Infancy and Childhood

an intense emotional bond that develops between two individuals.

One wire monkey, and one cloth monkey. Depending on the test, one or both would have a food source. His setting was a lab. Data collection method was tests. Research design was experiment.

Contact comfort is the basis of attachment.

Mary Ainsworth developed this test to investigate infant attachment.

It begins with a mother and her infant, between the age of 12 and 18 months, entering a small room. The mother shows the baby some toys and allows the child to explore or play freely. This is followed by a series of 3-minute periods of various activities by the adults in the study. First, an unfamiliar adult enters the room, talks to the mother, and interacts with the infant. Three minutes later, the mother goes out of the room, leaving the stranger with the infant. The behaviors that are most important for evaluating attachment are those of the baby when the mother returns.

These infants actively explore while in the room with their mothers, and they become upset when their mothers leave them. When the mother returns, a securely attached baby will often run or crawl to her, greeting her warmly. The mother is able to soothe the child to the extent that sometimes the child returns to play with the stranger.

Unlike the resistant infants, they show little distress when the mother departs, avoid contact with the mother when she returns, and usually don’t show wariness of the stranger, although they may avoid the stranger much as they do the mother.

These infants appear anxious even with their mothers and tend not to explore much. They become very distressed when the mother leaves but are ambivalent and display anger on her return. They stay near the mother after she returns but seem to resent her earlier departure and often resist her attempts at contact. These babies are wary of the unfamiliar adult, even when the mother is present.

Unlike those in the three standard classifications, these infants show no coherent strategy for dealing with stress during separation and reunion in the strange-situation test. These infants seek to be close to their mothers in erratic ways, often showing patterns typical of secure, avoidant, and/or resistant infants simultaneously.

What parent behaviors are associated with secure attachment?

What parent behaviors are associated with resistant attachment?