A03

• What are the strengths of the strange situation?

  1. Good reliability
  2. Good predictive validity
• What are the limitations of the strange situation?

  1. May be more than 3 types of attachment
  2. Culture-bound
• Strength = good reliability

  • The Strange Situation shows very good inter-observer reliability - different observers watching the same children in the Strange Situation 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
  • We can be confident that attachment type assessed by the Strange Situation doesn’t depend on subjective judgements
• Strength = good predictive validity

  • Strange Situation’s outcomes predicts a number of the baby’s later development
  • A large body of research has shown that babies assessed as secure attachment tend to have better outcomes than others, both in childhood (better achievement in school and less involvement in bullying) and adulthood
  • Securely attached babies also tend to go on to have better mental health in adulthood
  • Those babies with insecure-resistant tend to have the worst outcomes -> suggests the Strange Situation measures something real and meaningful in a baby’s development
• Limitation = may be more than 3 types of attachment

  • There is at least one other type of attachment that has been identified, as a small number of children don‘t fall into one of the 3 types
  • These children may be classified as disorganised attachment, a mixture of insecure avoidant and resistant attachment
  • Van Ijzendoorn et al. (1999) further supported this with a meta-analysis of nearly 80 studies in the US
  • Found that 15% of children fell into this insecure-disorganised category
  • Ainsworth’s conclusions may have been oversimplified and don‘t account for all attachment behaviours
• Limitation = culture-bound

  • Strange Situation may not be appropriate for other cultures
  • Designed by a Western Woman, based on western ideas of attachment that sees secure attachment as most desirable - may not be the case in other cultures
  • E.g. Takahashi (1986) Japanese study found that Japanese babies displayed very high levels of separation anxiety, which led to a disproportionate number being classified as insecure-resistant
  • Anxiety response may not be due to high rates of attachment insecurity but to unusual nature of experience in Japan where mother-baby separation is very rare