Social-Conditioning Theory Applied to Metaphors Like "Attachment": The Conditioning of Infant Separation Protests by Mothers*

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Jacob L. Gerwitz
Martha Peláez Nogueras

Abstract

The "attachment" metaphor has labe1ed a process, of which infant protests duringmaternal departures have served as a presumably-unlearned indexo Within social-conditioningtheory, if, and how, such infant protests could be acquired was examined by (a)providing stimuli to the child via routine maternal behaviors (visual, verbal and movementorientations) during mothers' departures and (b) mothers' returns after brief separations ..18 6- to ll-mo. infant-mother dyads were studied in successive sessions. Two treatmentswere implemented in two orders: 1) CRF-infant protests to departure and separation cueswere aJways followed by contingent maternal responses; 2) DRO-cuedinfantprotests werenever followed by contingent maternal responses. To control for general stimulation effects,the same number and content of maternal stimuU were provided in the two treatments.Individual infant cued-protest rates during both departures and brief separationsincreased under CRF and decreased under DRO, shifting down from contingent to noncontingenttreatments and up from noncontingent to contingent treatments. Resultssupport the assumption that infant protests to both maternal departure and brief-separation cues can be conditioned in everyday settings, trained inadvertently by the socialcontingencies the caregiver's behaviors provide in the departure and separation contextsin which the pro tests are found.

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How to Cite
Gerwitz, J. L., & Peláez Nogueras, M. (2011). Social-Conditioning Theory Applied to Metaphors Like "Attachment": The Conditioning of Infant Separation Protests by Mothers*. Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 87–103. https://doi.org/10.5514/rmac.v1.i1.26903