User:N9D13/sandbox

Dollard and Miller Attachment Theory
John Dollard and Neal Elgar Miller were two American psychologists and professors who proposed the behavioral theory of attachment that suggests that attachment is comprised of a series of learned behaviors. They believed that children learn to form connections between the food provider, which is most often the mother, and the comfort of being fed through the process of classical conditioning, where the child learns to seeks comfort through contact with the mother. There are four fundamental processes that are instrumental for learned behaviors of the attachment theory to take place: drive, cue, response and reward.

Authors and Attachment Theory Background
Dollard and Miller have received recognition for their interest and contribution in constructing a psychotherapy that was based on the social learning theory of attachment by Albert Bandura. The works of Dollard and Miller were also influenced by John Bowlby who coined the term attachment theory and suggested innate comportment may be adjusted in response to an objective. Dollard was a pioneer in the multiple integrated branches of social and behavioral sciences. Miller is considered one of the most highly appraised learning theorists and experimentalists of the 20th century. Together, they have made various contributions in written works explaining their collaboration and the significance of their attachment theory.

Learning Theory of Attachment
Dollard and Miller proposed a theory in which attachment is comprised of a series of learned behaviors. They suggested that the provision of food is the foundation for the learning of attachment. Thus, an infant will create a bond regardless of who feeds it. The proposed theory did not share the same views of John Bowlby and James Robertson, who clearly expressed in their three phases of emotional response that a child is subject to experience intense distress in the event that it becomes separated from the mother, even if fed by another caregiver. Dollard and Miller’s theory of attachment states that children learn to connect the food provider, which is most often the mother or any primary caregiver, with the comfort of being fed. This occurs through the process of classical conditioning, where the infant associates comfort when it is in contact with the mother. They suggested that ultimately, the child will form attachment with the caregiver that provides food. In addition, they advocated that learning is a blind operation, meaning that it is not dependent on what is seen but rather works through the behavioral process of reward and punishment. Therefore, for attachment to materialize, behaviors are learned rather than inborn.

The theory consists of four fundamental processes that are instrumental to the learning process: drive, cue, response and reward. Drive, or motivation, urges and directs action toward solving a recognized need. A cue, or stimulus, is a sign emphasized by that drive as possibly pointing the way to a need’s solution. The response is any particular solution-seeking action that is directed to that cue. A reward, or reinforcement, is the fortifier of those response-to-cue associations, leading to the reduction of the need.

Authors Major Works

 * Dollard, John; Doob, Leonard William; Miller, Neal E.; Mowrer, Orval Hobart; Sears, Robert R. (1939). Frustration and aggression. New Haven: Published for the Institute of Human Relations by Yale University Press
 * Miller, Neal E; Dollard, John (1941). Social learning and imitation. New Haven: Published for the Institute of Human Relations by Yale University Press.
 * Dollard, John; Miller, Neal E. (1950). Personality and psychotherapy: an analysis in terms of learning, thinking, and culture. McGraw-Hill publications in psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.