Interaction and Attachment in Normal and Atypical Infants

This summary of the special series critically evaluates what we know about the relations between early interaction, the "strange situation," and later social behavior in normal and atypical infants including premature infants, abused or neglected infants, and the infants of depressed mothers. Equivocal relations between early interaction behaviors and later attachment classifications are attributed to the limitations of the strange-situation paradigm, a paradigm that has rapidly become the accepted standard for assessing attachment. A more complex paradigm that would tap behavior in more ecologically meaningful situations, both stressful and nonstressful, may provide more insight into the functional significance of attachment.