What does the Strange Situation tell us about attachment?

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In 1969, American Psychologist Mary Ainsworth developed a new procedure for studying attachment types in infants. She called her procedure the Strange Situation Classification – known more commonly as just the Strange Situation. Ainsworth was a student of the leading Developmental Psychologist John Bowlby. 

As an adult you know when you’ve formed an attachment with someone; you know how it feels and you know how to express your feelings in words. However, when it comes to babies and young children they haven’t yet developed these skills.

Therefore researchers must turn to more subtle techniques such as the Strange Situation, which measures the security of an attachment in 1 to 2 year olds; a twenty minute participatory observation, during which the researcher observes the infant’s behavioural responses to a series of scenarios.

Ainsworth’s strange situation includes eight stages, each lasting roughly 3 minutes:

Stage 1: Mother and Baby
Stage 2: Mother, Baby and Stranger
Stage 3: Stranger and Baby
Stage 4: Mother returns
Stage 5: Stranger leaves
Stage 6: Mother leaves, leaving baby alone
Stage 7: Stranger returns
Stage 8: Mother returns and stranger leaves

So what were the researchers measuring?

When the mother was in the room with the baby, they scored the infant’s behaviour on four measures:

• Proximity and contact-seeking
• Contact maintaining
• Avoidance of proximity and contact
• Resistance to contact and comforting.

The baby’s exploratory behaviours were also recorded as they explored the environment.

Ainsworth reported that infants display one of three attachment types:

Secure Attachment

Securely attached infants showed distress when separated from their mother, were avoidant of the stranger when alone but friendly in the presence of their mother, and were happy when the mother returned from outside the room. Seventy percent of children studied fell into this category.

Ambivalent Attachment

Fifteen percent of children demonstrated an ambivalent attachment with their mother. These children showed intense distress when the mother left the room, and demonstrated a significant fear of the stranger. When the mother returned to the room, ambivalent children approached the mother but rejected contact.

Avoidant Attachment

Ainsworth reported that a final fifteen percent had an avoidant attachment style. Such infants show no interest when the mother leaves the room and play happily with the stranger. When the mother returns, avoidant children barely seem to notice.

Disorganised Attachment

In 1990, Main and Solomon added that a very small percentage were inconstant in their behaviours and defined this attachment style as disorganised.

Caregiver Sensitivity Hypothesis

Ainsworth’s Caregiver Sensitivity Hypothesis suggests that differences in infants’ attachment styles are dependent on the mother’s behaviour towards the baby during a critical period of development.

Ainsworth et al. (1978): The Strange Situation.

The Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) was designed as a valid method of measuring attachment in young children. More specifically, it aimed to assess how infants between the ages of 9 and 18 months behaved under conditions of mild stress and novelty. It measured three main factors of attachment theory: anxiety, separation anxiety and secure base.

The SSP is still considered to be the accepted method of assessing the quality of attachments, despite a number of criticisms.

The Procedure.

The SSP comprises eight episodes, most lasting for about three minutes. Episode one (introductions) lasts around thirty seconds. During the procedure, every aspect of the participants’ behaviour is observed and recorded, with special attention given to reunion behaviours, that is, the infants’ responses to their mothers’ return.

Each episode is outlined in the Box 1.

In the original study, the testing room was an unfamiliar environment of 81 square foot, divided into 16 squares to aid the recording of movements.

Five categories were recorded:

1. Proximity seeking and contact seeking behaviours.
2. Contact maintaining behaviours.
3. Proximity avoiding and interaction avoiding behaviours.
4. Contact resisting and interaction resisting behaviours.
5. Search behaviours.

Findings.

Infants tended to explore the room and the toys more enthusiastically when just the mother was present than when after the stranger entered or when the mother had left the room.

Reunion behaviour showed three specific types of attachment (see box 2), with 70 percent displaying type B (securely attached); 15 percent type A (insecure-avoidant) and 15 percent displaying type C (insecure resistant).

Conclusions.

Ainsworth concluded that sensitive responsiveness plays a major role in the quality of attachments. Sensitive mothers are able to correctly interpret the signals emitted by the infant and respond in an appropriate way. Sensitive mothers are more likely to have securely attached babies, whereas insensitive mothers tend to have insecurely attached babies.

Criticisms.

The SSP assumes that attachment type is a fixed characteristic. However, behaviours on the day can change in response to, for example, the stress levels of the mother. The behaviour of the mother will then impact how she responds to the child and how the child responds in return.

The procedure lacks what researchers call ecological validity, that is, it representers an artificial environment that is unlikely to replicate itself in the real world. Some researchers have found that the behaviour of the child can alter within different environments, such as the home (e.g. Brofenbrenner, 1979).

The procedures ethics have been called into question because it places very young children is a stressful situation.

Children might act differently in the SSP when they are with a different parent. For example, children might register as insecurely attached with the mother but securely attached with their father (see Main and Weston, 1981).