discuss into different types of attachment

Another theory is the Shaffer and Emerson’s they did a longitudinal study which was over a 2 year period, they followed 60 infants, the infants were observed every 4 weeks until they were 1 years old and then again at 18 months. The attachment was measured in two ways, separation protest in seven everyday situations and also stranger anxiety. There findings were they found that half of the children showed their first specific attachment between 25 and 32 weeks. Fear of strangers occurred about a month later in all the children. The intensity of attachment peaked in the first month after attachment behaviour first month after attachment behaviour first appeared, as measured by the strength of separation protest. From this they conducted the stage theory, into 3 stages, The Asocial Stage (0-6 weeks) emotional behaviour, such as crying and smiling is directed at anyone or anything. Indiscriminate attachment (6 weeks – 7 months), during this stage the infant is generally content when receiving attention from anyone. Specific attachment (7-11months) the infant in this stage forms a strong attachment to one individual, but good attachments to others follow shortly after this.

Mary Ainsworth designed an experiment to measure the type of attachment between an infant and their caregiver; she called this The Strange Situation. These tests last for about 20 minutes and used on American infants aged between 12 and 18 months. It takes place in a laboratory and the method used in a controlled observation. The Strange Situation consists of 8 episodes, which involved the infant being separated from there caregiver, being with a stranger, and reunion with the caregiver. Separation protest, the infants willing to explore, Stranger anxiety and reaction to the reunion with the caregiver was key behaviours used to assess the security or the insecurity of the attachment relationship. From this experiment they found that more of the infants displayed the behaviour of a secure attachment which were 70 %, there were 10% anxious/resistant and 20 % were anxious/avoidant. They found that the securely attached infants were distressed when separated from the caregiver. Anxious/resistant these infants were very distressed when separated and did resist the caregiver on reunion. Anxious/avoidant did not seek contact with the caregiver and showed very little distress at separation. This gives a good idea to be able to distinguish between attachment types.

Finally there were Van ljzendoorn and Krunanburg’s they did research into cross culture variations of attachment, they used results of 32 studies and used the strange situation to measure attachment. The research was from 8 different countries including, US, UK, Germany, Japan, China and Israel. They found that secure attachment was the most common in the 8 countries. The western cultures had a more avoidant dominant insecure attachment, while the non western were resistant and was the dominant insecure attachment. This shows that there is a difference in cultures and how the children are raised, to each individual culture.

In conclusion this just shows that there are many different research and theories on attachment, all really resulting in saying that attachments need to be formed to give the child the basis of what it needs for the future. Different cultures do display a difference in attachment based on how they are raised.