Types of Attachment

Question 1

Define a secure attachment

Answer 1

-Most desirable attachment type associated with psychologically healthy outcomes

• shown by moderate stranger and separation anxiety and ease of comfort at reunion

Question 2

Explain what occurs in secure attachments

Answer 2

• if separated the infant becomes distressed
• when reunited the child is easily comforted by the caregiver
• majority of attachments are of this type
• associated with a healthy cognitive and emotional development

Question 3

Define insecure attachment

Answer 3

The bond between child and caregiver is weaker

Question 4

What are the two types of insecure attachments ?

Answer 4

• insecure-avoidant
• insecure - resistant

Question 5

Define insecure - avoidant

Answer 5

• if separated from their care giver the child doesn’t become particularly distressed
• usually can be comforted by a stranger
• shown by children who generally avoid social interaction and intimacy with others
• low anxiety but weak attachment
• shown by low stranger and separation anxiety and little response to reunion - avoidance of care giver

Question 6

Define insecure - resistant

Answer 6

• strong attachment and high anxiety
• shown by high levels of stranger separation and by resistance to be comforted at reunion

Question 7

Who came up with the strange situation ?

Answer 7

Ainsworth et al (1978)

Question 8

What is the aim of the strange situation?

Answer 8

She used it to assess how children react under conditions of stress by separation from the caregiver and the presence of a stranger and also to new situations

Question 9

What were they assessing ?

Answer 9

Proximity seeking - an infant with good attachment will stay close to the care giver

Exploration and secure base behaviour - good attachment enables a child to feel confident to explore

Stranger anxiety - a sign of attachment is to show anxiety when a stranger approaches

Separation anxiety - a sign of attachment is to protest at separation from caregiver

Response to reunion - how the child reacts upon being reunited with caregiver

Question 10

How did they collect data ?

Answer 10

• a group of observers recorded what the infant was doing ever 15 seconds
• the observer notes down which of the following behaviour’s is displayed and also scores the behaviour for intensity on a scale of 1-7

Question 11

What was the method of “the strange situation” ?

Answer 11

• in a controlled observation 12-18 month old infants were left in a room with their mother
• 8 different scenarios occurred eg. Being approached by a stranger , the infant being left alone and the mother returning
• the infants reactions were constantly observed

Question 12

What were the results of the strange situation ?

Answer 12

• 15% of infants were “ insecure avoidant” - they ignored their mother and didn’t mind if she left
• 70% were “securely attached “ - they were content with their mother , upset when she left and happy when she returned - they avoided strangers
• 15% were “ insecure resistant “ they were uneasy around their mothers and upset if she left - they resisted strangers and were also hard to comfort when their mother returned

Question 13

What was the conclusion of the strange situation ?

Answer 13

Infants showing different reactions to their careers have different types of attachment

Question 14

What were the strengths of the strange situation ?

Answer 14

• good reliability = showed very good inter-rated reliability
• Bick et al. (2012) looked at inter-rated reliability in a team I’d trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment types for 94% of tested babies

Question 15

What are some weaknesses of the strange situation ?

Answer 15

• ethnocentrism = tendency to believe that one’s ethnic or cultural group is centrally important and that all other groups are measured in relation to one’s own
• culture bound :
• Takahashi (1990) = noted that the test does not really work in Japan as Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their babies that we would expect there are very high levels of separation anxiety
• the reunion stage = Japanese mothers rushed to the baby and scooped them up meaning the child’s response was hard to observe
• laboratory type situation made the study artificial thus reducing the ecological validity
• parents may have changed their behaviour as they knew they were being observered —> have a effect on the child’s behaviour
• mother may have not been the main attachment figure
• Kagan (1982) suggested that temperament, the genetically influenced personality of the child is the most important influence on behaviour in this situation
• temperament could be a confounding variable
• Main and Solomon (1986) pointed out that a minority of children display atypical attachments that do not fall within types A,B or C behaviour
• this is known as DISORGANISED ATTACHMENT
• disorganised children display an odd mix of resistant and avoidant behaviours

Question 16

Who conducted the cross cultural studies ?

Answer 16

Van ljzendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

Question 17

What was the method in the cross cultural study ?

Answer 17

They carried out a meta analysis of 32 studies of the strange situation in different countries eg. Japan , England and Sweden etc.

They were analysed to find any overall patterns

Question 18

What were the results of the cross cultural study ?

Answer 18

• % of children classified as secure or insecure were similar across the countries tested - there were more differences within the actual countries than between them
• secure attachments were found in the distribution of insecure attachments
• in western cultures the dominant type of insecure attachment was avoidant with the highest proportion of insecure - avoidant children coming from Germany
• in non western cultures the dominant type of insecure attachment was resistant
• Japan has the highest proportion of insecure-resistant children

Question 19

What was the conclusion of this study ?

Answer 19

There are cross cultural similarities in raising children with common reactions to the strange situation

Question 20

What are some evaluation points on the cross cultural study ?

Answer 20

• children’s re brought up in different ways in different cultures = results in different types of attachment in different cultures
• “strange situation “ may not be the ideal method for studying cross cultural attachment
• using a different type of study may have revealed different patterns or types of attachment in different cultures
• study assumes that different countries are the same thing as different cultures
• one problem with the research method is that meta-analyses can hide individual results that show and unusual trend

Question 21

What were some key findings of this cross cultural study ?

Answer 21

1. Some cultural differences are found. Grossman et al (1985) - claimed that more “avoidant” infants may be found in Germany because of the value Germans put on independence - so avoidance is seen as good
2. The causes of different attachment types are debatable - the causes may be the sensitivity of their careers and or their inborn temperament
3. The strange situation experiment doesn’t show a characteristic of the child - the experiment only shows the child’s relationship with a specific person so they might react differently with different careers or later in life
4. Attachment type may influence later behaviours - secure attached children may be more confident in school and form strong, trusting adult relationships
   - avoidant children may have behaviour problems in school and fund it hard to form close, trusting adult relationships
   - resistant children may be insecure and attention seeking in school as adults their strong feelings of dependency may be stressful for partners

Question 22

What are strengths of the cross cultural study ?

Answer 22

• There is a large sample - there were nearly 2000 babies in Van Ijzendoorns meta analysis
• increased internal validity by reducing the impact of anomalous results

Question 23

What are weaknesses of the cross cultural study ?

Answer 23

• samples tend to be unrepresentative of culture:
• meta analysis was between countries not cultures
• Van Ijzendoorn and sagi (2001) found that distributions of attachment type in Tokyo were similar to the western studies where as rural samples had an over representation of insecure resistant individuals
• method of assessment is biased :
• the strange situation was designed by an American researcher based on a British theory - imposed etic
• example of this is a lack of separation anxiety and a lack of pleasure on reunion indicates an insecure attachment
• in Germany this behaviour might be seen as independence than avoidance
• small cross cultural differences may reflect the effects of the mass media in which books and television programmes that advocate similar notions of parenting are disseminated across counties