Ainsworth, Mary D. Salter - Critical Response
Critical Response
The field observation techniques of Mary Ainsworth were perhaps the most unorthodox, and thus most criticized, aspect of her research among contemporaries. In fact, after her Baltimore study, Ainsworth had difficulty getting a grant for another longitudinal study of the same type because most funding entities considered her original sample size too small and her clinically focused interview technique too far afield.
Ainsworth was also initially taken to task for "non-objective" language in case reports describing mother-infant interaction. Descriptive terms such as "sensitive" and "tender" were considered too subjective by many scientists, who believed that there was only value in concrete, measurable phenomena.
Unlike other research psychologists of her era, Ainsworth looked at all of her observational data in context in order to uncover its meaning, and sought to...
[The entire page is 898 words long]
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