& Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. (2022). Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 6(1), 2307-0919. [45] Secure-autonomous adult responses were associated with secure infant behavior towards the speaker, dismissing responses with insecure-avoidant infant behavior towards the speaker and preoccupied responses with insecure-ambivalent infant behavior towards the speaker. The caregiving system: A behavioral systems approach to parenting. The ultimate causation of some infant attachment phenomena. (1999). Hesse, E., & Main, M. (2006). Examining the role of parental frightened/frightening subtypes in predicting disorganized attachment within a brief observational procedure. In cases where assessments were available at both 12 and 18 months, . Main, M., & Solomon, J. Disorganized attachment in early childhood: Meta-analysis of precursors, concomitants, and sequelae, Development and Psychopathology, 11, 225249. Disorganised Attachment - Psych Central It is believed that this conflict underpins a disorganized attachment (Hesse and Main, 2006) and research has suggested that these parental behaviors are linked to infant disorganization (see . This work has been described as 'revolutionary'[1] and Main has been described as having 'unprecedented resonance and influence' in the field of psychology.[2]. [16] For example, this classification in infancy has been found associated with school-age externalising problem behavior,[17] indices of dissociation in adolescence[18] and development of post-traumatic stress symptoms following trauma exposure. In other studies however, no longitudinal association has been found. -Mary Main-The effects of disorganized attachment. Lyons-Ruth K., Bureau J. F., Easterbrooks M. A., Obsuth I., Hennighausen K., & Vulliez-Coady L. (2013). [53], A 'Cannot Classify' category has also been delineated by Hesse and Main which is used to describe interviews in which no single predominant attachment state of mind can be identified. A parents ongoing experience of an anxiety disorder (Manassis, Bradley, Goldberg, Hood, & Swinson, 1994) or multiple forms of social and economic disadvantage (Cyr, Euser, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Van IJzendoorn, 2010) have also been found to predict infant disorganized/disoriented attachment behavior. Interviews categorised as preoccupied are characterised by angry, vague, confused, or fearful fixation on particular attachment relationships or experiences. Main, M. (1977). [55] Transcripts are not only allocated to one of the five major classifications described above, but also assigned scores on a number of different scales and assigned to one or more of 12 sub-classifications.[56]. Hazen, N., Sydnye, D.A., Christopher, C., Umemura, T., & Jacobvitz, D. (2015). An official website of the United States government. (1999). "Cannot Classify". Infantmother attachment among the Dogon of Mali. The organized categories of infant, child, and adult attachment: Flexible vs. inflexible attention under attachment-related stress, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 48(4), 1055-1096, p.1093. Some children are overly solicitous and protective toward the parent (classified by Main and Cassidy as controlling-caregiving) while others are harshly directive or rudely humiliating toward the parent (classified controlling-punitive). Direct indices of apprehension regarding the parent, VII. Very extensive nonmaternal care predicts motherinfant attachment disorganization, Development & Psychopathology, 27(3): 649-661, Main, M., Hesse, E., & Hesse, S. (2011). The emergence of the disorganized/disoriented (D) attachment classification, 1979-1982, History of Psychology 18(1): 3246. Main, M. (2000). Duschinsky R., Greco M., & Solomon J. [59] Some longitudinal studies have also found associations between attachment security in infancy, as assessed in the Strange Situation, and in young adulthood, as assessed by the AAI. I. Sequential display of contradictory behavior patterns, II. 3168). Development of cognition, affect, and social relations, A prospective longitudinal study of attachment disorganization/disorientation. Cyr, C., Euser, E. M., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2010). The classification has been found to be a risk factor for later development (Sroufe et al., 1999). New York: McGraw-Hill. [25], After the initial presentation of protocols for coding D Strange Situation behavior in infants by Main and Solomon, researchers have explored the caregiving behavior associated with the classification. Yet Mains texts indicate that she did not presume that a conflict between attachment and alarm would be the only cause of displays of conflict behavior in the Strange Situation Procedure. For instance, Main and Solomon (1986) initially headlined a new category of attachment behavior, and this announcement was not read in the context of Mains other work that linked the process of disorganization to avoidance and ambivalence/resistance. Main, M., Goldwyn, R., & Hesse, E. (2003). Research has supported this proposed association between frightening and frightened parental behavior and the infant's classification as D in the Strange Situation. Research has found different AAI response patterns to be associated with different types of parental behavior. (2015). George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1984). . Unresolved states of mind, anomalous parental behavior, and disorganized attachment: A review and meta-analysis of a transmission gap, Attachment & Human Development, 8(2),89-111. Third, the behaviors often had a jerky, contradictory, or disoriented quality, which disturbed the infants sequencing of movement or gesture in seeking their caregiver, and as such, despite their differences, suggested some disturbance of the expression of the attachment system in its capacity to smoothly coordinate behavior and attention. Since this new classification was put forward by Main and Solomon (1986), disorganized/disoriented attachment has become an important concept in clinical and social intervention contexts. Hesse, E., & Main, M. (2006). Parsing the construct of