Attachment Behavior at Home and in the Laboratory: Q-Sort Observations and Strange Situation Classifications of One-Year-Olds

• Published in: Child development Vol. 61; no. 6; pp. 1965 - 1973
• Main Authors: Vaughn, Brian E., Waters, Everett
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.12.1990; University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press for the Society for Research in Child Development, etc
• Subjects: Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure; Anxiety; Arousal; Attachment Behavior; Avoidance Behavior; Babies; Behavior; Children; Control systems; Dependency (Personality); Dependency (Psychology); Emotions; Exploratory Behavior; Family Environment; Home security; Humans; Infant; Infant Behavior; Infants; Interpersonal Competence; Laboratories; Longitudinal Studies; Mother-Child Relations; Mothers; Naturalistic Observation; Object Attachment; Observational research; Personality; Personality Assessment; Personality Development; Psychology, Child; Q Methodology; Q sort; Resistance (Psychology); Security (Psychology); Sociability; Social Behavior; Social Environment; Social research
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb03578.x

This article reports Attachment Q-set data and Strange Situation classifications of 58 1-year-old middle-class infants. Security, dependency, and sociability were scored from Q-sort reports of home observations. The primary analyses involve comparisons between securely attached infants (Group B) and anxiously attached infants (Groups A and C combined). Additional analyses compare anxious-resistant with anxious-avoidant infants. Secure classification in the Strange Situation was associated with quality of secure-base behavior at home (i. e., higher Q-sort security scores) and with sociability, but not with dependency scores. Descriptive analyses of individual Q-set items support the secure-base interpretation of Strange Situation security classifications. Relations between home security scores and interactive behavior scores from the Strange Situation were also examined by multiple regression analysis.