Parent preference in the attachment exploration balance in infancy: an experimental psychoanalytic approach.

" Fifteen 15-month old infants with mother as primary caretaker were observed in Ainsworth's Strange Situation modified to provide a simultaneous choice of mother or father during post-separation reunion episodes. Both exploratory and attachment behaviors were more significantly affected by separation from mother than from father, suggesting the greater importance of the mother as a secure base for exploration and as an at tachment figure. The intrapsychic version of the parent most crucial to exploration and a t tachment at this age is that of mother, in whose absence the infant is not yet able to evoke the memory of the mother to sustain either exploratory behavior or the at tachment bond adequately. In their seminal paper on infant attachment reseai-ch, Sroufe and Waters 14 emphasized the importance of having regard to the content and meaning of the child's attachment behavior. Following Ainsworth and her collaborators I they have secured the importance of the organizational approach to studying attachment in child development research. Ainsworth has furthermore emphasized that exploratory behavior should be related to the child's attachment to his/her mother and has accordingly formulated the now well-known concept of the "attachment-exploration balance"--the relative emphasis in the infant's behavior on exploratory vs. attachment related behaviors and the importance of a secure relationship with a caretaking figure as a sine qua non for exploration. 1 Although Ainsworth's approach is based on ethology and its applications to mother-infant interaction as developed by Bowlby, no specific hypotheses derived from this orientation have been tested in An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association, Detroit, Michigan, May 1, 1981. This study was conducted while the authors were associated with the Child Analytic Study Program, Youth Services, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan {Humberto Nagera. M.D., Director). Dr. Shill was Senior Research Associate, Mr. Biven, Associate Director of the Program, and Dr. Solyom, Director of the Infant Study Section. Reprint requests should be addressed to Merton A. Shill, Ph.D., Child Study Center, 924-C Baldwin Ave., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104. Child Psychiatry anti Iluman Development Vot, 15r Fall 1984 34 1984 Ituman Sciences Press Merton A. Shill, et al. 35 research to date, attachment theories being considered rather a "guide" to investigation, i The importance of investigating both the emotional and cognitive aspects of the development of the child within a theoretical framework has recently been emphasized. I~ Osofsky and Connors ~z have further observed that "the lack of a clear theoretical base has been a limiting factor in the development of frameworks for studying parent-infant relationships" {p. 519L The present paper is based on principles of psychoanalytic developmental psychology from which hypotheses have been derived in an attempt to predict the performance of dependent variables which measure exploration and attachment. We have drawn on both psychoanalytic developmental psychology and observational/experimental studies in academic psychology in an attempt to ground findings concerning parent-infant relationships within a theoretical framework so as to permit prediction and construct validation. The constructs explored in this paper deal primarily with the assumption in psychoanalytic psychology of the intrapsychic representation of significant figures in the infant's life {especially the mother and father} and the conditions under which this representation is rendered sufficiently unstable so as to induce the child to reestablish contact with a significant parental fgure in a direct interpersonal manner, instead of being able to rely on the emotional sufficiency of the internal mental representation of the parent in the latter's absence. Winnicott 18 refers to the capacity of the child to play independently of the direct presence of or interaction with the mother as "the capacity to be alone," which he considers a significant developmental milestone. This pilot study may be said to attempt to assess this capacity directly by determining whether it is the internMized representation of the mother or the father which is more affected by separation. The child's interest in exploring the environment during separation puts the independence of the internal mental representation of the parent from exteroceptive stimulation to the test. This test is minimal where exploration occurs in the presence of the parent, maximal if the child is physically separated from the parent. This research is an attempt to use Ainsworth's strange situation to explore the attachmentexploration balance as constituting such a test. Other terms have been developed to describe this phenomenon. Furer 6 suggests that during this period of instability in object representation, the internal representation of the mother requires "refueling" by interpersonal interaction with the parent. Following Piaget, Fraiberg 4 has used the 36 Child Psychiatry and Human Development term "evocative memory" to describe the child's capacity for recalling without external stimulation the mental image of the mother, during stage VI of Piaget 's stages of sensori-motor intelligence (18-24 months). We hypothesized tha t infants whose mothers were the primary caretaker would organize their a t t achment and exploratory behavior preferentially around her presence more significantly than around the presence of the father or a stranger. We assumed tha t the infant 's relationship to the mother as pr imary caretaker would be more central to both its affective and cognitive development than tha t of either the father or a s tranger such tha t the link between the affective and cognitive factors in development could be clearly demonst ra ted by. assessing the at tachment-exploration balance in Ainsworth 's Strange Situation. We therefore predicted that the at tachment-exploration balance would shift in favor of a t tachment more significantly when the infants were separated from mother than when they were separated from father. This shift would he interpreted as evidence of an insufficiently secure internalized representation of the mother, whose evoked memory would otherwise sustain the mother-child a t t achment securely in the parents ' absence. 4 Given an inadequate capacity at this developmental stage for such evocative memory, the child will seek out alternative a t tachment figures in an interpersonal, "external" relationship for security. Differences in reactions to separation from mother, father and stranger were expected to parallel previous research in showing the inability of the stranger to function adequately as a secure base in the Strange Situation, when comPared to either parent.