ainsworth

• Secure: moderate stranger distress and separation anxiety, often using their mothers as a safe base to explore. When mother leaves they become distressed, but then an overjoyed reaction when she comes back, and they are easily calmed down. Mothers are sensitively responsive to child’s needs, responding appropriately to

  child’s actions
• Insecure Avoidant: Low separation anxiety and stranger distress, does not pay attention to mother, and is not fazed by her leaving. No reaction when mother returns. Child does not use mother as a safe base, but is rather distant to her. Mother lacks sensitive responsiveness, does not properly respond to child’s actions.
• Insecure Resistant: High separation anxiety and stranger distress, does not leave mother’s side, and becomes extremely upset when she leaves, and when returning, child is very difficult to calm down.  Mother is

  inconsistent in sensitive responsiveness
• + High levels of control of extraneous variables due to it being a controlled observation, therefore less chance of extraneous variables affecting results.

  However this results in low levels of ecological validity, we cannot be sure that the children are acting as they normally would in a natural setting, and may be more anxious because of the unfamiliar setting that they have been placed in.
• -Culture bias – only American middle class families studied, no representation in research to other social

  classes or cultures, therefore it is difficult to extrapolate these results to other populations, as they may have vastly different child-rearing practices, which may result in the formation of other attachment types.
• The Strange Situation is a controlled observation that is designed to assess the quality of a child’s attachment to a caregiver. It

  takes place in a room in controlled conditions with a two-way mirror through which psychologists can observe the infant’s

  behaviour. The strange situation consists of seven 3-minute ‘episodes’ involving the infant, mother and a stranger (e.g. mother

  and baby, stranger enters, mother leaves, mother returns etc). Through the different episodes a number of different behaviours

  are monitored to judge attachment such as stranger anxiety, separation protest and reunion behaviour.
• A strength of the strange situation is that it appears to have good predictive validity. For example, research has indicated that babies and toddlers assessed as securely attached tend to have better outcomes than others, both in childhood and later life. E.g better achievement in school and better mental health in adulthood. This therefore suggests that the strange situation is a valid measure which assesses something real and meaningful in a child’s development. However, it has been argued that the child’s genetically influenced personality could account for variations in attachment behaviour in the strange situation and later development. This is therefore a limitation of the strange situation as the anxiety observed, and subsequent difficulties, may be the result of the child’s personality traits rather than an insecure attachment.
• Furthermore, it could be argued that the application of the strange situation to other cultures might not always be appropriate as different child-rearing practices could lead to attachments being identified as insecure when this is not actually the case. For example, a meta-analysis of studies using the strange situation in other cultures identified a greater number of insecure- avoidant infants in Germany, but this may be due to German mothers valuing and encouraging independent behaviour rather than being insensitive, meaning that the insecure label might not be appropriate. This is therefore an example of an imposed etic as an attachment measure developed in one culture is then imposed on others without sufficient consideration being given to its appropriateness due to cultural differences in parenting styles.
• Ainsworth’s proposal of three distinct attachment types has also been challenged. Main and Soloman argued that a minority of children display attachments that do not fall within the three categories defined by Ainsworth. This has led to the development of a fourth category, Type D, commonly known as ‘disorganised’ attachment

  where children display a mixture of resistant and avoidant behaviours.

  This therefore challenges Ainsworth’s proposal of fixed attachment types as not all children display a consistent pattern of behaviour within the strange situation.