Patterns of Attachment
This is the book-length report of the Baltimore study, in which Ainsworth and colleagues set out the Strange Situation procedure, the classification system built from it, and the home observations that preceded it. The part that matters most for how attachment is understood is the fieldwork rather than the laboratory: infants were observed at home across their first year, and the patterns they later showed in the laboratory were related back to how their mothers had responded to them at home. That is the origin of the claim that sensitivity, meaning noticing a signal and responding to it appropriately and promptly, is what produces a secure pattern. The sample was small by modern standards and drawn from one American city, a limit worth stating whenever the classifications are treated as universal. This account is written from public material rather than from the volume, which is a book and has no abstract.
This is the book-length report of the Baltimore study, in which Ainsworth and colleagues set out the Strange Situation procedure, the classification system built from it, and the home observations that preceded it. The part that matters most for how attachment is understood is the fieldwork rather than the laboratory: infants were observed at home across their first year, and the patterns they later showed in the laboratory were related back to how their mothers had responded to them at home. That is the origin of the claim that sensitivity, meaning noticing a signal and responding to it appropriately and promptly, is what produces a secure pattern. The sample was small by modern standards and drawn from one American city, a limit worth stating whenever the classifications are treated as universal. This account is written from public material rather than from the volume, which is a book and has no abstract.
Written from the public account of the work.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Lawrence Erlbaum. The commonly quoted 66 per cent secure, 22 per cent avoidant, 12 per cent resistant distribution is across the pooled sample of 106 infants, not the 26-dyad Baltimore project alone. The underlying cell counts were not verified against the book for this article.
Where we use it
- What the Crib Actually Decides, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below is the right work, with one detail that does not line up. The 1978 Erlbaum first edition has no DOI. This DOI is the 2015 Routledge Classic Edition reissue of the same book, so the year differs from the citation. Worth opening before quoting a figure from it.
The source
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203758045
DOI: 10.4324/9780203758045