One of the main examples on how control systems helps shed light on attachment is when a baby starts crying, which according to Bowlby serves as a signaling behavior. As a baby, the child does not have enough control to seek the mother or on his own fix the error signal, if she is too far away or not in sight, so instead of approaching the mother, the child’s cries serves as the output in his control system because its goal-directed effect is that the mother will go towards the child, essentially reducing the error signal. In these situations, a child usually does not stop crying until he is in contact with his mother, and likewise if the error signal is the other way around, and the mother is the one that needs the child, her attachment behavior will not terminate, or be inhibited, until she is in contact or displays some sort of signaling behavior with her child. Applying control systems to attachment behavior helps us comprehend the purpose of a child’s, sometimes incessant, crying, or of a mother’s, sometimes coddling, hovering.

However, I do wonder how we can be sure that this control system is based solely on proximity, because certainly this system is not as simple as the temperature control system. This attachment control system depends on the mother’s hormones, mother/child’s emotions and on contextual information, if they are in a familiar/unfamiliar or safe/unsafe context; we cannot oversimplify it by saying that it functions as a machine but applying the control systems approach does indeed help clarify certain forms of behavior.

4. Why do we need a hedonic/incentive system? Why isn’t homeostatic control sufficient?

A hedonic system serves to put forth goal-directed actions. Homeostatic control, on the other hand, would not keep getting activated if it is already stable, or nearly stable, as its purpose is reducing error signals to maintain within an acceptable range from the set reference signal. Whereas, hedonic systems activate every time we “like” or “want” something. According to Berridge and Kringelbach’s paper: Pleasure Systems in the Brain” hedonic/incentive systems have evolutionary origins. They argue that these hedonic