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Strange Situation Procedure Essay

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Evaluate the usefulness of the Strange Situation procedure to our understanding of attachment.

Attachment is typically where an individual pursues security and comfort from another individual who is normally part of an extensive, emotionally significant relationship. One type of attachment is the connection between a child and their mother or caregiver (Custance, 2012). This type of attachment is what Ainsworth focused on when she developed the Strange Situation procedure. This essay will mainly focus on Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure, to identify the usefulness and limitations of it into the understanding of attachment.
There are many accounts of how and why attachment is shaped, Freud (cited in Custance, 2012) suggested attachment was formed in infants as a parent fulfils their basic biological need, keeping them warm, fed and changed. This instinctively makes the infant learn to love that person creating an attachment. This sort of theory of attachment was called ‘cupboard-love’. Bowlby (Cited in Custance, 2012) disputed such a theory as the foundation of attachment. Instead, Bowlby was inspired by the evolutionary theory and ethological research which transpired his work. He …show more content…
She found that previous theories were inaccurate in describing how attachment is formed especially between infants and their mother or caregiver. This enabled a shift away from ‘cupboard-love’ theories to rather a more emotional attachment of the love an infant and mother or caregiver have for one another. Which is thought to be created by how responsive or unresponsive a mother is to their infants’ needs. However, the Strange Situation does have limitations as dicussed it makes inferences based on one occasion, it does not take into account if the child is ill or having a bad day and it lacks ecological validity for different culture and

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