Ainsworths strange situation

• Ainsworth’s procedure

  1. Mother and child enter the play room
  2. The child is encouraged to explore
  3. Stranger enters and attempts to interact with the child
  4. Mother leaves while the stranger is present
  5. Mother returns and the stranger leaves
  6. Mother leaves, the child is left alone
  7. Stranger returns and tries to comfort the child
  8. Mother returns and offers comfort
• Reunion behaviour

  Measures the reaction of a baby when reunited with their primary care giver
• Type A

  Avoidant-insecure (22%)
• Type B

  Securely attached (66%)
• Type C

  Resistant-insecure (12%)
• Type B - securely attached (66%):

  Behaviour in the room - explored unfamilair room when they knew they had a secure base to return to

  Response to caregiver - Distress when separated but pleased when returned

  Behaviour towards stranger - showed moderate avoidance

  Behaviour of caregiver - sensitive caregivers
• Type A: avoidant-insecure (22%)

  Behaviour in the room- Explored unfamiliar room

  Response to caregiver - Didn’t seem concerned with caregivers absence. showed little interest in her when she returned

  Behaviour towards stranger - Avoided stranger but not as strongly as they avoided the caregiver on her return

  Behaviour of caregiver - caregiver sometimes ignored infants
• Type c - Resistant-Insecure (12%)

  Behaviour in the room - Explored very little when caregiver present

  Response to the caregiver - Intense distress showed anger upon reunion

  Behaviour towards stranger - wary of the stranger. Ambivalent behaviour towards caregiver when she returned seeking and rejecting contact

  Behaviour of caregiver - caregivers behaved ambivalently toward infants
• Methodology :

  Evaluations-

  Lab study

  ✅Highly controlled

  ❌Mother was aware she was being observed thus demand characteristics were created Observation

  ✅Highly controlled

  ❌subjective
• Ethics

  Evaluation

  ❌ Distress

  ❌No protection from harm
• Reliability :

  ❌ Observation is not always reliable is subjective

  ✅ However inter-rater reliability was used and improves this

  ✅ Different observers watched the children and agreed on an attachment type (94% agreement)
• Internal validity:

  Evaluation -

  ❌Only measures attachment with mum

  ❌Research has found that infants behave differently depending on whom they are with. some are ‘secure‘ with mother but ‘insecure avoidant with the father.

  ❌Main and Cassidy (1988) reviewed Ainsworth’s study and added a new attachment type -type D- Disorganised. these infants show and odd mix of avoidant and resistant behaviours. And don’t fit into any other of the three catagories.

  ❌ This suggests Ainsworth wrongly classified some infants thus she wasn’t accurately measuring what she intended (lacks internal validity)
• Time

  Evaluation

  ❌ Because the experiment was in the 1970s more mothers were staying at home mothers in the 21st century more mothers go back to work - this may affect the strength of the mother and infant attachment
• Sample

  Evaluation-

  ❌106 middle class American infants - Ethnocentric - children and parents in other countries behave differently in the strange situation
• A positive of the strange situation

  ✅ The strange situation enables us to assess the strength of attachment and how this will relate to behaviours lager in life
• Cultural variations in attachment

  Individualist cultures -

  Value personal interest and independence

  More likely to be in the west e.g. Germany, GB,USA,Sweden

  
  

  Collective cultures-

  Value group needs and working together

  More likely in the Easy e.g. Japan and china
• Culture variations in Japan and Germany

  Japan -

  • Collectivist county

  • Child-rearing places a large emphasis on developing close family relationships

  • Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their children and almost never leave their child with a stranger

  • Mothers are highly responsive to their child’s needs

  Germany -

  • Individualist county

  • Require distance between parent and child

  • The ideal is an independent, non-clingy infant

  • Parents value independence, they want self reliant children Who can ‘stand on their own two feet’ and not make demands on them
• Van Ijzendoorn And Kroonenberg‘s (1988) Aim

  • To investigate cross cultural differences in attachment
• Van Ijzendoorn And Kroonenberg‘s (1988) Procedure

  • Van Ijzendoorn conducted a meta analysis of the findings from 32 studies of attachment. 8 countries were included in the study with a total of over 2000 participants. all of these studies used the strange situation procedure
• Van Ijzendoorn And Kroonenberg‘s (1988) Findings

  • The most common attachment type in all cultures was secure attachment, the next common was Avoidant and the least common was resistant

  • The country with the highest level of secure attachment was Great Britain

  • The country with the highest level of insecure avoidant attachment was Germany this is because they are encourages to be more independent

  • countries with the highest level of insecure attachment was Japan and Isreal. Because they are encouraged to be dependent on their mothers
• Van Ijzendoorn And Kroonenberg‘s (1988) Findings (part 2)

  • Differences between cultures were small( there were lots of similarities), where the variation within cultures was 150% greater than the variation between cultures this means there will be more variation between the locations within the country rather than countries
• Van Ijzendoorn And Kroonenberg‘s (1988) Conclusion

  The global pattern reflects Ainsworth’s findings with her American sample. this supports the idea that secure attachment is the ‘norm’ and the best for healthy social and emotional development
• Takahashi (1990)- Japanese infants

  • Studied 60 middle class Japanese infants with their mothers. They found similar levels of secure attachment to those found in Ainsworth. However they reported no children showing avoidant and 32% showed insecure resistant attachment. They often became incredibly distressed at being alone and 90% of time the experiment had to be stopped

  • This could again be explained by their child rearing where in Japan they rarely leave their children
• Grossman and Grossman (1991) -German infants

  • German infants tend to be classified as insecurely attached. They reported much higher levels of insecure avoidant attachments in their samples

  • This could be due to child rearing practices in Germany where independence is encouraged, so children dont show proximity seeking behaviours in the same way
• Cultural similarities: Tronick et al (1992)

  Tronick studied an African tribe ,the Efe, who live in extended family groups. Infants were looked after and even breastfed by different women but usually slept with their mother at night

  • Despite such differences in childrearing practices the infants still showed one primary attachment to their mother at six Months

  • supports the idea that attachment is universal
• In Van Ijzendoorn's investigation which country was found to have the highest percentage of anxious avoidant children

  Germany
• In Van Ijzendoorn's investigation which country was found to have the highest percentage of anxious resistant children

  Japan
• In Van Ijzendoorn's investigation which attachment type was most common in all of the countries investigated

  Secure