In this assignment I will evaluate the Strange Situations Procedure and how useful it is to our understanding of attachment. Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth and Bell, 1970), developed the Strange Situations Procedure after spending some time on her early attachment studies. The procedure is "a way to assess attachment security in a laboratory setting." It consists of a standardized series of episodes involving a child, his mother and a stranger in a sequence of separations and reunions.' (Quoted in Investigating Psychology, page 217). To evaluate this procedure I will examine its usefulness and its limitations. One aspect of this procedure that is helpful to our understanding of attachment is that it provides a greater depth of insight into attachment than simply observing it in an uncontrolled environment, such as a field experiment. The procedure takes place in a controlled laboratory, where external variables can be controlled and more in-depth observations can take place, therefore providing the researcher with a greater set of results to analyze when it comes to reporting the study. This first aspect helps us understand attachment because it provides the platform of basic knowledge we need to begin understanding attachment in more depth. It also initiates the likelihood of controlling but changing the situation/environment that participants will find themselves in, therefore allowing us to see a variety of different behaviors in different situations. On the other hand, since this experiment is controlled and takes place in a laboratory, where situations are modified to expose different behaviors of the participating children, this may reduce the ecological validity within the study. It goes ecological...... half of the document...... in this lack of information there is a clear difference with known experiences and how these influence the child's behavior and this should be reported first of the beginning of the experiment. In conclusion, the Procedure for Strange Situations has many limitations on the usefulness of understanding attachment, however it has allowed us to understand attachment in more depth. Attachment behaviors are readily available to a researcher when conducting this procedure, thus making it an efficient and convenient way to examine attachment behaviors. On the other hand, there is a lack of general and ecological validity within this procedure, which may cause unreliability of the recorded and observed results and may be difficult to apply to other people in other countries. In both cases, researchers were able to quickly gain detailed information about a child's attachment behaviors.