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Preferred term

strange situation  

Definition

  • Professor Mary Ainsworth and her student Barbara Wittig at Johns Hopkins University devised the strange situation procedure in the 1960s to demonstrate concepts central to John Bowlby's ethological theory of attachment. Although originally designed to elicit behaviors presumed to be universal among infants under stress, the strange situation instead was found to elicit systematic differences in the behavioral strategies used by infants. [Source: Encyclopedia of Human Development; Strange Situation]

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URI

https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/strange_situation

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