the young is synchronized with maternal behavioral and physiological changes that are consistent with the mother’s preparation for the next generation of off- spring. New attachments are formed typically within minutes and hours rather than weeks and months, possi- bly to balance the tension between conservation and sur- vival (Cairns & Werboff, 1967; Mason & Kinney, 1974). In this regard, the adaptation had to be rapid in order for the vulnerable infant to live.
Attachment Theory
Studies of infant-mother attachment came in the wake of these systematic investigations, and they stimulated enormous scientific and public interest (Maccoby & Masters, 1970). Psychoanalyst John Bowlby began a se- ries of seminars on these issues at the Tavistock Clinic
in London in the 1950s, and expanded the series in the 1960s (Foss, 1961, 1965; see Bretherton & Waters, 1985). Two key research programs reported in these dis- cussions were: (1) the observations of Schafer and Emerson (1964) on the age of onset of attachment and (2) Ainsworth’s (1963) observational report of infant- mother attachment in Uganda. Schafer and Emerson (1964) discovered that human infants begin to exhibit discriminative attachment at about 8 to 9 lunar months after birth, and that these attachments were formed with respect to a wide range of persons who were intimately involved in the infants’ caretaking.
John Bowlby first became known for his contribu- tions to object relations theory and, specifically, the sig- nificance of early mother-infant bonds (i.e., Bowlby, 1946, 1952). Beginning in the early 1950s, he began in- formal interdisciplinary seminars that involved, along with others, the eminent ethologist Robert Hinde. One outcome of these discussions was a paper published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis where Bowlby integrated concepts from object relations theory with evolutionary assumptions. He thereby generated a framework of attachment that fused psychoanalysis and ethology (Bowlby, 1958). In an important set of vol- umes, Bowlby described the implications of his “attach- ment theory” for understanding maternal-child anxiety, separation, and loss (1969, 1973).
In Bowlby’s view of attachment, priority is given to the events that occur during the child’s early years in the establishment of a relatively stable attachment sys- tem. Mother-infant separation is likely to produce en- during negative consequences. The nature of the attachment that is formed in early development gives rise to an internal representational model formed by the child. Moreover, the processes that give rise to an at- tachment involve intense mutual regulation and mutual organization between the mother and infant. Bowlby (1952) wrote:
If growth is to proceed smoothly, the tissues must be ex- posed to the inf luence of the appropriate organizer at crit- ical periods. In the same way, if mental development is to proceed smoothly, it would appear to be necessary for the undifferentiated psyche to be exposed during certain crit- ical periods to the inf luence of the psychic organizer—the mother. (p. 53)
Unlike ethological /animal behavior work, Bowlby’s ob- ject relations/attachment theory has a distinctive focus on individual differences. In addition, its goal, like ob-
7The “Strange Situation” seems to have been modeled after
the assessments of attachment employed with nonhuman mammals (see Scott, 1963).
ject relations theory, is to provide a comprehensive ac- count of psychopathology. Like ethological assumptions, it emphasizes the formative effects of early experiences. Any discussion of modern “attachment theory” must include Mary D. S. Ainsworth, Bowlby’s long-term col- laborator. Ainsworth conducted a pair of influential ob- servational studies on mother-infant relations in Uganda (Ainsworth, 1967) and Baltimore (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). One of the procedures to emerge from the later study was a controlled observation proce- dure labeled the “Strange Situation” (Ainsworth et al., 1978).7This assessment involved a series of very brief
separations (i.e., 1 to 3 minutes), with special attention given to the quality of the reunions. The coding of a re- union provided a classification procedure by which chil- dren were diagnosed as securely attached (Type B) or insecurely attached (Types A and C), along with vari- ous subtypes (Ainsworth et al., 1978). A primary attrac- tion of attachment theory is its presumption that these types are linked to the quality of later relationships and to psychopathology.
An extended discussion of attachment theory and its strengths and shortcomings is beyond the limits of this chapter and would catapult the account into the contem- porary period. For the current state of affairs on this enormously influential theory, the modern developmen- tal version of neopsychoanalysis, see Bretherton and Waters (1985) and Goldberg, Muir, and Kerr (1995). COGNITIVE REEMERGENCE
This era also saw the reemergence of cognitive-develop- mental questions as a central focus for thinking and re- search. Stimulated by a national reexamination of the educational process (e.g., Bruner, 1960), in part because of influential volumes on Piaget (Flavell, 1963; Hunt, 1961) and Vygotsky (Cole, 1978), and in part because of the fading vigor of social learning approaches, the prob- lem of how mental development occurs became a domi- nant concern for developmental researchers. It is a reemergence—rather than a revolution—because the is- sues of mind, consciousness, and mental development were central to the discipline at its founding.
Virtually all aspects of the field were touched by the fresh emphasis. Investigations of language development,
thinking, sensation, and information processing in chil- dren flourished as they had in no earlier era. Even hard-core behavioristic models proved to be vulnerable to cognitive modifications, with the new directions on “mediational mechanisms” being provided by T. and H. Kendler (Kendler & Kendler, 1962) and M. Kuenne (1946). Information-processing approaches were chal- lenged to build bridges to cognitive developmental studies and interpretations. Given the thrust of the move- ment, it seemed inevitable that the barriers between so- cial development and cognitive development should be transcended, and that it should become once again per- missible to refer to concepts of others and of self (see Harter, 1983, 1998, Chapter 9, this Handbook, Volume 3; Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). The recent history of this movement and the statement of the rapprochement among experimental-cognitive concepts, social cognition, and cognitive-developmental concepts are covered in other chapters of this Handbook (e.g., see, Baltes, Linden- berger, & Staudinger, Chapter 11, this Handbook, this volume; Fischer & Bidell, 1998; Kuhn & Franklin, Chap- ter 22, this Handbook, Volume 2; Overton, Chapter 2, this Handbook, this volume).
HISTORICAL THEMES AND