attachment - attachment types

Question 1

what are the behaviours identified by ainsworth that indicate attachment strength

Answer 1

• proximity to mother
• exploration/safe base behaviour
• stranger anxiety
• separation anxiety
• reunion response
• sensitive responsiveness

Question 2

what are the three attachment types identified by ainsworth

Answer 2

• insecure avoidant
• secure
• insecure resistant

Question 3

what is the insecure avoidant attachment type

Answer 3

infants explore freely, not using their mothers as a secure base. has low stranger anxiety and separation anxiety. mothers how low sensitive responsiveness

Question 4

what is the secure attachment type

Answer 4

infants use their mothers as a safe base, they have moderate levels of stranger anxiety and show separation anxiety. caregiver shows sensitive responsiveness

Question 5

what is the insecure resistant attachment types

Answer 5

infants are clingy and have high separation and stranger anxiety. when their mothers return, the infant appears ambivalent, with mixed emotions seeming to both crave and reject her attention. mothers are inconsistent with sensitive responsiveness

Question 6

what was the procedure of ainsworths study

Answer 6

structured observations of infant and mother pairs in a lab setting. there were eight stages which included the mother leaving the room and the stranger entering. behaviours that indicated attachment strength were recorded

Question 7

what were ainsworths findings

Answer 7

• 66% of infants were secure
• 22% of infants were insecure avoidant
• 12% of infants were insecure resistant

Question 8

what do ainsworths findings provide evidence for

Answer 8

for the three distinctive attachment types that seemed to correlate with the level of sensitive responsiveness shown by the mother

Question 9

what does ainsworths research suggest

Answer 9

that a secure attachment develops due to the attention of a consistently sensitively responsive mothers

Question 10

what are the strengths of ainsworths strange situation

Answer 10

• its a highly controlled observational research study with standardised procedures and clear behavioural categories. this standardisation has resulted in precise replications of the strange situations
• predictive validity: children classified as securely attached tend to have better social, emotional and academic outcomes in later childhood and adulthood. mccarthy found adults with secure friendships and romantic relationships were securely attached in infancy

Question 11

what are the weaknesses of ainsworths strange situation

Answer 11

• as the strange situation was developed in america, it may be a culture bound test and not valid when applied to other cultures. in other cultures some children are taught to be more or less independent
• it has low ecological validity as the observation was not in a familiar environment like the family home. the mother knows her behaviour is being monitored so she may show sensitive responsiveness due to demand characteristics
• kagans alternate temperaments hypothesis suggestes infants have an inherited high or low reactive temperament. high reactivity results in distressed babies and low reactive infants show low distress

Question 12

what was the procedure of ijzendoorns study

Answer 12

conducted a large scale meta analysis of 2000 infants in 32 studies from 8 different countries; each study classified the attachment types of infants and mothers using the strange situation

Question 13

what were the findings of ijzendoorns study

Answer 13

• secure attachment was the most common attachment in all countries
• insecure resistant was the least common type
• avoidant was more common in individualistic western cultures and resistant in collectivist culture
• germany had the most insecure avoidant infants ( 35% )
• japan had the most insecure resistant infants ( 27% )

Question 14

what do ijzendoorns findings suggest

Answer 14

a secure attachment is the most common type, there is a globally preferred attachment style which potentially has a biological basis. there are cultural variations for example german families encourage independent avoidant behaviour, japanese mothers spend significant time with infants explaining the extreme resistant reactions

Question 15

what are the strengths of cultural variations

Answer 15

• as the dominant attachment style was secure for all countries studied, this may be evidence for bowlbys theory that there is a biological instinctive drive to parent in a way that produces secure attachments
• this meta analysis included a very large sample so a poorly conducted study or any unusual results only have a small effect on the overall results, increasing confidence in the validity of the findings

Question 16

what are the weaknesses of cultural variations

Answer 16

• ainsworth and ijzandoorns findings may lack temporal validity. simonelli et al found fewer secure and more avoidant infants in modern italian families due to the changing nature of family life
• many of the countries represented only had 1 study included so a small sample is not representative of the countries population
• using the strange situation to assess attachment in non western countries may be an example of ethnocentrism. it may suffer from cultural bias as secure styles of attachment are more common in western cultures