maternal insensitivity: Distinct longitudinal pathways associated with early maternal withdrawal, Exploration, play, and cognitive functioning. For example, One little girl cried desperately for her father to return throughout the entire separation. [27] This includes work by Main's students, such as Mary True (in Uganda) and Kazuko Behrens (in Japan). . Rutter M., Kreppner J., & Sonuga-Barke E. (2009). Solomon noted a variety of behaviors discrepant with the Ainsworth coding protocols, which were particularly common in the maltreated sample: apparent signs of depression in infants; indications that an infant was attempting to muster an ABC strategy but failing to achieve this; infants initially approaching the caregiver but then veering off; and disoriented behaviors (e.g., the child leaves its arm hanging in the air). Bowlby and Ainsworth's Attachment Theory and Stages Stopping the spin. MacDonald, H.Z., Beeghly, M., Grant-Knight, W., Augustyn, M., Woods, R.W., Cabral, H., Rose-Jacobs, R., Saxe, G.N., & Frank, D.A. Main and Solomon have been characterized as theorists of an exhaustive, categorical system bent upon reducing complex human experience to typologies (OShaughnessy & Dallos, 2009, p. 559). Main, Hesse, and Hesse (2011, p. 441) have criticized the widespread and dangerous presumption that infants can be divided into four categories of comparable status, and that any behavior besides the Ainsworth three patterns is disorganized and caused by frightening or abusive treatment by the parent. Such specifications suggest that Mains use of the term disordered was linked to the gap she faced between (visible) observations of behavior that showed no unitary and coherent strategy for seeking even conditional proximity on reunion in the Strange Situation Procedure, and the idea of (invisible) motivational conflict or disruption, which could be expressed behaviorally in any number of possible odd or out-of-context ways. Solomon began to compile detailed notes on cases she found difficult to classify, for discussion with Main on her return. The display of D . Whereas in the stressful Strange Situation, avoidance may function to modulate the painful and vacillating emotions, Main and Stadtman (1981, p. 293) noted that in less stressful situations we might expect to see the anger and conflict that the infant had been too frightened to express in a stressful, unfamiliar environment. [37] An additional issue for attempts at home screening of disorganized attachment is Main's finding that some infants classified as insecure-avoidant in the strange situation may show disorganized-type behaviors at home. describing themselves as killing a person with a thought). New York: Wiley-Interscience. Duschinsky, R. (2015). (2010). Child Development, 72(5), 1451-1466; Behrens, K. Y. Adult attachment scoring and classification system. This combination of dependence and independence on her advisor appears to have been significant in facilitating Solomons attention to discrepancies between the tapes she was viewing and Ainsworths coding protocols, as she was forced to make notes and think about these discrepancies with a delay before she could seek guidance on their meaning. Madigan, S., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J., van IJzendoorn, M.H., Moran, G., Pederson, D.R., & Benoit, D. (2006). This groundbreaking volume brings together eminent researchers and clinicians to present current, original theory and data on the nature of disorganized attachment, its etiology, and its sequelae. Description In Mary Ainsworth's original work on attachment classifications [ 1] three categories of infant-parent attachment were elucidated. Mary Main was among the first doctoral students of Mary Ainsworth's at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, exploring the relationship between attachment and infant play in her doctoral research. The association between frightened/frightening parental behavior and disorganized/disoriented infant attachment had sufficient empirical support and a conceptually compelling quality, with the result that it magnetized the fields curiosity. It is my hope that, in attending to the goals of Main and Solomon in introducing the disorganized/disoriented attachment classification, this can help counter and qualify essentialist deployments of the concept, documented, for instance, in Duschinsky et al. Mary Main - Wikipedia describing a person as both dead and alive) or describing themselves as causal in a death or abuse in a way that is clearly not possible (e.g. (1999). Attachment in the Preschool Years (pp.161-181), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p.163. On its own, with no other behavioral signs, an infants hand-to-mouth behavior on reunion is situated as usually sufficient for D category placement (p. 140). ), Infant response to rejection of physical contact by the mother: Aggression, avoidance, and conflict, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, The quality of the toddlers relationship to mother and to father: Related to conflict behavior and the readiness to establish new relationships. Hesse, E., & Main, M. (2000). Attachment in mothers with anxiety disorders and their children, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Attachment research and eating disorders: A review of the literature. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds. A decade later, Dutra, Bureau, Holmes, Lyubchik, and Lyons-Ruth (2009) found that this association is unmediated by the experience of trauma. However, Ainsworth theorized that the apparently unruffled behavior of these infants was in fact a mask for distressa hypothesis later evidenced through studies of the heart rate of avoidant infants (Sroufe & Waters, 1977). (Eds. 8600 Rockville Pike In this procedure, the infant is encouraged to play with a friendly stranger dressed in a clown outfit, who then starts to cry when asked to leave the room. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Discovery of an insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. As such, infants coded as disorganized/disoriented are also given a secondary A, B or C classification.