L7 - Ainsworth’s Strange Situation - Types Of Attachment - Secure, Insecure-resistant & Insecure-avoidant

Question 1

Type of attachment

Answer 1

the type of attachment relationship there is between the infant and caregiver

Question 2

Ainsworth

Answer 2

interested in individual differences – the different types of attachment that infants formed with their caregivers

Question 3

Strange Situation

Answer 3

• Ainsworth and Bell (1970) devised the strange situation to be able to test the nature of attachment systematically
• The aim was to see how infants (aged between 9 – 18 months) behave under conditions of mild stress and also novelty
• Stress is created in the strange situation by the presence of a stranger and by separation from a caregiver
• This tests stranger anxiety and separation anxiety respectively
• The strange situation also aims to encourage exploration by placing infants in a novel situation and thus tests the secure base concept

Question 4

Strange situation procedure

Answer 4

• research room is new environment- 9x9 foot square - split into 16 squares to help record each
• has 7 episodes - each highlights certain behaviours - each around 3 mins
• controlled lab study

Question 5

7 episodes

Answer 5

1. Parent sits, infant plays - secure base
2. Stranger enters & talks to parent - stranger anxiety
3. Parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comfort if needed - separation anxiety
4. Parents return, offers comfort to infant if needed, stranger leaves - reunion behaviour
5. Parent leaves, infant is alone - separation anxiety
6. Stranger entres & offers comfort - stranger anxiety
7. Parent returns, greets infant & offers comfort - reunion behaviour

Question 6

Data collected

Answer 6

• by group of observers, every 15 seconds
• also note which behaviours are displayed & also scores the behaviour for intensity on scale of 1-7:
  1. Proximity and contact-seeking behaviours
  2. Contact-maintaining behaviours
  3. Proximity and interaction-avoiding behaviours
  4. Contact and interaction-resisting behaviours
  5. Search behaviours

Question 7

3 types of attachment

Answer 7

• Secure (Type B)
• Insecure Avoidant (Type A)
• Insecure Resistant (Type B)

Question 8

Secure Type B

Answer 8

• high willingness to explore & stranger anxiety
• separation anxiety - some easy to soothe
• enthusiastic when reuniting with caregiver
• around 66% of infants

Question 9

Insecure Avoidant (Type A)

Answer 9

• high willingness to explore
• low stranger anxiety
• when separated indifferent
• avoids contact when reunited with caregiver
• 22% of infants

Question 10

Insecure Resistant (Type C)

Answer 10

• low willingness to explore
• high stranger anxiety
• distressed when separated
• seeks & rejects caregiver when reunited
• 12% of infants

Question 11

Similarities between infants

Answer 11

• Exploratory behaviours declined in all infants from episode 2 onwards, whereas the amount of crying increased
• Proximity - seeking and contact-maintaining behaviours intensified during separation and when the stranger appeared
• Contact-resisting and proximity-avoiding behaviours occurred rarely towards the caregiver prior to separation

Question 12

Differences between infants

Answer 12

• They found three main types of children which they called A, B and C to avoid being biased.

Question 13

Characteristics of Secure (Type B)

Answer 13

• harmonious and cooperative interactions with their caregiver
• They are less likely to cry inconsolably if the caregiver leaves the room
• When feeling anxious they seek close bodily contact with their caregiver and are easily soothed, though they may be reluctant to leave their caregiver’s side prematurely
• They seek and are comfortable with social interaction and intimacy
• This infant uses the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore and thus able to function independently

Question 14

Characteristics of Insecure Avoidant (Type A)

Answer 14

• tend to avoid social interaction and intimacy with others
• In the ‘strange situation’, such children show little response to separation and do not seek the proximity of their caregiver on reunion
• If the infant is picked up s/he shows little or no tendency to cling or resist being put down
• Such children are happy to explore with or without the presence of their caregiver
• They are also characterised by high levels of anxiousness as well as avoidant behaviour, and may become quite angry because their attachments needs are not met
• This style is also known as anxious-avoidant

Question 15

Characteristics of Insecure Resistant (Type C)

Answer 15

• This style is characterised as those infants who both seek and reject intimacy and social interaction
• Such children respond to separation from their caregiver with immediate and intense distress
• On reunion, such children display conflicting desires for and against contact, they may angrily resist being picked up while also trying other means to maintain proximity.

Question 16

Evaluation of the strange situation

Answer 16

strengths
- high reliability
- real-world application

weaknesses
- fails to measure other types of attachment
- ethical issues
- validity

Question 17

High reliability

Answer 17

• Reliability of the ‘strange situation’ has been assessed using inter-rater reliability.
• Ainsworth et al. (1978) found almost perfect agreement when rating exploratory behaviour
• They found 0.94 agreement between raters. (1 is perfect).
• This shows that the strange situation is a reliable method to test types of attachment because when independent observers were measuring the infant’s behaviour they were in agreement in what they saw.
• Bick et al. (2012) who looked at the inter-rater reliability in a team of trained Strange Situation observers and found agreement on attachment type for 94% of tested babies.
• This study again supports the idea that the strange situation to measure attachment types is still reliable

Question 18

Real world application

Answer 18

• In situations where disordered patterns of attachment develop between infant and caregiver, intervention strategies can be developed.
  E.g.the ‘Circle of Security’ project (Cooper et al., 2005) teaches caregivers to understand their infants’ signals of distress better and to increase their understanding of what it feels like to be anxious.
• The project showed a decrease in the numbers of caregivers classified as disordered (from 60% to 15%) and an increase in infants classed as securely attached (from 32% to 40%)

Question 19

Fails to measure other types of attachment

Answer 19

• Subsequent research has found that Ainsworth et al’s analysis overlooked a fourth type of attachment.
• Main and Solomon (1986) analysed over 200 Strange Situation videotapes and proposed the insecure-disorganised (Type D) attachment type. - This attachment type is characterised by a lack of consistent patterns of social behaviour.
• some infants don’t have a consistent type of attachment.
• Such infants lack a coherent strategy for dealing with stress of separation.
  E.g. they show very strong attachment behaviour which is suddenly followed by avoidance or looking fearful towards their caregiver.
• Van Ijzendoorn et al. (1999) further supported this with a meta analysis of nearly 80 studies in the US and found 62% secure; 15% Type A; 9% Type C and 14% Type D

Question 20

Ethical issues

Answer 20

• caused possible psychological harm to the infants as they were briefly separated from the caregiver in some of the episodes.
• intention of the strange situation is to cause only mild distress, some have questioned whether it is acceptable to do this to infants.
• Ainsworth et al. (1978) claimed that the procedure was intended not to be any more disturbing than ordinary life experiences.
• However, in episode six, 20% of the infants reportedly cried ‘desperately’.
• when the strange situation was repeated in some other countries, it had to be stopped e.g in Japan, the strange situation experiment had to be stopped at episode 6 because many of the infants were crying uncontrollably.
• This therefore questions whether the strange situation is the best method to test types of attachments.

Question 21

Validity

Answer 21

• Main and Weston (1981) found that children behaved differently in the ‘strange situation’ depending on which parent they were with.
• This suggests that the classification of an attachment type may not be valid because what we are measuring is one relationship rather than a child’s general ‘attachment type’.
• critisises for low ecological validity as controlled lab experiment so the child’s behaviour and possibly the caregiver might not be natural
• study was carried out on American, white middle-class mothers and infants so it lacks population validity and may not be generalisable to other cultures and people
• may be culturally biased as it was created by Ainsworth who was American & lived in westernised society - so may not apply to non-western / collectivist cultures

Question 22

Who was studied

Answer 22

106 babies, middle class - USA