4.1.3 AINSWORTH’S STRANGE SITUATION Flashcards
who created the ‘Strange Situation’?
when?
what is it?
- MARY AINSWORTH
- 1969
- lab observation
- designed to measure the quality of attachment and differences in attachment styles in infants
- devised a technique known as ‘The Strange Situation’
what was the procedure?
- Ainsworth and Bell used 100 middle-class infants from a US university nursery and their mothers
- they were introduced to a strange room with toys
- the infants behaviour was observed during a set of pre-determined activities
- involved the child experiencing 8 ‘episodes’ of approximately 3mins each
- child is observed playing for 20mins while caregivers and strangers enter and leave the room (recreating the flow of the familiar and unfamiliar presence in most children’s life)
- observers noted the child’s willingness to explore, separation anxiety and reunion behaviour
- Ainsworth and Bell observed from the other side of a one-way mirror so that the children didn’t know they were being obsessed
what were the 6 stages of the procedure?
- the mother and the infant are left to play and the child is encouraged to explore
1) stranger enters the room and attempts to interact with the infant
2) mother leaves whilst stranger is in the room
3) mother returns and stranger leaves
4) mother leaves
5) stranger returns
6) mother returns and stranger leaves
what was Ainsworth looking for?
1) how willing the infant was to explore the room?
2) how the infant reacted to the stranger?
3) how the infant reacted to being left?
4) how the infant reacted upon reunion with the mother?
all these behaviours could be observed on several occasions
what are the three classifications for the infants that Ainsworth observed?
and what % of kids were classified for each?
- Type B Secure -> 70%
- Type A Insecure Avoidant -> 15%
- Type C Insecure Resistant -> 15%
what behaviour did Ainsworth find with each type?
what did Ainsworth conclude?
- the mother’s behaviour toward her infants will predict attachment type
- she called this Caregiver Sensitivity Hypothesis
- the fact that the majority of infants in her study were securely attached seems to support this hypothesis
evaluate the positives of ‘The Strange Situation’
- easy to replicate so therefore reliable
-> follows a standardised procedure involving 8 episodes of the
mother and stranger entering and leaving the room - there’s inter-rather reliability
-> more than one observer was used and the experiment was filmed - evidence for reliability comes from other research that found
-> categories used to observe the infants also work
-> the classifications for attachment are reliable
evaluate negatives of ‘The Strange Situation’
- population validity is low
-> it’s a relatively small sample
-> all ppts came from smilier socio-economic and geographical
backgrounds - lacks ecological validity / may not be applicable outside the lab
-> doesn’t represent talks completed by caregivers-infants in real life
-> Ainsworth was aware of this and calls the study ‘strange’
-> had to sacrifice ecological validity for the control of a lab
observation - culture bound
-> Ainsworth judged children by Western standards and this may
not be applicable to other cultures where child rearing practises
are different - other attachment figures were ignored / only focused on mothers
what is the 4th classification of attachment?
MAIN ET AL (1986)
- found a fourth type of infant who didn’t fit into the criteria for the existing 3 types
- these infants often froze in the strange situation / displayed completely random behaviours (Ainsworth didn’t cover)
- categorised them as Type D: Disorganised
- found that these were children who had suffered some form of abuse in early infancy
- the fact that this was found 16yrs after the original, raises issues about what else could have been missed
