ainsworth's strange situation - types of attachment

• strange situation aim

  to see how infants (9 to 18 months) behave under conditions of mild stress and novelty
• room size

  9 times 9 foot room marked off into 16 squares
• 8 episodes

  1. parent and infant play
  2. parent sits while infant plays (use of parent as secure base)
  3. stranger enters and talks to parent (stranger anxiety)
  4. parent leaves, infant plays, stranger offers comfort if needed (separation anxiety)
  5. parent returns, greets infant, offers comfort if needed, stranger leaves (reunion behaviour)
  6. parent leaves, infant alone (separation anxiety)
  7. stranger enters and offers comfort (stranger anxiety)
  8. parent returns, greets infant, offers comfort (reunion behaviour)
• behaviours assessed

  separation anxiety

  reunion behaviour

  stranger anxiety

  secure base concept
• how is data collected

  video recorder or one way mirror, every 15 seconds put in behavioural categories. scale of 1 to 7
• findings similarities

  ainsworth et al combined data from several studies total 106 middle class infants

  • similar = all exploratory behaviours decreased from ep 2 + crying increased
• secure infants (B)

  high willingness to explore, moderate stranger anxiety, easy to soothe from separation anxiety, enthusiastic reunion behaviour, 66 %
• insecure avoidant infants (A)

  high willingness to explore, low stranger anxiety, indifferent separation anxiety, avoids contact at reunion with caregiver, 22 %
• insecure resistant (C)

  low willingness to explore, high stranger anxiety, distressed separation anxiety, seeks and rejects at reunion with caregiver, 12 %
• overlooked 4th attachment type (insecure - disorganised)

  Main and Solomon

  • analysed over 200 strange situation videotapes
  • proposed insecure disorganised - lack of consistent pattern, lack coherent strategy for dealing w stress of separation

  support

  • van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg
  • meta analysis of nearly 80 studies
  • found 15% insecure disorganised

  suggests ainsworths og conclusions were oversimplified
• observations had high reliability


  inter observer reliability

  • ainsworth et al found 0.94 agreement

  agreement between raters
• real world applications

  intervention strategies can be developed to tackle situations when disordered patterns of attachment develop

  • eg. Circle of Security Project teaches caregivers to better understand infant's signals of distress and increase understanding of what anxiety feels like
  • decrease in disordered attachment 60 % to 15%
  • increase in secure 32 % to 40 %
• low internal validity - does it measure child attachment type or quality of one particular relationship


  Main and Weston

  • children behave diff based on which parent they were with
  • relationship not attachment type

  however, according to bowlby's theory of monotropy, attachment type is largely related to one special relationship

  Main

  • attachment type based chiefly on mother