Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

Question 1

What is the Strange Situation?

Answer 1

A controlled observation designed by Mary Ainsworth that aims to measure the security of attachment that a child displays towards the caregiver.

Question 2

What was the procedure for the observation:

Answer 2

• Took place on 100 middle class American mothers and their children
• Takes place in a controlled space, through a one-way mirror, through which psychologists observed over 8 episodes
• Each episode lasted 3 minutes
• The episodes involve measuring the infant’s reaction to a stranger approaching/ leaving and their carer approaching/leaving

Question 3

The infant behaviours used to judge the attachment were:
PESSR

Answer 3

Proximity Seeking
Exploration/Secure Base behaviour
Stranger Anxiety
Separation Anxiety
Reunion Behaviour

Question 4

Proximity seeking:

Answer 4

Whether or not a child seeks to stay fairly close to the caregiver

Question 5

Exploration and secure-base behaviour:

Answer 5

How well a child feels confident to explore their environment, using their caregiver as a secure base, i.e a point of contact that makes them feel safe

Question 6

Stranger anxiety:

Answer 6

Whether the infant displays signs of anxiety (e.g crying or hiding) when a stranger approaches

Question 7

Separation anxiety:

Answer 7

Whether the infant shows signs of anxiety when separated from the caregiver (e.g, crying)

Question 8

Reunion behaviour:

Answer 8

An infant’s reaction when the caregiver returns after a short period of separation

Question 9

Inter-rater reliability=

Answer 9

Degree to which 2 observers agree on what they are observing

Question 10

What were Ainsworth’s three findings? (3 key types of attachment)

Answer 10

Type B - Secure attachment
Type A - Insecure Avoidant
Type C- Insecure Resistant

Question 11

Type B

Answer 11

Secure attachment (60%)
“The type I want my child to B”

Question 12

Type A

Answer 12

Insecure Avoidant (30%)

Question 13

Type C

Answer 13

Insecure Resistant (10%)

Question 14

Describe Secure attachment:

Answer 14

These children have cooperative interactions with their caregiver. They explore happily, but also still use their caregiver as a secure base.
Mild separation and stranger anxiety.
Accept comfort upon reunion.

Question 15

Describe Insecure Avoidant attachment:

Answer 15

These children explore freely and avoid interaction and intimacy with the caregiver.
They do not seek proximity or show secure base behaviour.
They show little or no response upon reunion.
Show little stranger anxiety.

Question 16

Describe Insecure Resistant attachment:

Answer 16

These children both seek and resist intimacy and social interaction.
These children seek greater proximity than others and tend to explore much less.
Show extreme stranger anxiety and separation anxiety but they also resist their carer when they are reunited with them: (Upon reunion they resist comfort from their caregiver)
Also known as the ambivalent attachment due to the unsure nature of the child’s reaction.

Question 17

What was Ainsworth’s conclusion?

Answer 17

• There are 3 main types of attachment
• Most American infants are securely attached
• There is an association between the mother’s behaviour and the infant’s attachment. If the mother is sensitive/responsive to the infant’s signals, the infant is securely attached. If the mother is insensitive/unresponsive to the infant’s signals, the infant is insecurely attached.

Question 18

A strength of the strange situation is that observations have high inter-rater reliability.

Answer 18

Ainsworth found almost perfect agreement when rating explanatory behaviour of the infants during the observation - with a 0.94 agreement between the raters.
SB it demonstratres that the observation is reliable as there was an almost unanimous agreement among the observers. In observations such as Strange Situation which rely heavily on subjective interpretation, a high inter-rater reliability is crucial for valid results.
Increases the validity of conclusions made from strange situation.

Question 19

A weakness of the ss is that the methodology is culture biased.

Answer 19

Takahashi (1990) noted that the test does not work in Japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their children. In this country a mother leaving her child with a stranger is not a realistic day to day scenario.
Infact, infants were so distressed by being left alone, that for 90% of the infants, the study had to be stopped.
WB - shows that SS only reflects the norms of American culture and does not consider differences in child-rearing practices across cultures (etic approach) thus it is culturally biased. Thus the situation decreases in population validity.

Question 20

A weakness is that late researchers found that Ainsworth didn’t account for a key fourth type of attachment.

Answer 20

Main and Soloman (1986) analysed over 200 strange situation tapes and proposed a type D attachment: insecure-disorganised. This was characterised by a lack of consistent social behaviour and attachment. When dealing with stress and separation, they showed very strong attachment which was suddenly followed by avoidance or looking scared of the caregiver.
WB - shows that Ainsworth’s research didn’t account for this attachment thus her conclusions are too neutral and lack sufficient detail. Thus, her conclusions only provides us with an incomplete understanding of attachment types, decreasing its validity.

Question 21

A weakness of SS is that it doesn’t account for different attachments with different caregivers.

Answer 21

For example, the SS aims to measure the attachment type a child has, however, researchers claim that focusing on one relationship between the carer and the infant might give us a limited picture on a child’s attachment behaviour. Main and Weston (1981) found that children behaved differently based on which parent they were with.
WB - although she believed she was measuring attachment behaviour with caregivers in general, she actually only measured attachment with the mother. Thus lacking internal validity, therefore conclusions from SS decrease in overall validity.

Question 22

What did Main and Weston (1981) find?

Answer 22

That children behaved differently based on which parent they were with.

Question 23

Briefly explain two ways the Strange Situation technique might be modified to be more realistic.

Answer 23

• measure attachment type in the home/a more familiar environment: to improve the ecological validity of the measure of attachment type
• use different caregivers: to get a wider measure of baby’s attachment as most babies in real life have multiple attachments
• make the observations covert: to ensure mother’s behaviours towards infant are more natural (improve internal validity)
• make multiple observations over time as a more realistic assessment of usual attachment type would be achieved.