Types Of Attachment

• Strange Situation

  Aim: to produce a method for assessing quality of attachment. Procedure: 100 American middle class mothers and infants (aged 12-18 months) were placed in controlled observations. 7 episodes of 3 minutes that looked for four behaviours; Separation anxiety/ Stranger anxiety/ Reunion behaviour/ Exploration behaviour. The experience involved the infant being placed in a room with toys where the mother and a stranger would enter and leave on a number of occasions putting the infant at times alone, alone with a stranger, alone with their mother, or with both adults.
• Found: From analysing the behaviour of the infants they suggested 3 attachment types. Secure attachment - 66% uses caregiver as a secure base, showing little stranger anxiety, may cry on separation but easily soothed on reunion. Insecure avoidant - 22% does not use caregivers as a secure base, shows little to no stranger anxiety, separation anxiety and no joy at reunion. Insecure resistant - 12% does not use caregiver as secure base as unable to explore and seeks intense and clingy proximity, shows extremely high separation anxiety and stranger anxiety. Seeks and rejects caregiver on reunion.
• Evaluation Strange Situation

  Some argue it is unethical as 20% of children cried desperately in episode 6. However, Ainsworth argued stress was no more than an everyday experience. A weakness of the Strange Situation is that it was developed in the USA - culturally biased - cannot be generalised. Behaviour that is regarded as healthy in the USA may not be regarded as healthy elsewhere in the world.
• Evaluation Strange Situation

  The research method used by Ainsworth, controlled observation, may be subject to observer bias. This is a weakness of this method because interpretations of the behaviour being viewed may be subjective. The behaviour of the subjects being observed may be affected because they know they are being observed - demand characteristics. This lowers the ecological validity of this research as it does not reflect the usual everyday behaviour between infants and caregivers.