Why does music get stuck in our heads?

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-triggers-earworm-song-thats-stuck.html

I found this article on attempting to explain earworms (why certain songs get stuck in our heads). Research on this article explains it to be as a result of either:
Contact with certain people, specific rhythms you encounter, certain situations which relate to the songs meaning or lyrics, situational (where the song was heard), stress, tiredness or boredom.
Links to Ebbinghaus' memory research of 'involuntary memory retrieval', but no one explanation or cause can show why certain songs get stuck in our heads. It is more than likely, however, that cues are the main cause for the memory of a certain song to be involuntarily remembered.

Science Daily Article- Substance Abuse

Today I found an article that was of particular interest to me, as I am currently studying substance abuse in psychology I found something that can possibly explain a persons need to start or continue the taking of drugs. The title being "High Childhood IQ Linked to Subsequent Illicit Drug Use, Research Suggests" catching my eye. It explains that a high childhood IQ may be linked to illegal drug use, the results were more persuading in regards to women. At first this may seem very unlikely, but when you discover that it is a longditudinal study of approximately 8000 people the results seem much more convincing.
At first IQ scores were measured at the ages of 5 and 10 years and then at the ages of 16 and again at 30 drug use was recorded through self reporting measures. Results show that by the age of 30, around one in three men and one in six women had used Cannibis, the use of other drugs was also recorded with overall drug use twice as common among men than women. Those with high IQ scores at the age of 5 were 50% more likely to have used illegal drugs than those with lower scores 25 years later. With women these results were even more suprising who were more than twice as likely to have used illegal drugs than those with low IQ scores.
The most intriuging question with this article is 'Why would those with a higher IQ be more inlcined to drug use?', many argue that those with a higher intelligence are open to new experiences which increase simulation and arousal levels. Other research shows that more intelligent children are easily bored and often have a more extroverted personality and so tend to seek excitement more using drugs.

Privation

Privation is where no attachment bond has been formed so there is no opportunity for attachments to form. It is different to deprivation, as it is where there has been no attachment figure to start off with. This is often harder to study as even when attachment figures are bad influences on the child they still have an attachment figure, whereas children who have suffered privation have not had this bond at all. It is known as the 'forbidden experiment' as this is immoral and unethical to test if you wanted to condition someone to be raised with privation. In the rare case that an infant has suffered with privation future relationships are said to be much more affected than those who have simply just been deprived.
Studies that are of the most interest to me are those of feral children, these are children who have been abandoned and raised by packs of dogs for which their behaviours and norms have changed to copy those of the dogs. This is often used by behaviourist psychologists as it is easier to argue that role models and people in your environment influence your behaviour as opposed to a biological or evolutionary perspective. Children such as Oxana and Aveyron have been studied and attempts to rehabilitate them into society and experiments in helping them learn normal human behaviours have been carried out.
Curtiss who famously studied the case of Genie a feral child found that severe privation has permanent irreversible effects as attempts to change her behaviours were effective but only to a small extent, she never fully overcame her behaviours and tendencies to which she was brought up with. On the other hand Koluchova 1991 found that Czechoslovakian twin boys overcame any negative effects of being neglected and lived normal lives in education as well as both raising families.
Romanian orphan studies have been very useful in studying privation, as the sample size is so large it has allowed several children to be studied, these children were living in inhumane conditions, whilst being malnourished, having no toys and having minimal social interaction causing devastating effects. These orphanages were found and it caused a public outcry with many people in the UK adopting the children and taking them out of such inhumane conditions. Many studies took place which were longitudinal to see the effects on the rest of these infants lives. Kreppner er al 1999 studied 104 children who were adopted before the age of 2 and found that these children has a lower frequency of pretend play and a lower ability to appreciate other peoples' mental states. This is supported by the work of Rutter et al 2007 who found that these children had quasi- autistic like symptoms such as communication difficulties and stereotyped behaviours.
The problem with using Romanian orphanages when studying privation is that the results are difficult to generalise as even with the huge sample that was used there is also a huge variation in individual differences, the level of care and socialisation must effectively be studied in the families that these children were adopted into, however most research suggests some long term damage taking place when privation has occured.

