1 AQA Psychology A AS Level © Nelson Thornes 2008 Unit 1, Section 2 Development psychology –...

1AQA Psychology A AS Level © Nelson Thornes 2008

Unit 1, Section 2

Development psychology – early social developmentAttachment in humans


Unit 1, Section 2

Mary Ainsworth

‘Variations in attachments’


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• Mary Ainsworth (1970) was most famous for her work on ‘The Strange Situation’.

• This is a technique that places the infant in different situations in order to research the quality of attachment to the caregiver.


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• The mother and her infant go into a room. The mother sits, and the child is placed on the floor and is free to explore.

The Strange Situation – the methodology used:


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• A stranger then enters the room and talks briefly to the mother.


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• The stranger leans forward and tries to engage with the infant through play and talk.


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• The mother leaves the room. Now the baby is alone with the stranger. The stranger tries to comfort the baby if they get upset, and tries to play with them.

My mummy’s gone! Who’s that stranger?


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• The mother returns to the room and the stranger leaves.


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• The mother leaves the room and the infant is alone.


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• Instead of the mother returning to the room, the stranger returns and tries to comfort and play with the baby.

My mummy’s gone! Here she comes

Ahhhh! It’s not… oh no… where is my mummy?


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• The mother re-enters the room and the stranger leaves.


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• The procedure provided Ainsworth with a means of looking at: stranger anxiety; separation anxiety; and the infant’s behaviour towards the mother.

• This led Ainsworth to develop three broad types of attachment.


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• Here are the different types of attachment that she recognised:Secure

attachmentResistant

attachmentAvoidant

attachment

‘I trust you’ ‘I don’t trust you’ ‘I don’t care!’


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12%22%66%Percentage of infants in

study

Avoidant attachment

Resistant attachment

Secure attachment

Here are the results of the study:


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• Ainsworth concluded that:• attachment differences depended upon the sensitivity of the

mother (i.e. how well the mother could read her infant’s feelings and moods).

• sensitive mothers generally had infants who were securely attached.

• less sensitive and less responsive mothers (i.e. those who ignored their infant or were impatient with them) had babies who were more likely to be insecurely attached.

• a baby’s attachment does seem to be affected to some extent by the quality and sensitivity of the caregiver.

• See De Wolff and van IJzendoorn (1997)


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• The Strange Situation – some methodological issues:

• This was an effective means of looking at infants’ attachments to their mothers in a relatively efficient way.

• Replication was easy: the method has been employed in studies the world over – especially in cross-cultural research.

• Validity concerns related to the location being different from the infant’s normal environment. This criticism is limited, though, because many infants experience new locations quite naturally – e.g. with a babysitter, at play group, etc.

• Ethics: consider distress, the infant clearly found most of the situations distressing. What about informed consent? Prior to each study, was the mother informed of the potential distress that their baby might experience?

1 AQA Psychology A AS Level © Nelson Thornes 2008 Unit 1, Section 2 Development psychology –...

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