The Handy Psychology Answer Book. Lisa J. Cohen

Based on the child’s responses to separations and reunions with the mother, the child could be classified into secure and insecure attachment categories. Ainsworth also found that attachment status in the lab correlated with the mother’s behavior toward the child in the home. Ainsworth’s publication of this data in her 1978 book Patterns of Attachment was a milestone in attachment research. This fairly simple experimental paradigm would dramatically change psychological research into child development.

      What does it mean to be securely attached?

      A securely attached child (B baby in Ainsworth’s system) showed interest in the toys when the mother was in the room. Some babies showed mild to moderate distress in the separation episodes. Most importantly, in the reunion episodes, the child directly sought out contact with the mother. If the child was distressed after the separation, contact with the mother was effective in soothing the child. This pattern of behavior is seen to reflect the child’s felt security in the mother’s availability and responsiveness to the child’s attachment needs.

      What is the “strange situation” and what does it show?

      The strange situation is a twenty-minute procedure in which infants of twelve to eighteen months and their mothers are introduced to a room full of toys attached to an observation room by a one-way mirror. A sequence of separations and reunions follow. There are eight episodes to the strange situation, the first lasting only thirty seconds and the rest up to three minutes. The baby’s reactions during the two separation and reunion episodes are carefully observed through the oneway mirror. Based mainly on these behaviors, the baby is classified as either securely attached or into one of three insecurely attached categories.

      What does it mean to be insecurely attached?

      A child who is insecurely attached is viewed as feeling insecure about the mother’s emotional availability or responsiveness to the child’s attachment cues. The child then modifies his or her attachment behavior to adapt to the mother’s behavior. There are several categories of insecure attachment. Ainsworth originally proposed two categories, avoidant and resistant attachment, but another category, disorganized attachment, was added later.

      What are the ways that insecure attachment manifests?

      Avoidant children, whom Ainsworth originally classified as A babies, show overly independent behavior. They tend to show more interest in the toys than their mother and little distress during the separation. Most importantly, they turn away from their mother upon reunion; hence they are avoidant. Resistant babies (or C babies) may be seen as overly dependent. They are less likely to engage with the toys when their mother is present and may show great distress upon separation. Upon reunion, they show proximity-seeking behavior with the mother (crying, reaching, etc.) but also resist the mothers’ attempts to soothe them. They may push their mothers away, arch their backs when picked up, or angrily kick their mothers. While avoidant and resistant classifications are considered a variant of normal attachment, disorganized attachment is more likely to be found in children who are victims of abusive or otherwise pathological parenting. These children do not show a consistent strategy of dealing with attachment and may even show fear toward their parent.

      Are insecurely attached children less attached to their parents than are securely attached children?

      No. Biology ensures that all children are powerfully attached to their caregivers. There is no choice in this matter. Children vary in the security of their attachment, which basically means how safe they feel in their relationship with their attachment figure, and how secure they are that their caregiver will respond to their needs. But this does not mean they vary with regard to the power of their attachment to their caregivers.

      What kind of parenting results in securely attached babies?

      In Ainsworth’s sample, securely attached children were more likely to have mothers who were reliably sensitive and responsive to the child’s cues as measured in the home environment. Mothers who were more sensitive to their infants during feeding, play, physical contact, and episodes of emotional distress in the first three months of life were more likely to have securely attached infants at twelve months.

      What kind of parenting results in insecurely attached babies?

      Mothers of avoidant babies were shown to be reliably unresponsive to the babies’ cues in Ainsworth’s home studies. Avoidant attachment behavior is considered to reflect the child’s suppression of attachment needs in response to a reliably unresponsive mother. Mothers of resistant babies were found to be unreliably responsive to the child’s attachment cues in the home setting. Thus resistant attachment may be seen as a strategy to maximize their mother’s attention by ratcheting up their attachment system. Disorganized attachment is more often found in children who have been abused or whose mothers have significant emotional pathology. These babies cannot find a consistent strategy to deal with their parents’ erratic or even frightening behavior. Thus their attachment behavior is disorganized.

      The way mothers respond to their babies’ emotional cues affects the quality of the infants’ attachment. Parents of securely attached infants are reliably and sensitively responsive to the child’s emotional communications. Parents of insecurely attached children fail to respond sensitively to their children’s emotional cues or at least do so inconsistently.

      How might the principles of behaviorism apply to attachment theory?

      The three major attachment classifications, secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant, can be seen to reflect predictable responses to different reinforcement schedules. They can be explained by the laws of operant conditioning. Avoidant attachment reflects the extinction of attachment-seeking behavior after these behaviors have consistently failed to elicit a response from the mother. The children, in effect, give up on the mother’s response. Resistant attachment reflects the opposite pattern, in which there is an increase of behavior in response to an intermittent reinforcement schedule. The child learns to crank up the attachment behaviors in order to maximize the likelihood of the desired response from the mother. Secure attachment reflects a consistent reinforcement schedule. The child has learned that attachment-seeking behaviors will be consistently and predictably rewarded, so the child simply performs them when needed and stops when they are no longer needed.

      What implications does attachment style have for later child development?

      Alan Sroufe and his colleagues conducted several studies looking at the impact of attachment status on later childhood development. Children who were classified as securely attached were more likely to have better relationships with peers and teachers in later childhood than those classified as insecure. Insecure-resistant children showed overly dependent behavior with teachers, while insecure-avoidant behavior showed overly independent behavior. These children were less likely to seek help from teachers when problem solving even if they could not solve the problems by themselves.

      How did Mary Main apply attachment theory to adults?

      Mary Main (1943–) was interested in the way attachment status might manifest in adults. She recognized that quality of attachment could not be easily captured in behavior, as it could be with infants, but would have to be investigated as an enduring part of personality. She built on Bowlby’s concept of internal working models to consider the way adults represent attachment relations. A representation is like a mental image or map of relationships. Main addressed questions about attachment: How do adults think about and talk about attachment? What is their narrative about attachment?

      When is attachment status more likely to change?

      Changes in parental circumstances can impact attachment status, either