Mary Ainsworth

Mary Ainsworth was a Canadian-American developmental psychologist whose research on infant–caregiver relationships helped establish attachment theory and identify patterns of attachment.

John Bowlby: A British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed attachment theory. Ainsworth extended Bowlby’s account of attachment through systematic observations of infants and caregivers.
Strange Situation: A structured laboratory procedure that observes infants’ responses to separations from and reunions with a caregiver. Ainsworth developed this procedure to classify attachment behavior in unfamiliar settings.
Baltimore Longitudinal Study: Ainsworth’s study of infant–mother relationships in Baltimore, based on repeated home visits and observations. This project supplied the home-observation evidence behind her account of maternal sensitivity and attachment.
Attachment theory: A theory explaining how bonds with caregivers provide children with protection and a foundation for exploration. Ainsworth’s observations and classifications became central evidence for this broader theory.
Mary Main: An American developmental psychologist who advanced research on attachment and adult representations of attachment. Main built on Ainsworth’s classifications and later identified disorganized attachment.
Secure attachment: An attachment pattern in which a child uses a caregiver as a secure base and seeks comfort from them when distressed. Ainsworth’s observations identified this pattern through infants’ reunion behavior.
Uganda study: Ainsworth’s field study of infant–mother attachment in Uganda, published in 1967. Her observations there documented attachment behavior across a cultural setting different from the United States.
Adult Attachment Interview: A structured interview that assesses adults’ representations of childhood attachment experiences. Mary Main and colleagues developed it using questions raised by Ainsworth’s infant attachment classifications.
Darlene Behrens: A developmental psychologist whose work examines attachment across cultures and the history of attachment research. Behrens has studied how Ainsworth’s legacy shaped attachment research and its cultural assumptions.
Avoidant attachment: An attachment pattern marked by limited visible distress at separation and avoidance of a caregiver upon reunion. It was one of the patterns Ainsworth classified in the Strange Situation.

Linked from 4 pages