mary ainsworth designed the strange situation to measure attachment.
mary ainsworth designed the strange situation to measure attachment.
who designed the strange situation to measure attachment?
mary ainsworth
the most common and empirically supported method for assessing attachment in infants (12 months – 20 months) is the strange situation protocol, developed by mary ainsworth as a result of her careful in-depth observations of infants with their mothers in uganda(see below). the strange situation protocol is a research, not a diagnostic, tool and the resulting attachment classifications are not 'clinical diagnoses.' while the procedure may be used to supplement clinical impressions, the resulting classifications should not be confused with the clinically diagnosed 'reactive attachment disorder (rad).' the clinical concept of rad differs in a number of fundamental ways from the theory and research driven attachment classifications based on the strange situation procedure. the idea that insecure attachments are synonymous with rad is, in fact, not accurate and leads to ambiguity when formally discussing attachment theory as it has evolved in the research literature. this is not to suggest that the concept of rad is without merit, but rather that the clinical and research conceptualizations of insecure attachment and attachment disorder are not synonymous.
attachment in children
although originally designed for 1-year-old children, ainsworth’s strange situation has been adapted to measure the attachment and exploratory behavior of children between the ages of 2-4½ years-old. a fundamental feature of the strange situation is that the situation the child is placed in must elicit stress. if the strange situation fails to stress the child, it cannot serve as an adequate environment for the measurement of attachment. the preschool strange situation features several alterations to facilitate the creation of stress in older children. these modifications include a slightly longer separation, changes in the role and/or gender of the stranger, and changes in the instructions to the caregiver. some versions of the preschool strange situations omit the stranger altogether, thus leaving the child alone in the room throughout both separations. the coding system used to interpret the attachment style expressed by the child has also been modified. rather than focusing entirely on the expression of specific behaviors and emotions, the revised coding system assesses ways in which a variety of behaviors, such as talking, are organized to maintain and negotiate proximity and contact. cassidy, marvin and the macarthur working group published a version of the strange situation procedure designed for children within the age group of 3- to 4-years-old. in addition to categorizing a child’s attachment as secure, insecure/avoidant, insecure/ambivalent, and insecure/disorganized, the measure includes a seven-point avoidance scale and nine-point security scale.
attachment measures