ATTACHMENTS: Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

Question 1

What is the Ainsworth strange situation (the aim? )

Answer 1

• developed by Mary Ainsworth in 1969

Aim: to asses the quality of a child’s attachment through an experiment

• to be able to observe the key attachment behaviours as a means of assessing the quality of their attachment

Question 2

What is the procedure of the strange situation

Answer 2

• involved around 100 middle-class American Infants (Cultural bias)
• controlled observation: used to observe the infants during a set of pre-determined activities
• takes place in a room with quite controlled conditions
• used a two-way mirror ( which decreases both social desirability and demand characteristics)

This way psychologists could observer the infants behaviour to judge their attachment. This included:
- Proximity seeking
- exploration and secure base behaviour
- stranger anxiety
- separation anxiety
- response to reunion

The procedure has 7 episodes, each lasted 3 minutes, so the whole experiment lasted 21 mins

Question 3

The series of assessment in the strange situation

Answer 3

1. Mother and infant : exploration and secure based behaviour
   - they both enter the room, infant is free to play with toys while mother sits on chair and reads magazine
2. Mother, infant and stranger: stranger anxiety
   - 3 mins in stranger enters and talks to mothers
   - after that the stranger attempts to interact with the infant
3. Infant and Stranger: stranger and separation anxiety
   - mother leaves the room, stranger is alone with the infant, stranger comforts infants if they are upset and offers to play with them
4. Mother and Infant: response to reunion
   - mother returns stanger leaves
5. Infant: separation anxiety
   - mother leaves baby alone in the room
6. Stranger and infant: stranger anxiety
   - stranger re-enters the room and offers to play/ comfort the infant
7. Mother and infant: response to reunion
   - mother returns and stranger leaves

Question 4

Finding of the strange situation

Answer 4

Ainsworth found that there were distinct patterns in the way that infants behaved. She identified 3 main types of attachment.

Secure attachment (type B)

Insecure-avoidant attachment (type A)

Insecure resistant attachment (type C)

Question 5

Characteristics of secure attachment (Type B)

Answer 5

• explore happily but regularly go back to their caregiver.
• show moderate separation distress
• moderate stranger anxiety
• require and accept comfort from the caregiver in the reunion stage
• good proximity
• 60-75% of British toddlers are classified as secure.

Question 6

characteristics of insecure-avoidant attachment (type A)

Answer 6

• explore freely
• do not seek proximity
• show secure base behaviour
• little to no reaction when caregiver leaves
• make little effort to make contact when the caregiver returns
• show little stranger anxiety
• do not require comfort at the reunion stage
• 20-25% of British toddlers are classified as insecure avoidant

Question 7

The characteristics of Insecure- Resistant attachment (type C)

Answer 7

• children seek greater proximity than others so explore less
• extreme stranger and separation anxiety
• ambivalent to reunion, resist comfort with their carer
• 3% of British toddlers are classified as insecure resistant

Question 8

Positive Evaluations of the strange situation

Answer 8

1. the attachment types are strongly predictive of later development
   - Kokkinos et al (2007) found that babies assessed to have a secure attachment types go on to have better outcomes in many areas
   - ranging from success at school to romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood
   - insecure-resistant attachment is associated with he worst outcomes including bullying in later childhood.
   - this is Seen as positive as it increases the validity of the concept of the different attachment types
   - it explains subsequent outcome and behaviours in later life
   - shows that the assessment is attachment types in the stranger situation is accurate since the individual assessed continue displaying behaviours of this attachment later throughout their life
2. has good inter-rater reliability
   - Bick et al
   - different observers watching the same children generally agree on the attachment types they obtain
   - controlled conditions, meaning the standardised procedure is easy to replicate
   - behavioural categories are easy to observer
   - Bick et al 2012 observed 94% interrater reliability between studies

Question 9

Negative evaluations of the stranger situation

Answer 9

1. lacks ecological validity
   Evi: playroom was strange and unfamiliar to the infant’s every environment ( research environment was artificial)
   Eva: a weakness because it is possible that the experiment was not measuring the infant’s natural behaviour and as a result, findings cannot be generalised past the study.
2. classification system doesn’t fit all infants
   - Evi: Main and Solomon 1986 added a 4th type of attachment (Type D) DISORGANISED ATTACHMENT
   - used for babies who were inconsistent and did not fit clearly into one of Ainsworth’s 3 attachments
   - Eva: the study was unsuccessful at classifying all infants into the 3 categories and therefore the classification process in incomplete.
3. cultural variation
   - test may not have the same meaning in countries outside of Western Europe and USA
   2 reasons
4. Cultural differences in childhood experiences are likely to mean that children respond differently to the strange situations
5. Caregivers from different culture behave differently in the strange situation
   - Takahashi noted the test doesn’t work in Japan because Japanese mothers are so rarely separated from their babies, so that high levels of separation anxiety.
   - Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg.