Mary Ainsworth And Attachment An Influential Psychologist - amazonia.fiocruz.br

Mary Ainsworth And Attachment An Influential Psychologist Video

Although Bowlby believed that these basic dynamics captured the way the attachment system works in most children, he recognized that there are individual differences in the way children appraise the accessibility of the attachment figure and how they regulate their attachment behavior in response to threats.

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However, it was not until his colleague, Mary Ainsworth, began to systematically study infant—parent separations that a formal understanding of these individual differences emerged. Ainsworth and her students developed a technique called the strange situation —a laboratory task for studying infant—parent attachment Ainsworth et al.

In the strange situation, month-old infants and their parents are brought to the laboratory and, over a period of approximately 20 minutes, are systematically separated from and reunited with one another. Specifically, they become upset when the parent leaves the room, but, when he or she returns, they actively seek the parent and are easily comforted by him or her. Children who exhibit this pattern of behavior are often called secure.

These children are often called anxious-resistant.

The third pattern of attachment that Ainsworth and her colleagues documented is often labeled avoidant. First, she provided one of the first empirical demonstrations of how attachment behavior is organized in unfamiliar con- texts.

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Second, she provided the first empirical taxonomy of individual differences in infant attachment patterns. According to her research, at least three types of children exist: those who are secure in their relationship with their parents, those who are anxious-resistant, and those who are avoidant.

Finally, she demonstrated that these individual differences were correlated with infant—parent interactions in the home during the first year of life. Children who appear secure in the strange situation, for example, tend to have parents who are responsive to their needs. Children who appear insecure in Aj strange situation i.]