What is the strange situation theory?

The Strange situation is a procedure devised by Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s to observe attachment in children, that is relationships between a caregiver and child. It applies to children between the age of nine and 18 months. The procedure played an important role in the development of Attachment theory.

What are the 8 stages of the strange situation?

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.

What is the strange situation test?

an experimental technique used to assess quality of attachment in infants and young children (up to the age of 2). The procedure subjects the child to increasing amounts of stress induced by a strange setting, the entrance of an unfamiliar person, and two brief separations from the parent.

What did the Strange Situation experiment prove?

With the observation, it was concluded that there are three types of attachment: secure, ambivalent, and avoidant. Secure attachment was proved when the baby was distressed when the mother left, and happy when she returned.

Why is the Strange Situation important?

Her creation of the Strange Situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) provided a gold standard for identifying and classifying individual differences in infant attachment security (and insecurity) and ushered in decades of research examining the precursors and outcomes of individual differences in infant …

What is the key element of the Strange Situation test?

Throughout the procedure, the child is observed on four aspects: play behavior, reactions to departure and to the mother’s return, and behavior when the stranger is around.

What were the 4 things Ainsworth assessed in the Strange Situation?

(1) Mother, baby, and experimenter (lasts less than one minute). (2) Mother and baby alone. (3) A stranger joins the mother and infant. (4) Mother leaves baby and stranger alone.

Why is Ainsworth Strange Situation important?

The Strange Situation is a semi-structured laboratory procedure that allows us to identify, without lengthy home observation, infants who effectively use a primary caregiver as a secure base.

Why is the Strange Situation culturally biased?

Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Research can be seen to be ethnocentric due to the fact that the research procedure was developed in the United States and is based on the US views of what is seen as ‘important’ in caregiver-infant attachment (is based purely on US values).