Thirty years of Strange Situation Procedure: observation and evaluation of father-child interactive behaviors.

Background Strange Situation Procedure (SSP, Ainsworth, Blehar, Water, Wall, 1978) is an important methodology for the evaluation of attachment relationship between child and his attachment figures (mother and father). Individual differences on attachment relationship with the father and interactive behaviors are studied during the 18th months of infant’s life. Following this point of view, the aims of the work are: a) evaluation of attachment style in italian children belonging to a non-clinical population; b) comparing the distribution of attachment patterns in our simple with international studies (Van Ijzendoorn & De Wolff, 1997; Ahnert, Pinquart & Lamb, 2006), in order to understand inter-cultural characteristics of attachment development; c) applying observational scales of interactive behaviors (Ainsworth, 1978) and assessing if they could be useful to distinguish between the different patterns of attachment. Method 26 father-child dyads observed in the SSP procedure at 18 months of child. Results The results show: a) our sample shows the prevalence of sicure pattern with specific attention on avoidant behaviors (11 subjects were classified as B1); b) no statistical differences between patterns observed in our Italian sample and two meta-analytic studies with the American sample; c) statistical differences observed in four interactive behaviors that discriminate between sicure and insecure children. Conclusions the patterns of attachment evaluated are similar in the two countries (Italy and USA), even if in the Italian sample there is a tendency towards avoidant behaviors. We could hypothese that the prevalence of this aspects could be considered as adaptive solution on developmental context.