4.5 The Strange Situation Flashcards
What did Ainsworth base her attachment types on?
Ainsworth studied 26 in a tribe in Uganda and their Rships w their infants who ranged from 15wks-2yrs for hours at a time over 9 mths
What are Ainsworth’s attachment types?
- Insecure-avoidant (Type A) - infants are willing to explore - have low stranger anxiety - unconcerned by separation - avoid contact upon reunion w caregiver - caregivers are indiff to infants’ needs
- Securely attached (Type B) - infants are keen to explore - have high stranger anxiety - easy to calm - enthusiastic upon reunion w caregiver - caregivers are sensitive to infants’ needs
- Insecure-resistant (Type C) - infants are unwilling to explore - have high stranger anxiety - distressed by separation - seek and reject contact upon reunion w caregiver - caregivers are ambivalent to infants’ needs
What is the Strange Situation?
A controlled observation designed to measure the security of att a child displays towards a caregiver
What behaviours are measured in the Strange Situation?
- Proximity seeking - infant w secure att stays close to caregiver
- Exploration and secure-base behaviour - secure att gives child confidence to explore using caregiver as secure base
- Stranger anxiety - secure att shows anxiety when stranger approaches
- Separation anxiety - protest upon separation indicates att
- Reunion behaviour - behav upon reunion after brief separation is recorded
What is the procedure of the Strange Situation?
7 episodes, each lasts 3 minutes
- Child is encouraged to explore - tests exploration/secure-base
- A stranger enters and tries to interact w child - tests stranger anxiety
- Caregiver leaves the child and stranger together - tests separation and stranger anxiety
- Caregiver returns and stranger leaves - tests reunion behav
- Caregiver leaves child alone - tests separation anxiety
- Stranger returns - tests stranger anxiety
- Caregiver returns and reunites w child - tests reunion behav
What did Ainsworth find?
Ainsworth identified 3 main patterns of infant behav
• Insecure-avoidant - 20-25% infants classified IA
• Secure - 60-75% British toddlers classified S
• Insecure-resistant - 3% British toddlers classified IR
What did Ainsworth conclude?
Sensitive responsiveness is the major factor in determining the quality of atts - sensitive mothers respond appropriately to their needs and usually have securely-attached children
What support is there for the Strange Situation as a way of assessing types of attachment?
- Predictive validity - att type indicated by SS is strongly predictive of later development - babies assessed as secure typically go on to have better outcomes in many areas e.g. romantic Rships and adult friendships - I-R related w worst outcomes e.g. bullying in later childhood and adult mental health problems - evidence of predictive validity
- Reliability - SS has high inter-rater reliability - SS occurs under controlled conditions w clearly operationalised behavioural categories - Bick et al investigated inter-rater reliability in team of trained SS observers and found 94% agreement on att types of observed babies
What reduces support for the Strange Situation as a way of assessing types of attachment?
- Cultural bias - SS suffers from an imposed etic when being generalised to other cultures - uses cultural norm in the US to judge norms in other cultures - German babies IA - seen as negative - Germany encourages independence from young age - therefore German child-rearing practices deemed not ideal - but only from US standpoint - ethnocentric
- Classification system of att types incomplete - Main & Solomon reviewed several hundred SS episodes via videotape - suggested Ainsworth overlooked a fourth type - some infants showed inconsistent patterns of behaviour which they termed insecure-disorganised - van Ijzendoorn et al M-A found that 15% of infants were classified as ins-disorg - suggests Ainsworth’s original assessment system incomplete
Why should attachment types, theoretically, have similar patterns across cultures?
If Bowlby’s belief that atts are innate and universal, then att type patterns should be similar across cultures, regardless of child-rearing styles
What research has been done into cultural variations of attachment?
van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg conducted M-A of proportions of S, IA & IR atts in range of countries - also looked at differences w/in countries to investigate variation w/in a culture
What was van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg’s procedure?
Researchers located 32 studies of att in 8 diff countries where SS had been used to investigate proportions of infants w diff att types - 15 studies were in USA - results of 1,990 children
What did van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg find?
Overall att type was:
• Type A = 21%
• Type B = 67%
• Type C = 12%
- Type A was found more in Western cultures, Type C found in China, Israel & Japan
- In samples from all cultures except one in Germany the modal att type was B
- The highest proportion of Type A was found in German samples
- Intra-cultural differences were often > inter-cultural differences
What did van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg conclude?
- Type B att is predominant in all cultures
* Overall patterns of att types were similar to what Ainsworth found
What support is there for research into cultural variations in attachment?
• Large sample size - combining results of att studies in diff countries leads to larger sample so easier to assess reliability and significance of results - vIj & K M-A nearly 2000 babies and their primary att figures - means greater int validity - reduced impact of anomalous results
