Ainsworth's Strange Situation

Question 1

The Strange Situation

The strange situation was developed by Mary Ainsworth in 1969. The aim was to be able to observe key attachment behaviours as a means of assessing the quality of a child’s attachment to a caregiver.

Answer 1

Procedure
The strange situation is a controlled observation procedure designed to measure the security of attachment a child displays towards a caregiver. It takes place in a room with quite controlled conditions (i.e. a laboratory) with a two-way mirror though which psychologists can observe the infant’s behaviour.
The behaviours used to judge attachment included:
~ Proximity seeking – an infant with a good attachment will just stay fairly close to the caregiver.
~ Exploration and secure-base behaviour – good attachment enables the child to feel confident to explore, using their caregiver as a secure base.
~ Stranger anxiety – one of the signs of becoming closely attached is a display of anxiety when a stranger approaches.
~ Separation anxiety – another sign of becoming attached is to protest at separation from the caregiver.
~ Response to reunion - with the caregiver after separation for a short period of time under controlled conditions.
The procedure has seven episodes, each of which last three minutes:
Beginning: Child and caregiver enter an unfamiliar playroom
1. The child is encouraged to explore: Tests exploration and secure base.
2. Stranger comes in and tries to interact with the child: Tests stranger anxiety.
3. The caregiver leaves the child in stranger together: Tests separation and stranger anxiety.
4. The caregiver returns and the stranger leaves: Tests reunion behaviour and exploration/secure base.
5. The caregiver leaves the child alone: Tests separation anxiety.
6. The stranger returns: Tests stranger anxiety.
7. The caregiver returns and his reunited with the child: Tests reunion behaviour.

Findings
Ainsworth et al. (1978) found that there were distinct patterns in the way that infants behaved. She identified three main types of attachment:
~ Secure attachment (type B): These children explore happily but regularly go back to their caregiver (proximity seeking and secure base behaviour). They usually show moderate separation distress and moderate stranger anxiety. Securely attached children require and accept comfort from the caregiver in the reunion stage. About 60-75% of British toddlers are classified as secure.
~ Insecure-avoidant (type A): These children explore freely but do not seek proximity or show secure base behaviour. They show little or no reaction when their caregiver leaves and they make a little effort to make contact with the caregiver returns. They also show little stranger anxiety. They do not require comfort at the reunion stage. About 20-25% of toddlers are classified as insecure-avoidant.
~ Insecure-resistant (type C): These children seek greater proximity than others and so explore less. They show huge stranger and separation distress but they resist comfort when reunited with their carer. Around 3% of British toddlers are classified as insecure-resistant.

Question 2

Evaluation of the Strange Situation (support for validity, good reliability, culture-bound)

Answer 2

+ Attachment type as defined by the strange situation is strongly predictive of later development. Babies assessed as secure typically go on to have better outcomes in many areas, ranging from success at school to romantic relationships/friendships in adulthood. Insecure-resistant attachment is associated with the worst outcomes including filling in later childhood (Kokkinos 2007) and adult mental health problems (Ward et al. 2006).
This is evidence for the validity of the concept because it can explain subsequent outcomes.

+ The strange situation shows very good inter-rater reliability. In other words different observers watching the same children in the strange situation generally agree on what attachment type to classify them with. This may be because the strange situation takes place under controlled conditions and because the behavioural categories are easy to observe. In a recent study by Bick et al.(2012) looked up inter-rater reliability in a team of trained strange situation observers and found agreement on attachment type for 94% of tested babies.
This means we can be confident that the attachment type of an infant identified in the strange situation does not just depend on who is observing them.

• There is some doubt about whether the strange situation is a culture-bound test, i.e. it does not have the same meaning in countries outside Western Europe and the USA. This is for two reasons. First, cultural differences in childhood experiences are likely to mean that children respond differently to the strange situation. Second, caregivers from different cultures behave differently in the strange situation.
  For example Takahashi (1990) has noted that the test does not really work in Japan because Japanese mothers are so rarely separated from their babies that, as we would expect, there are very high levels of separation anxiety. Also in the reunion stage Japanese mothers rushed to the baby and scooped them up, meaning the child’s response was hard to observe.