Deprivation

Deprivation occurs when an attachment bond is formed and then broken. This is often thought to have psychologically damaging affects on infants that have been deprived, particularly those under the age of two as theorised by psychologists such as Bowlby.
Robertson and Robertson argued that the short term effects of deprivation lead to three stages, firstly of protest( the child refusing to separate from the attachment figure), then Despair(where the child would feel abandoned and be distressed) and finally detachment (where the infant would lose the attachment bond and show little emotion to others). Bowlby studied deprivation as well as privation, through his famous case study of 44 thieves he concluded that maternal deprivation led to delinquency, this is often considered when studying criminals as his work revolutionised the way many approach attachment and in particular deprivation. He also argued that repeated separation in an infant leads to an insecure attachment type being formed which has consequences for later development.
Belsky 88 studied the effects of day care on attachment types and deprivation. Through meta-analysis ( using data from a range of studies) he found that out of 464 children, the children who spent less than 20 hours per week in day care had 26% with an insecure attachment type and those spending more than 20 hours per week in day care with 41% having an insecure attachment type. Through his conclusions that day care had negative affects on attachment types, many reduced the amount of hours they had their child in day care for. This changed the way many treated their children, with mothers choosing not to work to spend more time with their children, it became almost a moral panic for parents as they felt responsible for how their children's future relationships turned out. Arguably the result of these attachment types could be due to specific day care centres. Not all day care centres may be damaging, some may provide a more adequate socialisation process for infants than parents themselves. Creps and Vernon-Feagans found that infants starting daycare before the age of six months were more sociable when older. On a personal note, I dont think day care is too damaging, if the infant is happy and is socialising with many other people possitively then surely future relationships can only be successful.

Child Attachment-alternative ways to measure

Ainsworth's 'strange situation' may not be practical for all psychologists to use if they want to find out the attachment type of a person, particularly if this is an older child or adult. An alternative is to use Main et al 1985 Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), this consists of fifteen questions asked to adults in the space of an hour that are open ended allowing the adult to elaborate on past experiences or what they would do in a specific situation, from this Main et al found four main attachment types amongst the adults they studied.
Insecure-dismissing: Where all attachment relationships are dismissed and disregarded
Autonomous-Secure: Where all attachment experiences are recalled openly with ease
Insecure-Preoccupied: These individuals struggle to please their parents
Unresolved- These individuals have experienced an attachment trauma or the loss of an attachment
These types can be used to experiment attachment types in adults, which may be more efficient to use, Ainsworth's study is more longitudinal, however it is incapable in explaining adult attachment types and whether these are different to that of infants. Main et al also found that the insecure-dismissing and insecure-preoccupied type adults tended to have insecure children in the strange situation condition, this shows that a mothers own childhood and attachment experiences can affect the way she interacts with her child determining the attachment type the infant has. This may also support the view that attachment types are biological, if the attachment type of the mother and infant are the same and if both were to be separated at the birth, however this is hard to generalise as the environment is the basis for forming attachments with other people.
Another way to study the attachment types of a child is through an experiment devised by Waters et al 1995, this is where 90 behavioural descriptors are shown on cards and these are then sorted into 9 piles, ranking them from 1-9, 1 being least like the child's behaviours and 9 being most like the child. This is determined through interviews and observations of children. Peterson et al 1998 also concluded that this corresponded with the classifications in the 'strange situation' by Ainsworth making it more reputable.

Child Attachment- Mary Ainsworth

What I have found particularly interesting is the work conducted by Mary Ainsworth, through her 'strange situation' procedure she was able to conclude three types of infants. The 'strange situation' was an experiment in which a stranger would enter the room with the mother and infant, then the mother would leave leaving the stranger alone with the infant, the infants behaviour was then observed and then the mother would return. She argued that the type and quality of attachment between the mother and child is dependent on the mother’s behaviour so that when an infant became securely attached it would be due to the mother being sensitive to its wants and needs.

