..attachment theory....human babies, notoriously helpless creatures that they are, need mother love or something much like it in order to thrive and develop emotionally and cognitively" (27). This statement is applied in the context of Bowlby's thesis that it is the attachment between the child and the caregiver that ultimately determines the level of emotional and cognitive development of the individual. Thus, greater and more positive attachment leads to healthy development among children; the opposite happens when, as in the case of orphaned babies, lack of attachment can lead to an abnormal development of the child, both emotionally and cognitively. A similar thesis is subsisted to by Mary Ainsworth, whose concepts of secure and insecure attachment demonstrates that the level of security of attachment of the child with his/her caregiver "provides an important foundation for psychological development later in life." She identifies babies as either having a secure or insecure base, wherein the latter, determined through the Strange Situation experiment, illustrates various levels of emotional distress when left and later reunited with his/her caregiver. According to Talbot, Ainsworth's theory on attachment and classification of insecure attachment among babies demonstrates how "responsiveness"...

However, she also warns that "...responsiveness is not an attribute only of mothers and certainly not of all mothers...If sensitivity is the key, then maternal omnipresence cannot be construed as a good in itself" (50).
However, despite these findings from Ainsworth and Bowlby, Jerome Kagan argues that attachment is not the sole determinant of later development among children. This is because infants are "evolutionary equipped to stay on a positive developmental course." Moreover, he cites individual as well as cultural differences as determinants on whether a child harbors either a secure or insecure attachment base, thereby creating different paths toward development as s/he grows older. Thus, Kagan and other researchers on attachment and human development argue that there are external factors that affect child development; thus, it is too simplistic to say that what determines an individual's development towards adulthood is the level of attachment a child has with a or his/her caregiver.

Works Cited

Faxed material on attachment.

Talbot, M. (1998). "Attachment Theory: the ultimate experiment." The New York Times Magazine.