Outline and evaluate the strange situation. (12 marks)

Outline and evaluate the strange situation. (12 marks)
Attachment:
Attachment is a mutual and intense emotional relationship between two people, in this instance child and caregiver compared to other animals. Humans are extremely helpless in infancy and rely less on their instincts. Thus unless the infant is highly motivated to stay near the caregiver, and the caregiver is in tune to the infant's needs, we would not be around today.

Aims:
To establish a universal method of assessing the strength of attachment, and to study individual differences in separation and stranger anxiety in infants aged 12 - 18 months.

Procedure:
This was a longitudinal study. Meaning it was conducted over a long period of time, where Ainsworth visited 26 mother - child couples at home every month of the child's first year of life.

Every aspect of the mother and babies behaviour was recorded, but Ainsworth was primarily interested in the reunion behaviour of both the child and mother. The study was broken down into eight stages, each three minutes long:
Stage 1: Mother and child enter room; child is free to play with toys while mother…