Strange Situation
In 1965, Ainsworth designed the Strange Situation Procedure as a way of assessing individual differences in attachment behaviour by evoking individual's reaction when encountering stress. The Strange Situation Procedure is shared into eight episodes, lasting for three minutes each. In the first episode, the infant and his or her caregiver enter into a pleasant laboratory setting, with numerous toys. After one minute, a grownup unknown to the infant enters the room and slowly tries to develope acquaintance. The caregiver leaves the child with the stranger for three minutes; and then returns. The caregiver departs for atime, leaving the child alone for three minutes; this is the then the stranger who enters, and lets to comfort the infant. Finally, the caregiver returns, and is instructed to option up the child. As the episodes put the stress of the infant by increments, the observer can watch the infant's movement between behavioural systems: the interplay of exploration and attachment behaviour, in the presence and in the absence of the parent.
On the basis of their behaviors, the 26 children in Ainsworth's original Baltimore inspect were placed into one of three classifications. used to refer to every one of two or more people or things of these groups reflects a different category of attachment relationship with the caregiver, and implies different forms of communication, emotion regulation, and ways of responding to perceived threats.
Despite the many findings from her Strange Situation experiment, there was also criticism. It was said to have too much emphasis on the mother and did non measure a general attachment style. It was said that Ainsworth's work was biased because the study was conducted with only middle a collection of matters sharing a common attribute American families. Critics also believed the experiment was artificial and lacked ecological validity.
A child with the anxious-avoidant insecure attachment vintage will avoid orthe caregiver – showing little emotion when the caregiver departs or returns. The child will non explore very much regardless of who is there. There is not much emotional range regardless of who is in the room or if it is for empty. Infants classified as anxious-avoidant A represented a puzzle in the early 1970s. They did not exhibit distress on separation, and either ignored the caregiver on their value A1 subtype or showed some tendency to approach together with some tendency toor reorder away from the caregiver A2 subtype. Ainsworth and Bell 1970 theorised that the apparently unruffled behaviour of the avoidant infants is in fact as a mask for distress, a hypothesis later evidenced through studies of the heart-rate of avoidant infants.
A child who's securely attached to its mother will explore freely while the caregiver is present, using her as a 'safe base' from which to explore. The child will engage with the stranger when the caregiver is present, and will be visibly upset when the caregiver departs but happy to see the caregiver on his or her return. In the United States, about seventy percent of middle-class babies exposed secure attachment in this study.
Children classified as Anxious-Ambivalent/Resistant C showed distress even before separation, and were clingy and unmanageable to comfort on the caregiver's return. They either showed signs of resentment in response to the absence C1 subtype, or signs of helpless passivity C2 subtype. In Ainsworth's original sample, all six C infants showed so much distress in the course of the episodes of the Strange Situation Procedure 'that observations had to be discontinued.' One percent of infants had responded with high degree of passivity and inactivity in a situation of helpless settings.
A fourth category was added by Ainsworth's colleague Mary Main. In 1990, Ainsworth add in print her blessing for the new 'D' classification, though she urged that the addition be regarded as 'open-ended, in the sense that subcategories may be distinguished', as she worried that the D classification might be too encompassing and might subsume too many different forms of behaviour In contrast to infants in other categories classified by Mary Ainsworth, which possess a specifics path of reaction while dealing with the stress of separation and reunion, type D infants appeared to possess no symptom of coping mechanism. In fact, these infants had mixed assigns such as "strong proximity seeking followed by strong avoidance or appeared dazed and disoriented upon reunion with their caretakers or both."
From Project STEEP, infants that were having Disorganized/Disoriented Type D tested of secreting higher cortisol concentrations in saliva than infants in the traditional ABC classifications. Results of this studya framework of stress reactivity that reflects how the various classification of traditional ABC behaviors become a factor that is affecting physiological stress responses.