theory of adult attachment styles
• Main found that there is a link between childhood attachment styles and adult attachment styles, so supporting the IWM