1978-2008, 40 years of Strange Situation. Interactive behaviors and patterns on attachment: an investigation of Ainsworth's model

76 12-month-old infants were observed in the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP, Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, Wall, 1978) in order to: (a) evaluate the distribution of infant-mother attachment in the Italian culture, and to compare the pattern classification with other national (Ammaniti et al., 1994; Tambelli et al. 2008) and international non-clinical samples (van IJzendoorn et al., 1992; Schuengel et al., 1999); (b) compare the classification of attachment by the global descriptive patterns with the Ainsworth’s microanalytic coding system (Interactive Behavior Scales). Results: Results show a significant lower proportion of Secure attachment and more Insecure Avoidant one in the Italian group than in US samples of meta-analytic studies. Discriminant function analysis (MDFA) and classification weights confirm the discriminant functions of the interactive behavior to differentiate between patterns of attachment and attesting good validity of the methodology and the coding system.