Strange Situation

The strange situation is a procedure devised by Mary Ainsworth in 1969 to observe attachment relationships between a caregiver and a child. It applies to children between the ages of twelve and twenty four months. Broadly speaking, the attachment styles were (1) secure,(2) insecure avoidant and (3) insecure ambivalent. In 1990, Mary Main and her husband, Erik Hesse, introduced another category: Disorganized.

In this procedure of the strange situation the child is observed playing for 20 minutes while caregivers and strangers enter and leave the room, recreating the flow of the familiar and unfamiliar presence in most children's lives. The situation varies in stressfulness and the child's responses are observed. The child experiences the following situations:

Four aspects of the child's behavior are observed:

On the basis of their behaviors, the children were categorized into three groups, with a fourth added later. Each of these groups reflects a different kind of attachment relationship with the caregiver.

A child who is securely attached to its mother will explore and play 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. The child feels confident that the caregiver is available, and will be responsive to their attachment needs and communications.

Securely attached children are best able to explore when they have the knowledge of a secure base to return to in times of need (also known as "rapprochement," meaning in French "bring together"). When assistance is given, this bolsters the sense of security and also, assuming the mother's assistance is helpful, educates the child in how to cope with the same problem in the future. Therefore, secure attachment can be seen as the most adaptive attachment style for learning and making use of resources in a non-threatening environment. According to some psychological researchers, a child becomes securely attached when the mother is available and able to meet the needs of the child in a responsive and appropriate manner. Others have pointed out that there are also other determinants of the child's attachment, and that behavior of the parent may in turn be influenced by the child's behavior.

A child with the anxious-avoidant insecure attachment style will avoid or ignore the caregiver, showing little emotion when the caregiver departs or returns. The child will not explore very much regardless of who is there. 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 return (A1 subtype) or showed some tendency to approach together with some tendency to ignore or turn away from the caregiver (A2 subtype). Ainsworth and Bell 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.

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