this man has influenced the world we live in today in areas such as education parenting and child care and unsurprisingly his ideas have shaped much of psychology in fact at one point in time his influence stretched to advising none other than the World Health Organization this man is John Balby the founder of attachment Theory hey everyone welcome back to buried in mind in this video we're going to explore balby's monotropic theory that offers an explanation for the formation of attachments John Balby was born in London in 1907 to an upper middle class family whose father was surging to the king's household Barbie was the fourth of six children and as was the social Norm at the time for a family in the upper middle class the children were raised by a nanny because it was thought that too much parental attention would lead to the children becoming spoiled when you talk like that I'm tempted to ring for Nanny and have you put to bed with no supper as a result John only saw his mother for about one hour a day after tea time in effect this nanny was his mother and when his Nanny left the family home when he was four years old for John this was a tragic loss one which he would later describe as being like the loss of her mother perhaps many of these early life experiences shaped his future work John Balby went on to become a psychologist who spent much of his life studying early childhood and the critical role the relationship a child forms with their mother plays in later development in the previous video we explored the learning theory explanation which suggested that an infant forms an attachment with their caregiver because of cupboard love simply because the mother provides food bolby was not a fan of this idea instead of the behaviorist's focus on the environment he believed that attachment had much more of a biological called basis to it with the animal stories of Lorenz in 1935 shaping his thinking so let's explore each part of balby's monotropic theory so firstly adaptive bolby sees attachment as an evolutionary behavior that helps with survival he sees attachment as an innate process where the child is born with the biological abilities to seek out an attachment figure and to be close to them he argues that this increases the chances of survival for the infant because it helps meet the child's needs as well as protect them from dangers for example there is the rooting reflex where newborn babies will turn their heads towards anything that Strokes or touches their cheek or mouth in anticipation of feeding it's a reflex to AIDS breastfeeding next there are social releases these are behaviors or signals from the infant that draw in an adult to give them their attention social releases is getting at the idea that the baby's behavior unlock blocks the response of the adult towards them for example a baby smile elicits the instinctive attachment behaviors from an adult where they respond to the baby other social releases include cooing or gripping a hand it initiates this reciprocal two-way interaction between the infant and the caregiver a baby doesn't need to learn these social release of behaviors they are instinctive this brings us to the critical period which is the idea that there is a certain time frame for a baby to form an attachment with their caregiver and according to Balby this is up to two and a half years old I've always suggested that if a child doesn't form an attachment during this time then there will be lasting consequences for the child's development socially emotionally and intellectually fourthly we come to a monotropy where the theory gets its name from the word mono means one so bulby here puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of the child attachment to one care caregiver usually the mother and that this relationship is more important and significant than the relationships they may form with other people finally there is the internal working model this is the idea that as a result of the monotropic relationship that is formed with the caregiver the child forms a model or a template for all their future relationships what their relationship was like with their mother becomes the model for what to expect from others this includes future romantic relationships as well as how the child may go on to be a parent themselves basing their parenting behavior on the relationship with their own parents so there are the parts of his theory if you ever forget them you can just ask me see what I did there yeah I know that's pretty rubbish and it's not exactly spot on but ask me now let's discuss Baldy's monotropic theory of attachment there is a range of supporting evidence for the theory firstly animals to do research by Lorenz in 1935 nicely demonstrates some of the features bolby included in his theory I wonder if you can think back to the video on animal studies where we explored Lorenz how many of the features of balby's monotropic theory can you see in his research you may remember that Lorenz randomly divided a large clutch of gray like goose eggs into two groups the first group of eggs hatched naturally with their mother the other group of eggs hatched in an incubator away from their mother but importantly the first moving object they encountered was Lorenz he then placed them under an upturned box and when the box was removed the naturally hatch goslings followed their mother whereas the incubated guzzlings followed Lorenz these findings firstly show how attachment is instinctive it's not learned the geese naturally have the ability to form a relationship with the first significant object they encountered in the first hours of their life and secondly the Research indicates a critical period in that the most likely time for imprinting to occur was approximately between 12 and 17 hours with them needing to imprint by approximately 30 hours further evidence for balby's monotropic Theory can be seen in the other animal study we considered with the work of Harry Harlow again can you think back to what they found in that research and where do you see bolby's monotropic Theory the main feature evident in Harlow's research is the internal working model Harlow found that the long-term effects of not having formed an attachment of not forming a bond with a caregiver caused significant damage they reported that the monkeys lacked skills in how to be social interact often being timid and not knowing how to behave around other monkeys and the mother less monkeys that became mothers themselves were inadequate mothers they lacked a model and an example of how to be caring nurturing and comforting to their own children because they had never experienced that themselves Beyond evidence from animal studies Research into Human Relationships also points to the internal working model hasn't in Shaver in 1987 published a questionnaire called The Love quiz the questionnaire measured their current relationships and also their past attachment history 620 people responded and they found a positive correlation between attachment type and later love experiences for example those with a secure attachment had relationships that were marked by trust friendship and positive emotions insecure avoidant adults had relationships that were marked by fear of closeness and lack of trust hasn't in Shaver's results support balby's idea of an internal working model and suggests that our early childhood experience appearances affect our later adult relationships however research by Shaffer and Emerson in 1964 challenges bolby's monotropic Theory this is because bolby's Theory placed the emphasis on the importance of the formation of one special attachment however Schaefer and Emerson in their research proposed four stages in the formation of attachment with the last one being multiple attachments this is the idea that children can form significant attachments with more than one person something bulby's Theory doesn't account for additionally some cultures around the world parent in such a way that multiple caregivers are the norm from the moment the child is born and so don't form a special attachment relationship with just one person and finally one criticism of bulby's theory is that it's socially sensitive this is because the theory emphasizes the importance of the formation of an attachment to one significant caregiver during the critical period And this is usually the a mother this arguably adds a terrible burden of responsibility on mothers to firstly form a strong relationship with their child and secondly setting them up to take the blame for anything that goes wrong in the rest of the child's life and it also underestimates the role of the father so now we can see that John Balby has clearly had a lasting impact on the world of child development but there's another psychologist who took bulby's ideas and created a way of measuring attachment which gave us the types of attachment we know today she was Mary Ainsworth and she did something rather strange to find out more about that you can click the video on the screen now I hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one