The Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth believed that the way children viewed their mothers would also be know as their attachment. She created a study called “The Strange Situation”. All subjects were in laboratories surrounded by two-way mirrors. There were 106 infants observed, thirteen of them being in the room with a rug, the rest on a tile floor. The room basically consisted of two chairs and a pile of toys. What Ainsworth wanted was five people involved in the experiment; the greeter, the experimenter, the observer, the stranger, and as a sixth person, the mother. The experiment took six separate occasions.
In the first two incidents, it’s not much more than the mother and baby getting settled into the room. In the second incident, the mother cannot interact with the baby for the first two minutes, if the baby doesn’t play by then, the mother can direct the baby to play. During the third encounter, the stranger comes into the room and introduces themselves as the stranger. When the baby starts playing with the toys, the mother leaves since the baby is distracted. When the mom is gone during the fourth incident, the observers look to see if the baby acknowledges the stranger. If the baby starts to cry, the stranger attempts to comfort the baby. The mother comes back after three minutes. At the beginning of the fifth trial the mother talks outside of the door before entering to the baby. If the baby is distressed the mother can calm the baby down. Once the baby is calm, the stranger leaves and the mother directs the baby back to the toys. The mother leaves and says bye to the baby. During the sixth trial, the baby is allowed to explore alone for a few minutes. The baby is observed to see if it cries out for its mother or if it continues to play with the toys. For the next episode, the seventh one, the stranger does what the mother did in the fifth one, talks outside the door and then enters. Observations of how the baby reacts to the stranger are made. The baby is watched to see if...