![]() How do children develop in their relationship with their caregivers? Psychologist John Bowlby believed that the relationship of a child to their caretaker resulted in all or nothing: either a relationship or no relationship. However, psychologist Mary Ainsworth disproved Bowlby’s theory that attachment is an all or nothing process in her famous and intriguing experiment titled, The Strange Situation. In 1969, she developed a test called the Strange Situation Classification (SSC), designed to root out the differences in attachments various babies have with their mothers. The experiment goes like this: A toddler and it’s mother are placed in a homely room with lots of toys, while the researchers watch through a one way glass taking notes about the child’s behavior every 15 seconds. While the setting is nice and comforting, it is different then what the child is used to, so theoretically, the child should act more attached to their mother in this unfamiliar area.
According to how the child reacted, Ainsworth separated the children into three groups: Secure Attachment, Ambivalent Attachment and Avoidant Attachment. When a child demonstrates Secure Attachment, the child is distressed when the mother leaves and comforted when the mother returns to comfort the child. The child usually ignores the stranger when alone, but with his or her mother, is more likely to interact with the stranger because they use their mother as a safe base to explore their environment. In Ambivalent Attachment, the child exhibits intense distress when the mother leaves, is completely mistrustful of the stranger yet is not easily comforted by the mother in return. The child may even push his or her mother away. The child who displays Ambivelant Attachment cries more and explores less because they cannot depend on a reliable base to explore. Lastly, the child who shows Avoidant Attachment usually is not interested in his or her mother, and plays normally whether the child is with his or her mother, the stranger, or completely alone. The child shows litter preference for the mother or the stranger. Ainsworth’s results give interesting insight to how parenting styles can affect the relationship between the child and caregiver, even affect the child’s personality. https://www.simplypsychology.org/mary-ainsworth.html
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