Attachment - Ainsworth's 'Strange Situation', types of attachment

Question 1

What was the aim of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 1

Ainsworth wanted to know if children differ in the ways that they bond, and if so why.

Question 2

What was Mary Ainsworth’s procedure?

Answer 2

1. Mother and infant placed in a room
2. After child has had time to explore, stranger enters the room
3. Mother then leaves baby with the stranger
4. After a few minutes the mother returns to comfort her child. ‘reunion’

Question 3

What did Ainsworth base the 3 types of attachment on?

Answer 3

On how the infants responded to the separation and reunion.

Question 4

What does insecure- avoidant attachment involve? (Type A)

Answer 4

• Explores freely
• Does not seek proximity or show secure based behaviour.
• Little or no reaction when their caregiver leaves
• Makes little effort to make contact when caregiver returns.
• Little stranger anxiety
• Does not require comfort at the reunion stage.

Question 5

What does secure attachment type involve? (Type B)

Answer 5

• Explores happily but regularly go back to their caregiver (proximity seeking and secure based behaviour).
• Shows moderate separation distress and moderate stranger anxiety.
• Require and accept comfort from the caregiver in the reunion stage.

Question 6

What does insecure- resistant attachment involve? (Type C)

Answer 6

• Seeks greater proximity than others so explores less.
• Shows huge stranger and separation distress,
• But resists comfort when reunited with their caregiver.

Question 7

What are the strengths of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 7

• Highly controlled observational study with a clear standardised procedure for replication => reliability

Strange situations is a well respected study and is the standard diagnostic tool used to measure a caregiver - infant relationships.

Question 8

What are the limitations of Ainsworth’s study?

Answer 8

Suffers from cultural bias - as the attachment type more common in western culture is viewed as “secure’’ and types more common in other cultures is labelled ‘‘insecure’’

Environmental bias - observations are only a snapshot of behaviours, not taking into consideration relationships with others, or home behaviour.

Could be seen as not operationalizable - Argued that the strange situation actually measure temperament of the child rather than attachment to the caregiver