Reliability, validity, and individual differences in The Strange Situation

Question 1

Outline 3 strengths of Ainsworth’s strange situation.

Answer 1

No demand characteristics from the baby.

Well-structured.

Reliable.

Replicable.

Question 2

Outline 3 weaknesses of Ainsworth’s strange situation.

Answer 2

Individual differences not catered for.

Unethical.

Artificial.

Doesn’t take the child’s past experiences into account.

Only uses middle class infants.

Ethnocentric.

Question 3

What is the maternal sensitivity hypothesis?

Answer 3

The notion that individual differences in infant attachment are due to mainly to the sensitivity of the mother.

Question 4

How do caregivers of securely attached infants act?

(Maternal sensitivity hypothesis)

Answer 4

Were very sensitive to their needs and responded to their infants in an emotionally expressive way.

Question 5

How do caregivers of resistant attached infants act?

(Maternal sensitivity hypothesis)

Answer 5

Often misunderstood their infants behaviour, varied in the way that they treated them.

Question 6

How do caregivers of avoidant attached infants act?

(Maternal sensitivity hypothesis)

Answer 6

Were uninterested in their infants.

They often rejected their infants and tended to be self-centred. In some cases caregivers of avoidant infants acted in a suffocating way.

Question 7

What is the temperament hypothesis?

Answer 7

The view that a child’s temperament is responsible for the quality of attachment, as opposed to the view that experience is more important.

Infants’ relationship with primary caregivers (and those later in life) can be explained in terms of the infant’s innate temperament (character it inherits through its genes).