Mary Ainsworth

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00f8n6q

This link is a really informative Radio 4 program talking about Mary Ainswaorths Strange Situation work.

Much research in psychology has focused on how forms of attachment differ between infants. For example, Schaffer and Emerson (1964) discovered what appeared to be innate differences in sociability in babies; some babies preferred cuddling more than others, from very early on, before much interaction had occurred to cause such differences.

However, it was Mary Ainsworth provided the most famous body of research offering explanations of individual differences in attachment.

It’s easy enough to know when you are attached to someone because you know how you feel when you are apart from that person, and, being an adult, you can put your feelings into words and describe how it feels.

However, most attachment research is carried out using infants and young children, so psychologists have to devise subtle ways of researching attachment, using involving the observational method.

Mary Ainsworth devised an assessment technique called the Strange Situation Classification (SSC) in order to investigate how attachments might vary between children. The video below also demonstrates the situation. (Think it is the same one we watched last week but just a good memory jogger!)