Learning theorists view that attachment is based on the principles of classical and operant conditioning. For learning theorists, every infant is born with reflex responses whereby the food, when given, plays the role of the stimulus and the pleasure that the infant gets from it after consumption, plays the role of the response. The primary caregiver (usually the mother) becomes associated with this feeling (pleasure) and systematically the conditioned stimulus. The food giver is therefore seen as the source of pleasure by the infant irrespective of whether the food is supplied or not. According to Dollard and Millard (1950), when hungry the infant feels uncomfortable and experience drive state which stimulates the baby to seek some way in order to lessen the discomfort of being hungry. The comfort found from the result in drive reduction. Reducing the drive is rewarding for the infant who associates the reward(primary) to the provider, mostly the mother (secondary). Ultimately, the infant becomes attached to the provider because the infant sees the provider as the source of reward.
However, according to Harlow and Harlow (1962), the attachment is not only based on the provision of food but also on contact comfort as seen on the behaviour of rhesus monkeys. The infant monkeys were placed in a cage with a two wired mesh cylinders and with a face. One was bare and provided milk to the baby monkey (lacteal mother) whilst the other one was covered with cloth providing (contact comfort). Harlow and Harlow (1962) have shown that providing food was not efficient for the formation of attachment as baby monkeys preferred the cloth-covered cylinder as a secure base. Though, the cloth covered did not give sufficient “love” to enable healthy psychological development because the monkeys developed some difficulties with mating and parenting. In another experiment, Harlow and Harlow (1962) demonstrated that affectional bond can not only occur between a caregiver and a child but also between infants.
Freud (1924) showed during his psychosexual stages that attachment between mothers and child is formed through the first stage (oral pleasure). Bowlby, also Freudian, (1969) proposed that attachment was essential for survival and suggested that infants physically dependants on an adult for protection, care and nourishment because they are born with an innate tendency to form an attachment in order to increase their chance of survival. For nativist, attac