Mr Henderson runs a local daily play centre for toddlers and infants aged between nine months and four years. He has noticed that when parents drop their children off, some children become highly distressed and find it very difficult to settle.
He has also observed that the toddlers show very different behaviors when their parents return to collect them at the end of the session. Some of the children run to their parent with open arms and are easily comforted, whereas others completely ignore their parent and continue playing. A third group of children demand to be picked up but then kick and push their parents away in apparent anger. Mr Henderson also notes that the parents themselves interact with their children in highly contrasting ways.
Evaluate Ainsworth's types of attachment with reference to the behaviors observed at the play centre.
Practise Edexcel A Level Psychology Content with exam-style questions for A Level Psychology. 1,059 questions covering Bowlby's work on attachment, Ainsworth and the Strange Situation, Research into deprivation, Research into privation, Research into day care, Cross-cultural research into attachment, Autism, Individual differences, and Developmental psychology, matched to the Edexcel A Level Psychology (9PS0) specification and written in Paper 1, Paper 2 and Paper 3 style. Every question includes a full worked solution and mark scheme, so you can see where marks are awarded rather than just whether you got the answer right.
