Is Imprinting an Appropriate Model for Human Infant Attachment?

Abstract

We generalized the results of animal imprinting studies to see if they predict the development of attachment in 28 polymatrically-reared, Kenyan Gusii infants, whose ages were 6 to 30 months. The hypotheses tested were: (1) there is a sensitive phase for attachment; (2) there is an association between age of infant attachment and developmental level, as well as between age of attachment and caregiving history. Our results provide evidence against a sensitive phase for attachment: infants throughout the age range of the sample showed shifts in attachments, and no particular epoch in the infant's caregiving history was found to be most important in predicting their first attachment figure. There was an association between age of attachment, and both developmental level, and caregiving history. Early attached infants had higher scores on the Bayley Mental Development Index and less maternal body contact than their age matched peers. We may conclude, therefore, that, so far as is at present known, the way in which attachment behavior develops in the human infant and becomes focused on a discriminated figure is sufficiently like the way in which it develops in other mammals, and in birds, for it to be included, legitimately, under the heading of imprinting so long as that term is used in its current generic sense. (Bowlby 1969: 223.)