Ainsworth's Strange Situation

what is strange situation?

• controlled observation designed by Mary Ainsworth that aims to measure the security of attachment that a child displays towards the caregiver

Procedure of Ainsworth Strange Situation

• Original study took place on 100 MC American mothers and their children.

• The observation takes place in a controlled space, with a one way mirror through which psychologists observe the infant over 8 episodes (each which lasted 3 minutes) that involve the measuring of the infants reaction to the stranger approaching/leaving and their caregiver approaching/leaving

what are the 5 behaviours used to judge attachment in infants during strange situation?

1) Proximity seeking - staying close to caregiver

2) Exploration and secure-base behaviour - if the child feels confident to explore and use their caregiver as a security base

3) Stranger anxiety - how infants display feelings of anxiety when a stranger approached

4) Separation anxiety - how infants display feelings of anxiety when their caregiver leaves

5) Reunion behaviour - infants reaction when caregiver returns after a period of separation

Findings: what were the 3 types of attachment?

Ainsworth found that there were 3 key patterns in which infants generally behaved. She concluded that these were the 3 types of attachment:

Type B: Secure attachments (60%)

Type A: Insecure avoidant (30%)

Type C: Insecure resistant (10%)

Type B: Secure attachment

• 60%

-Cooperative interactions with their caregiver

-Explore happily but regularly go back to their security base

-Show mild distress during separation and accept comfort from their caregiver in reunion stage

Type A: Insecure Avoidant

• 30%

-Explore freely and avoid interaction intimacy with others

-Don’t seek proximity or show security base

-Little reaction when caregiver leaves or returns

-Free to interact with strangers and shows little stranger anxiety

Type C: Insecure resistant

• 10%

-Both seek and resist intimacy and social interactions

-Seek greater proximity and tend to explore less

-Extreme stranger anxiety but resist their carer when returning

• Ambivalent attachment due to unsure nature of a child’s reaction

Strengths

1) Observations have high reliability:
Ainsworth found almost perfect agreement when rating exploratory behaviour of infants during the observation - with a 0.94 agreement between the raters. This is an almost unanimous agreement between observers

• strength as observations such as strange situation have high inter - rater reliability, which is crucial for valid results

Weaknesses

1) Lacks representation due to culture based methodology (very western, American procedure)

• Takahashi: Said test doesn’t work in japan because Japanese mothers are rarely separated from their children, and in this country leaving her child with a stranger isn’t a realistic day to day scenario

• Infants were so distressed after being left along that 90% of infants had to have the separation phase stopped

• since SS reflects western culture and doesn’t consider differences in rearing practices, it make SS culturally biased and not applicable to all circumstances

• Therefore not suitable to judge attachments cross culturally, reducing its utility

2) Fails to account for the 4th type of attachment, therefore its incomplete

• Main & Solomon: analysed over 200 SS tapes and proposed Type D attachment: insecure disorganised. This is characterised by a lack of consistent social behaviour and attachment. When dealing with stress and separation, they showed very strong attachment which was suddenly followed by avoidance or looking scared of the caregiver

• Ainsworth’s findings are narrow and lack sufficient detail

3) Infants have different attachments with different caregivers

• Main & Solomon: children behaved differently based on which parent they were with

• SS aims to measure attachment type a child has, however, researchers claim that by focusing on 1 relationship between carer and infant gives a limited picture on a child’s attachment behaviour