Mary Ainsworth And The Attachment Theory

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Mary Ainsworth is best known for her elaboration on the work of John Bowlby and the Attachment Theory. Psychologist Mary Ainsworth created an assessment technique called the ‘Strange Situation Classification’ (SSC) to investigate how attachments might differ between children. The procedure ‘Strange Situation’ was conducted by observing the behaviour of a child in a series of eight episodes lasting approximately 3 minutes each. During the test, the child is brought into a room with their mother and the child is allowed to explore the room and play with the toys. Then a stranger enters the room and talks to the mother, Then the mother leaves the infant with the stranger for 3 minutes. The mother then returns and the stranger leaves. The mother