The Strange Situation Flashcards
When did Mary Ainsworth conduct her strange situation research?
1969
What was Mary Ainsworth aim?
To assess the quality of a child’s attachment to a caregiver
What was Mary Ainsworth’s procedure?
A controlled (laboratory) observation was carried out using an unfamiliar playroom with a two-way mirror so researchers could observe the infants (9 to 18 months) behaviour.
They measured:
-Proximity seeking: how close the infant stays to the caregiver
-Exploration and secure-base behaviour: how much the child explores the room away from the caregiver and how often they ‘check in’ with their caregiver
-Separation anxiety: signs of protest when separated from the caregiver
-Stranger anxiety: sign of anxiety when a stranger approaches
-Response to reunion: how the child responds when reunited with the caregiver after separation
Describe the design of the procedure.
Episode: (each episode lasted 3 minutes)
1. The child is encouraged to explore
2. A stranger comes in and tries to interact with the child
3. The caregiver leaves the child and the stranger together
4. The caregiver returns and the Stanger leaves
5. The caregiver leaves the child alone
6. The stranger returns
7. The caregiver returns and is reunited with the child
Designed to measure:
Exploration and secure base
Stranger anxiety
Separation and stranger anxiety
Reunion behaviour and exploration of secure base
Separation anxiety
Stranger anxiety
Reunion behaviour
What were Ainsworth’s findings?
Three main types of attachment were found:
• Insecure-avoidant attachment (type A) = 22% (20-25% of British Children)
Children explored freely but did not seek proximity or show secure base behaviour. They showed little or no reaction when their caregiver left and made little effort to make contact when the caregiver returned. They also showed minimal stranger anxiety. They did not require comfort at the reunion stage.
• Secure attachment (type B) = 66% (~60-75% of British Children)
These children explored happily but regularly went back to the caregiver thus demonstrating proximity seeking and secure base behaviour. They usually showed moderate separation distress and moderate stranger anxiety. Securely attached children required and accepted comfort from the caregiver in the reunion stage.
• Insecure-resistant attachment (type C) = 12% (~ 3% of British Children)
Children sought greater proximity than others and explored less. They showed high levels of stranger and separation distress but they resisted comfort when reunited with their carer.
What were Ainsworth’s conclusions?
• There is an association between the caregiver’s behaviour and the infant’s attachment type, suggesting that the caregiver’s behaviour is important in determining attachment type.
• The majority of children are securely attached.
Evaluation point 1:
(+)predictive validity
Attachment type is a valid predictor of later development:
• Secure babies tend to have better outcomes such as success at school and developing positive romantic relationships and friendships in adulthood.
• Insecure-resistant babies tend to have the worst outcomes such as bullying in later adulthood (Kokkinos 2007) and adult mental health problems (Ward et al 2006).
This is a strength as it has high explanatory power as it cannot explain subsequent outcomes (i.e. behaviour in adulthood). It also means it is useful for helping to inform child-rearing behaviour.
Evaluation point 2:
(+)High inter-rater reliability
Different observers watch the same children and generally agree on what attachment type to classify them with e.g. Bick et al (2012) looked at inter-rater reliability in a team of trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment type for 94% of tested babies.
Strange situation has high inter-rater reliability as there are consistent findings across researchers because it is highly controlled and the DVs are operationalised.
Evaluation point 3:
(-)culture bound
Ainsworth’ conducted her original research in the USA so may be culturally biased. Cultural differences in childhood experiences may mean children respond differently to the strange situation and caregivers from different cultures behave differently in the strange situation e.g. Takahashi (1990) suggested that the strange situation does not work in Japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their babies so 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.
This is a weakness as it would be unreasonable to make generalisation about all infant behaviour based on this sample meaning of findings are culturally biased
Evaluation point 4:
(-) reliability
The strange situation only measures one particular relationship (and thus attachment type) and not general attachment type. It has been found that infants behave differently depending on whom they are with e.g. they may be secure with their mother but insecure avoidant with father.
This may low reliability as attachment type may be inconsistent between caregivers and thus may not be a reliable measurement of the child’s overall attachment type.
Evaluation point 5:
(-) incomplete
Main and Solomon (1986) found that a small number of infants displayed disorganised behaviour where they showed no consistent pattern and fitted none of the three main attachments. They suggested these children were a fourth attachment type: insecure disorganised.
Evaluation point 6:
(-) oversimplified
Infants within any given category differ from each other in their attachment behaviour. For example, two infants may be classified as showing avoidant attachment, but one might display much more avoidant behaviour.
This is a weakness as a categorise all children into one of three categories and does not differentiate between individuals within each category in terms of severity of attachment behaviours. This is oversimplistic as it suggests all children within one type are the same.
Evaluation point 7:
(-) low ecological validity
The behaviour of the participant being observed may be affected.
The caregiver may change their behaviour to make themselves the best version of themselves (social desirability bias)
The child may behave differently because they are in an unfamiliar setting.
This will lower the ecological validity as it may not reflect the usual everyday behaviour between infants and caregivers and thus may not give a valid measurement of attachment type.
(+) however although the playroom is unfamiliar, they will come across similar unfamiliar things in their life. This suggests that the child behaviour will reflect how they would act in real life suggesting that ecological validity has not been lowered.
Evaluation point 8:
(-) not measuring attachment
The strange situation measures anxiety and how a baby responds to an unusual situation which Kagan (1982) suggests is a measurement of temperament (the genetically influenced personality of the child) not attachment type.
This is a weakness because we don’t know if this study is measuring attachment or temperament. If Ainsworth is measuring temperament then the findings tells nothing about attachment and attachment types are invalid explanations.
