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15.5: What are the meta-theoretical assumptions of Ainsworth’s theory of attachment?

  • Page ID
    9347
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    It is easy to consider Ainsworth’s assumptions about the antecedents of attachment (i.e., caregiver behaviors) as evidence that she privileges environmental or contextual factors in her account of attachment. However, she also states explicitly that she is building on Bowlby’s evolutionary-ethological perspective, which means that she also assumes that infants come with bio-behavioral predispositions that are “experience expectant,” (Greenough, Black, & Wallace, 1987), in that these neurophysiological systems expect (and require) the experience of a sensitive responsive caregiver to become well-organized for dealing adaptively with distress and stressful encounters. If these bio-behavioral imperatives did not exist, the experience of insensitive and nonresponsive caregiving would not be so serious.

    Hence, Ainsworth assumes that both neurophysiological systems (which are characteristics of the infant or individual) and individual differences in caregiver behaviors (which are characteristics of the context or environment) are essential to the formation of different kinds of attachments. Although not used consistently in the work that follows from Ainsworth’s theory, Ainsworth herself never considered “quality of attachment” to be an attribute of the child (as is implied by the use of phases like “securely attached infant”); instead she thought of it as a dyadic quality that characterizes the relationship between an infant and a specific caregiver.