Ainsworth's early studies

Ainsworth - Early Studies 

Infancy in Uganda (Ainsworth, 1967)

Mary Ainsworth resisted Bowlby's ideas about attachment, preferring the more traditional learning theory. However that changed when she went to Uganda in 1954 to conduct a two-year naturalistic observation of mother-infant interactions. The participants were 26 mothers and their infants who lived in six villages surrounding Kampala. She observed that some mothers were more 'sensitive' to their infants' needs and these mothers tended to have 'securely attached' infants who cried little and seemed content to explore in the presence of their mother; secure attachment led to increasing competence and independence. Learning theory couldn't explain the importance of sensitivity in attachment, but Bowlby's evolutionary theory could.

The Baltimore study (Ainsworth et al, 1971)

When Ainsworth returned to America she continued to study mother-infant interactions but this time in an urban setting. She observed 26 mothers and their infants from birth in the Baltimore area. She and her team didn't use behaviour checklists, preferring to use shorthand to record rich details about their observations. 

The final interview with each mother and infant took place when the infant was one year old. The attachment relationship was assessed using the strange situation. She found that the mothers of the infants subsequently classified as secure has behaved most sensitively with them at home during the first three months of life. Learning theorists found this difficult to understand: they convinced that responsiveness to, for example, crying, should act as a reinforcer and increase the crying rather than Ainsworth's predictions that crying would decrease with caregiver responsiveness.