there are large variations in how even young children interact with the world around them and with their own mothers some children are very independent seemingly not needing their mothers for reassurance and others are excessively clingy in this video we'll look at Mary ainsworth's attempt to categorize the early attachment styles of these infants and try to find out which is the best adapted style we'll also look at how anworth technique for assessing attachment called The Strain situation has been used all around the world finding some interesting similarities and attachment Styles but also some clear differences between cultures the psych boost flashcard app has a new feature test yourself with over 1,500 multiple choice questions including every topic on a level and gcsc psychology try paper one for free right now and Patron supporters can watch psych boost videos at free learn from over 17 hours of exclusive exam tutorial videos and access hundreds of digital and printable resources including my Maps quiz sheets worksheets teaching slides and more ainsworth's types of attachment Mary answorth expanded on bal's work her work identified key behaviors that indicate the strength of an infant's attachment to their caregiver one behavior is infants maintaining closeness to their mother this is known as using the mother as a secure base for exploration frequently returning to her other important behaviors that indicate attachment include infants demonstrating anxiety around strangers that they show distress when separated from their mother their reaction when we're United with their mother when she returns and how well the mother can interpret and respond to their infant's needs through our observations of these behaviors in a controlled observation called The Strain situation answorth introduced a classification system for infin attachment that includes three types of infants one of the types he identified is the insecure avoidant or type a attachment infants with this attachment style tend to keep a certain level of Detachment from their mothers they explore their environment freely without frequently turning to their mother's secure base they have limited stranger anxiety not showing significant distress around unfamiliar faces when separated from their mother they display little to no distress and the reaction upon a return is typically indifferent these behaviors seem to be mirrored in their mothers as the caregivers often show less responsiveness to their children's needs and emotions of other mothers aworth suggests this lack of sensitivity on the part of the mother might explain the child's avoidant attachment behaviors infants with a secure type B attachment type feel confident exploring their surroundings but often return to their mother as a safe base when encountering strangers these infants will be cautious showing moderate stranger anxiety if the mother leaves they'll be distressed but have a positive and quick recovery when she returns often continuing their expiration and play soon after this attachment type is due to the caregivers sensitive and consistent responsiveness to the infant's needs infants with an insecure resistant type c attachment style appear less confident in exploring their surroundings they clingy staying close to their mother their reactions to strangers are defined by high anxiety and they become very distressed when separated from their mother but when she returns their emotions can be complex they may show a desire for closeness and comfort but push her away showing resentment the behavior of these infants often mirrors the unpredictable nature of their caregivers who are sometimes responsive to their needs but maybe neglectful or inconsistent at other times answorth strain situation answorth strain situation use a structured observational technique with two observers hidden behind a oneway mirror The Strain situation is a complicated study and while I'll tell you about each stage don't worry about memorizing it precisely mostly I want you to consider how the stages are designed to reveal the infant and mother's responses firstly the mother and infant enter a room with two chairs and some toys at this point the infant's willingness to explore and use the mother's secure Bas is assessed a stranger enters the room begins a conversation with the mother and tries to play with the infant at this point stranger anxiety is assessed by observing the infant's reactions to the stranger's presence next the mother leaves the room and the infant is alone with a stranger at this stage separation anxiety is observed as the mother leaves and the infant's reactions to being comforted by The Stranger recorded the mother then returns and the stranger leaves The Observers focus on the infant's reunion Behavior observers watch to see if the infant can calm down and if they seek prox ity and reassurance the mother leaves again now the infant is alone the infant's ability to deal with stress and their emotional responses to Solitude are observed then the stranger re-enters and interacts with the infant again stranger anxiety is evaluated along with the infant's receptiveness to comfort from The Stranger finally the mother returns and reunion behavior is observed again that is a strange situation but again don't worry about the exact order of the stages but how the study is carefully designed to assess a range of infant behaviors by varying the situation anor's research identified three primary attachment Styles based on patterns of behavior during the strain situation they are the secure insecure avoidant and insecure resistant types I outlined earlier in the video Let's quickly review how infants of each type behaved in a strange situation secure type B infants were the most common making up two3 of the sample these infants typically displayed moderate stranger anxiety and distress when the mother departed but were easily comforted when she returned their behavior suggests trust in the caregivers responsiveness the mothers of these infants often showed consistent stive responsiveness insecure infants made up the other third of the sample avoidant type A was the most common insecure type at 22% of the sample these infants had low stranger anxiety and appeared indifferent to the mother's departure and return meaning they didn't seem to care typically the mothers of these children showed low sensitive responsiveness insecure resistant type c was the rarest type accounting for only 12% of the sample these infants showed intense distress during separation and ambivalent behavior when she re-entered the room meaning they seem to both seek and resist contact when the mother returned this attachment style was often associated with inconsistent motherly responsiveness so aworth studies suggest there are distinct attachment patterns in infants and maternal sensitivity has a role in shaping these attachment types evaluations as a structured observation The Strain situation carefully controls the experience of each infant and the behavior categories are well defined this focus on standardization and control allows other researchers to replicate the study and compare their findings we can also evaluate the strain situation positively for its predict validity children identified is securely attached often show positive social emotional and academic outcomes later in life