Pavlov's Attachment Theory

Ivan Pavlov is a Russian scientist, who discovered the classical conditioning theory that involves leaning a new behaviour by association. In his research, he linked two stimuli to produce new learned response in animals. To demonstrate this, Ivan Pavlov conducted a study by ringing a bell before the dogs were fed. He made it a routine until the dogs were conditioned to the idea that ringing a bell was associated with food. The action of ringing a bell only made the dog to salivate which is a conditioned response (Walker, 2017). According to Pavlov, the dogs were demonstrating classical conditioning with the bell acting as the neutral stimuli, the unconditioned stimuli was food while the unconditioned response was salivating. Similarly, John Watson an American psychologist conducted an experiment on Little Albert to prove that conditioning also happens in human. In his study, he showed the 9 months old, several
Attachment is explained by how a person feels when the person he/she is attached to is away. The attachment research is carried out on infants and young children (Goldberg, Muir & Kerr, 2013). Mary Ainsworth devised the Strange Situation Classification to assess how attachments vary between children. In her experiment, Mary focused on children aged between one and two years in determining the behaviour and attachment styles. The experiment was conducted in different episodes that lasted three minutes each. Consequently, Mary identified three attachment styles that she related to early interactions with their mothers. These attachment styles are; secure, insecure avoidant and insecure ambivalent. More to this, Ainsworth concluded that the attachment style of a child depends highly on the mother’s behaviour towards them. Therefore, sensitive mothers respond correctly to the needs of children. This attachment has been found to be reliable due to its consistency observed in subsequent