Attachment Theory and Artificial Cognitive Systems

John Bowlby formulated the core of Attachment Theory whilst working in a multidisciplinary team of childcare professionals, psychoanalysts, ethologists and other researchers at the Tavistock Clinic for over thirty years after the Second World War (Holmes 1993). From its inception Attachment Theory integrated concepts from academic fields as diverse as Ethology, Cognitive Science and Psychoanalysis. Attachment Theory attempts to set out descriptions of a set of observable behaviours related to social and emotional attachment in animals and humans and the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to these observable phenomena. It can therefore be presented as incorporating theoretical components that can be termed the behavioural and cognitive components of Attachment Theory. The behavioural component of Attachment Theory is valuable for researchers interested in engineering artificial attachment systems because the set of attachment behaviours that have been observed and recorded over the last half century provide numerous behavioural scenarios. These can act as standardised specifications of requirements for the engineering process allowing artificial attachment systems to be focused in their design and evaluation (Petters 2004, 2006). The cognitive component of Attachment Theory provides a point of departure for contemporary engineering theories. Designers of artificial attachment systems can use the information processing explanations for attachment phenomena that already exist within Attachment Theory to constrain their simulations. In this case the artificial systems are using simulations to explain natural systems. Or designers can reproduce attachment behaviours with novel and less biologically plausible information processing structures and mechanisms. In this case artificial attachment systems may be being produced primarily in pursuit of engineering goals.