for example McCarthy's study followed up on women assessed as infants using the strange situation finding that securely attached infants were the most likely to form strong and enduring relationships and adulthood however there are some issues with a strange situation it could be a culture bound test which means that as it was developed within the American cultural context it may not be appropriate to apply it to child raring in other cultures as there's a potential for misinterpretation it's essential to recognize that different cultures might have unique child raring practices or values that could influence the infant's Behavior labeling these children's insecure is an example of cultural bias in the next part of the video I'll give you some examples that you can use to develop this evaluation we can use the term imposed etic here this is when we claim a researchers argued their cultural norms should be the standard for all cultures there are also criticisms of the stud's environment the highly controlled setting of The Strange situation doesn't mimic the familiarity of the home which might influence both the child and mother's behaviors given that the adult participants are aware of the observation it might have inadvertently affected the mother's actions who may have wanted to appear more caring than usual there is a convincing alternate perspective that challenges the conclusions of a strange situation Kagan argues what's being observed isn't attachment style instead it's the biological temperament of the child suggesting that some infants are born more challenging than others this would explain not only the child's Behavior but also the mothers who may struggle to satisfy the demands of a highly reactive child cultural variations and attachment vanor vanan dwn gathered the data from studies conducted in eight countries representing a range of cultures all of them use a strange situation to assess infant attachment this large metanalysis included over 2,000 infants across 32 studies here is a table of Van andor's findings you don't need to memorize this but we should be able to outline what vanan discovered overall regardless of the country a secure attachment was the most prevalent type and resistant was typically the rarest attachment style avoidant attachment was more frequent in individualistic Western cultures while resistant attachment was more likely in collectivist typically non-western countries an interesting finding is that the differences between individual studies within the same country were larger than the differences between countries we'll talk more about this in the evaluations important individual findings include Germany which had the most avoidant infants but 35% Japan and Israel had the highest counts of insecure resistant at 27 and 29% China recorded the lowest level of secure attachment at only 50% and the UK had the most secure 75% so what can we conclude from Van andor's metr analysis while the dominance of secure attachment as the most common attachment across all countries is evidence of a universal preference towards a secure attachment style potentially rooted in biology that being said cultural differences that influence parenting do play a significant role the German focus on encouraging Independence in their children may explain the high number of avoidant infants on the other hand the Japanese practice of mothers keeping their infants very close in the first few years might explain the infant strong reactions to separation that led to so many being classified as insecure it's likely for many of the Japanese infants the strange situation was the first time ever they' been left alone outside the home each stage in the strange situation is supposed to last 3 minutes in The Takahashi study and the left alone stage the infants crying was so intense that for 90% of the infants this stage was cut short evaluations temporality is likely an issue it's been 50 years since ASW Worth's original study and many of the studies including vanim Do's metanalysis are now older than 40 years family Dynamics in most cultures have changed significantly in this time in 2014 S and Ellie used the strange situation to assess attachment in modern Italian infant mother pairs compared to data from historical Italians there was a noticeable reduction in the percentage of securely attached infants while a proportion of avoidant infants had risen Simon Ellie believes this trend isn't necessarily negative instead it might just be infants adapting to Modern Life with mothers often a away due to work and infants frequently cared for by child minders infants might be developing ways to cope without showing excessive emotion every time they're separated or in the presence of a stranger the secure attachment style came out on top in every country studied this dominance of secure attachments across various cultures can be seen as supporting Bob's idea that Beyond some cultural variation this seems to be an inherited biological drive to parent in a way that produces a secure monotropic attachment between the infant and the mother a serious limitation of thatan do Mar analysis is that only one study was conducted for some countries the entire population of any culture can't be fully represented by one study with a relatively small sample size and to make things worse when more than one study was included for a country it was found there was more variation within countries than between them as an example here are the results for the two Israeli studies the study with a large number of type c infants was conducted in a communal farm called a Kutz while the other study was conducted on a more urban population this shows that when it comes to attachment cultures are monolithic blocks there's significant diversity within them for instance a study might focus on an urban population while ignoring rural infants after 32 studies the scale of Anan Do's metanalysis is impressive and there's a significant advantage to having such a massive sample size given the large amount of data if any studies were carried out poorly or had abnormal results there impact will be diluted this gives us more confidence in the overall pattern of findings returning to an evaluation I gave for the strange situation we can use here the observation was initially developed and conducted with Western samples and assumed to apply globally it's tempting to think that what works for one culture will work seamlessly for another however this assumption risk cultural bias in the strange situations secure attachment is argued to be the best type but it's far more common and individualistic Western cultures with 75% in the British sample and as low as 50% in the Chinese this risks cultural bias as it's ethnocentric to assume your cultural norms are superior I want to thank everyone over on patreon for supporting the channel because of you I've been able to teach part-time meaning I can make psych boost on YouTube for everyone and a special thank you to Kat posnik and ammed Romani for supporting at the developer level I do have extra resources that are exclusive to my patrons so if you decide to sign up you can grab those over my website and these include over a 100 exam question tutorial videos of course including questions on the attachment unit I hope this was helpful and I'll see you in the next psych Boost video