Attachment is the emotional and behavioral dependence of an infant to its primary caregiver. It involves the senses of resources and security.

Attachment develops between the ages of 6 to 8 weeks and 3 years, and lasts for life.

Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby.

The term “bonding” is often used alternatively for attachment. However, bonding is not associated with resources and security (e.g., a mother feels anxious but does not feel unsafe when she is separated from her infant).

Attachment: Child → Mother

Bonding: Mother → Child

Insecure attachments may be associated with the development of personality disorders.

Developed by Mary Ainsworth in the mid-1980s, “strange situation” is a research protocol for assessing an infant’s attachment.

Also called “respondent conditioning,” classical conditioning results from the repeated pairing of a neutral (conditioned) stimulus with one that evokes a response (unconditioned stimulus), such that the neutral stimulus eventually comes to evoke the response.

Example: A dog salivated when it had food in its mouth, saw the food, smelled the food, or even when it heard the footsteps of a person coming to feed it.

Food: Unconditioned stimulus (UCS).

Food → salivation: Unconditioned response (UCR).

Footsteps: Conditioned stimulus (CS).

Footsteps → salivation: Conditioned response (CR).

Extinction: When a CS is repeated without being paired with its UCS, the CR gradually weakens and eventually disappears. However, the UCR does not become extinct.

Generalization: The transferring of a CS from one stimulus to another. A dog may respond to the footsteps of people other than its feeder, or even to noises other than footsteps. Transference during psychotherapy was explained as stimulus generalization.

Discrimination: Recognizing and responding to differences between similar stimuli. A smart dog knows when its feeder is coming.

Give the positive reinforcement intermittently, and in a variable-ratio schedule.

Mechanism of extinction applied to substance-related disorders:

CS (conditioned stimulus): Environment associated with craving.

UCS (unconditioned stimulus): Drug.

CR (conditioned response): Craving.

The CR was established with repeated exposure to a paired UCS and CS. When the patient is repeatedly exposed to an unpaired CS (i.e., when a UCS is not available), the craving may finally become extinct.

It is a form of learning in which behavioral frequency is altered through the application of positive and negative consequences. Operant conditioning is also known as “instrumental conditioning.”

Example: A dog receives food only when it responds correctly by pressing a lever.

Food: Reinforcing stimulus.

Lever: Operant.

Positive reinforcement: Increases the probability that a response will recur.

Negative reinforcement: Leads to the removal of a response.

Variable-interval schedule: Reinforcement occurs at variable intervals.