In middle class US samples around 65% of infants were securely attached to the mother. She used these results to conclude that there are different types of attachments and that it is dependent upon the mother’s sensitivity and responsiveness to the child. Below shows the different attachment types:

 

Ainsworth's results revolutionised the approach many psychologists had on child attachment, as after this experiment psychologists would classify infants into one of these three categories from their own experiments. One major flaw however, is that it is culturally relative, it depends upon the culture as work by Izjendoorn would suggest. Note that she claims 65% of US infants were securely attached to the mother, surely this can't be said universally?

Child Attachment

Schaffer explains his theories on attachment in child social development, particularly with babies and young infants; he outlined different stages in which his studies concluded various stages in children’s social development. When we look around us, we can often relate to the stages he talks about when we study young children and babies, for example its often clear that a child becomes attached to its parent when it constantly relies on them to take them somewhere or engage in a particular activity with them and we can see the children that are reluctant to their parents or carers.
Schaffer’s stages were as follows:

Stage and Age of infant	Attachment stage
Asocial- 0-6 weeks old	Babies imitate people and objects
Diffuse- 6 weeks to 6 months	Babies show no particular preference for any one individual and will be comforted by anyone
Single strong attachment- 7 to 12 months	Babies now show a strong attachment for a single individual and will fear strangers
Multiple attachments- from 12 months	Babies will show attachment towards several people, by 18 months some have made as many as 5 attachments.

To critise the work of Schaffer you could argue that babies simply make the same expressions that older people do and dont intentionally copy any actions that they see from others, from the age 0-6 weeks babies can't speak and so perhaps the facial expressions they make are to communicate with the care-giver so they can respond to their needs, not because they are immitating them to communicate otherwise. Arguably at the Diffuse stage, babies have already attached themselves to several figures, this would explain them being easily comforted but perhaps the single strong attachment stage has already happened and the multiple attachments occuring before even 7 months. Schaffer's stages are very specific, individual babies for example some that are anxious- resistant may not experience these stages as they are more likely to avoid several strangers as well as the one main attachment figure.

Caregiver-Infant Interactions 
At a very young age, children and babies that havn't learnt to speak yet have to find other ways to communicate with the person who is caring for them. Different psychologists argue that this interaction is vital at different stages of a child's development.

Klaus and Kennell 76 argued that immediate physical contact straight after birth is vital for the babies' first bond to form they found that mothers who cuddled their baby straight after birth enjoyed better relationships with the baby. So perhaps a physical interaction straight after birth results in the set up of the relationship between mother and child for the rest of it's development.

Condon and Sander 74 found that babies would co-ordinate their actions to adult’s speech, they would engage with their conversation through their actions in a rhythm so that both can understand each other as if they are turn taking in communicating with each other, this is also known as interactional synchrony. Murray and Trevarthen 85 asked mothers to make a ‘frozen face’ expression with their babies and found that the infants became extremely upset and wanted to engage back with the mother demonstrating interactional synchrony as a way of communicating with the caregiver.

We can often see young babies and children imitating adult behaviours and particularly facial expressions before they’ve learnt to speak. Melzoff and Moore 77 investigated facial expressions in 2-3 week old infants.They found that after a video was shown to each baby of certain behaviours that they copied the behaviour straight after, this is an alternative to the other theories of care-giver interactions with infants and a behaviourist is more likely to support the idea of immitation arguing that we copy models as a basis for future relationships.

Snow and Ferguson 77 identified a specific way in which adults converse with young children in a way that certain words are paired together, it is usually slow, high pitched and repetitive and made up of short and simple sentences. Papousek 91 found that Chinese, German and American mothers tended to use a rising tone to signal to the baby that it was their turn in interacting with them. It can also be seen as a part of interactional synchrony.

As evidence has been found to support all the theories listed above, perhaps certain infants follow interactional synchrony for example and another immitation, or maybe all of the above are applied to all infants at different ages and stages in develoment. Through these caregiver-infant interactions we can see how most adults interact with their children, if a child has not received developments in these stages we can see how their future relationships develop as well as other behaviours through individual case studies e.g  feral children (the case of Genie).