Attachment

Introduction

Children are attached, if they tend to seek proximity to and contact with a specific caregiver in times of stress arising from factors such as distress, illness, or tiredness (Bowlby, 1984). Attachment is a major developmental milestone in the child's life, and it remains an important issue throughout the lifespan. In adulthood, attachment representations shape the way adults [Page 102]feel about the strains and stresses of intimate relationships, including parent-child relationships, and the way in which the self in relation to important others is evaluated. Attachment theory is a special branch of Darwinian evolution theory, and the need to become attached to a protective conspecific is considered one of the primary needs in the human species. Attachment theory is built upon the assumption that children come to this world with an inborn inclination to show attachment behaviour – and this inclination would have had survival value, or better: would increase ‘inclusive fitness’ – in the environment in which human evolution originally took place. Because of its ethological basis, assessment of attachment implies careful and systematic observations of verbal and non-verbal behaviour.

Assessment of Attachment in Infants

Attachment to a protective caregiver helps the infant to regulate his or her negative emotions in times of stress and distress, and to be able to explore the environment even if it is somewhat frightening. The idea that children seek a balance between the need for proximity to an attachment figure and the need to explore the wider environment is fundamental to the various attachment measures, such as the Strange Situation procedure (SSP; Ainsworth et al., 1978) and the Attachment Q-Sort (AQS; Vaughn & Waters, 1990) (see Table 1). Ainsworth and her colleagues observed one-year-old infants with their mothers in a standardized stressful separation procedure, and used the reactions of the infants to their reunion with the caregiver after a brief separation to assess the amount of trust the children had in the accessibility of their attachment figure.

The SSP consists of eight episodes, of which the last seven ideally take three minutes. Each episode can however be curtailed when the infant starts crying. Episode One begins when the experimenter leads caregiver and child into an unfamiliar playroom. Episode Two is spent by the caregiver together with the child in the playroom. In Episode Three an unfamiliar adult (the ‘stranger’) enters the room and after a while starts to play with the infant. Episode Four starts when the caregiver departs, and the infant is left with the stranger. In Episode Five the caregiver returns, and the stranger unobtrusively leaves the room immediately after reunion. Episode Six starts when the caregiver leaves again: the infant is alone in the room. In Episode Seven the stranger returns. In Episode Eight the caregiver and the infant are reunited once again, and the stranger leaves unobtrusively immediately after reunion.

The Strange Situation procedure has been used with mothers, fathers, and other caregivers. Infants usually are between 12 and 24 months of age. For pre-schoolers, the same SSP is used, but the rating system for classifying the children is different and still is in the process of validation (Cassidy et al., 1992). On the basis of infants' reactions to the reunion with the caregiver, three patterns of attachment can be distinguished. Infants who actively seek proximity to their caregivers upon reunion, communicate their feelings of stress and distress openly, and then readily return to exploration are classified as secure (B) in their attachment to that caregiver. Infants who seem not distressed, and ignore or avoid the caregiver following reunion are classified as insecure-avoidant (A). Infants who combine strong proximity seeking and contact maintaining with contact resistance, or remain inconsolable, without being able to return to play and explore the environment, are classified insecure-ambivalent (C).

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