Attachment - Ainsworth Study

Question 1

What was the procedure? What means did it look at?

Answer 1

The procedure (a series of 8 episodes, mainly lasting 3 minutes each) provided Ainsworth with a means of looking at:
Stranger anxiety
Separation anxiety
Proximity seeking behaviour
Exploration from secure base
Response to reunion

Question 2

What 5 things were examined

Answer 2

5 things that were examined:
Proximity Seeking – An infant with good attachment will stay close to the caregiver
Exploration and Secure Base Behaviour – Good attachment enables a child to feel confident to explore.
Stranger Anxiety – a sign of attachment is to show anxiety when a stranger approaches
Separation Anxiety – a sign of attachment is to protest at separation from caregiver
Response to Reunion – how the child reacts upon being reunited with caregiver

Question 3

What are the three attachment types

Answer 3

Securely attached

Insecure- avoidant

Insecure resistant

Question 4

Secure attachment

Answer 4

Securely attached
these infants played contented with their mother present ( it didn’t matter I’d the stranger was present) they would always return to the mother to check she was there.
During reunions they sought comfort from their mother and then continued playing.
Mother and stranger were treated differently with moderate distress and stranger anxiety

Question 5

Insecure avoidant

Answer 5

Insecure- Avoidant
These infants ignored their mother and her presence/absence didn’t affect their play. They didn’t turn to her at any intervals
Infants displayed little stress when she left and ignored her when she returned
infants reacted to the stranger and mother in a similar at - with little stranger anxiety shown

Question 6

Insecure resistant

Answer 6

Insecure-resistant
12% of infants were fussy and wary even with the mother present
They explored less and stayed by their other. They showed huge stranger distress and separation anxiety
They were distressed by her leaving and sought contact on her return but simultaneously would show anger and fight her contact
E.g. would put their arms up to be picked up and then fight o be put down again

Question 7

What did Ainsworth conclude

Answer 7

Ainsworth concluded that
Attachment differences depend upon the sensitivity of the mother (i.e. how well the mother could read her infant’s feelings and moods).
Sensitive mothers generally had infants who were securely attached.
Less sensitive and less responsive mothers (i.e. those who ignored their infant or were impatient with them) had babies who were more likely to be insecurely attached.
A baby’s attachment does seem to be affected to some extent by the quality and sensitivity of the caregiver.

Question 8

Positive evaluation for Ainsworth’s strange situation

Answer 8

+ Support for validity
+attachment type is strongly predictive of later development
Babies assed as secure tend to have better outcomes - for example
+ Success at school
+ Success in romantic relationships
+ Insecure resistant is associated with the worst outcomes including bullying in later childhood (Kikkions 2007) and adult mental health (Ward et al 2006)

+Good reliability
+ showed very good inter-rater reliability
+ Bick et al (2012) looked at inter-rater reliability in a term of trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment types for 94% of tested babies

Question 9

Negative evaluation of the strange situation

Answer 9

Ethnocentrism

• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one’s ethnic or cultural group is centrally important‘ and that all other groups are measured in relation to one’s own
  - The study only looked at white American babies of which the experimenter was white American

Culture bounds

- Takahashi (1990) has noted that the test does not really work in JApan because Japanese mothers are so rarely separated from their babies that, we would expect, there are very high levels of separation anxiety 
 - Also in the reunion stage, Japanese mothers rushed to the baby and scooped them up, meaning the child’s response was hard to observe  

Temperament

 - Ainsworth assumed that attachment was the main influence on anxiety 
 - Kalgan (1982) has suggested that temperament, the genetically influenced personality of the child, is the most important influence on behaviour in this situation 
 - Temperament could be a confounding variable

Question 10

Cultural variations in attachment

Answer 10

• Attachment may differ across cultures.
• An individualistic culture is one which emphasises personal independence and achievement at the expense of group goals, resulting in a strong sense of competition
• A collectivist culture is one which emphasises family and work goals above individual needs and desires, there is a high degree of interdependence between people
• Groomsman et al (1985) says that parents in Germany seek ‘independent , non-clingy infants, who do not make demands on parents, but obey their commands“

Question 11

Italy and Korea relates of the strange situation

Answer 11

• Simonella et al (2014)
  conducted a study using strange situation only 50% of infants were securely attached
  The researchers suggest this change could be due to increasing numbers of mothers working longer hours
• Jin et al (2012)
  87 children were assessed. Most infants were securely attached.
  More of those classified as insecurely attached were resistant. This was similar to Japan