Week 7 — Style, Bond, or Stage? Reading First Relationships — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 7 of the term — work four plain counts from the attachment research and the running case, read records R3 and R4 with them, and explain drop-off crying to a worried parent.

This week you met the early emotions, temperament and goodness of fit, Harlow's cloth and wire stand-in mothers, Bowlby's secure base, the Strange Situation and its four classifications, Erikson's first two stages, and mirror self-recognition. In this assignment you work four short problems, interpret each one, and explain drop-off crying to a worried parent. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Child Observation Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles. It builds on Week 3's habit of keeping what a child did apart from what it might mean, and on Week 2's first look at Erikson's stages.

The task

The running case is an illustrative, unnamed child built for this course; it describes no real child. Record R3 was written at a childcare center when the child was 14 months old: at morning drop-off the toddler cries when the parent leaves, accepts comfort from a caregiver, then plays while glancing back toward the caregiver; at pickup the toddler reaches for the parent and calms within a minute. Record R4 was written in the same center's block area at 2½ years: the child pushes away a caregiver's hand and says, "Me do it."

A parent of a toddler at another childcare center (illustrative) writes in a family newsletter, "My 14-month-old cries every morning at drop-off. I read that this means the baby is insecurely attached, and that childcare is to blame." Your job is to answer the way a child development student would, starting from a few plain numbers about the research and the records.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978) described 3 Strange Situation classifications, and Main and Solomon later described 1 more. How many attachment classifications are there in all?
2. Harlow's "The Nature of Love" appeared in 1958, and Patterns of Attachment by Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall appeared in 1978. How many years passed between the two works?
3. Record R3 of the running case was written at 14 months, and record R4 at 2½ years, which is 2 years and 6 months. Using 12 months in a year, how many months passed between the two records?
4. Erikson's Childhood and Society (1950) describes 5 stages in childhood and adolescence, and this week covers the first 2 of them. How many of the 5 stages does the course take up in later weeks?

Beside each value, add one brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: name the four classifications with their sources (secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant from Ainsworth and colleagues; disorganized from Main and Solomon), and explain that each is a research category for a pattern of behavior in one structured procedure, never a label for a child.
• Problem 2: state what Harlow reported about the cloth and wire stand-in mothers, and explain what the finding shows about comfort and feeding, linking it to Bowlby's secure base.
• Problem 3: read record R3's drop-off and pickup in two columns, behavior apart from interpretation, and say which part may reflect temperament and which reflects attachment, and why R3 earns no attachment classification.
• Problem 4: place record R3's comfort beside trust vs. mistrust and record R4's "Me do it" beside the autonomy side of autonomy vs. shame and doubt, and explain that the stage ages are approximate, not a timetable.

Explain it to a non-expert

Write a 3–5 sentence message to the parent, counted with Problem 3. Explain, in everyday words, that crying when a familiar caregiver leaves commonly shows that a bond exists, that how hard a toddler cries may reflect temperament while whom the toddler reaches for reflects attachment, and that childcare outside the home does not by itself prevent a secure attachment. Name one limit, such as that one drop-off cannot give a child an attachment classification, or that the effects of many hours of childcare are debated among researchers. Be respectful: the parent is worried and has read something that sounded official. More than one good message is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a neighbor whose new kitten hid under the bed for two days after moving in. Model message: "Hiding in a brand-new place is common, and it tells you more about how this kitten meets new things than about how much it likes you. Some kittens explore the first hour; others watch from cover first. One fair caveat: two days of hiding is a small sample, so watch how the kitten acts over the next few weeks before deciding anything."

Use that pattern for the parent, with your own wording and evidence.

Your reflection. After you check your draft, write two or three sentences on one of these, your choice: (a) which problem changed how you would talk about a toddler's crying at drop-off, and why; or (b) which word or phrase in your first draft you replaced, and what the new wording gets right.

Deliverables

Submit a single report containing:

• the four values, each with the counts, years, or ages and the arithmetic shown, and the brief interpretation the task names for that problem;
• your message to the parent, explaining drop-off crying with temperament kept apart from attachment, with one limit;
• your reflection, on the option you chose; and
• a one-line restatement of the counts, years, and ages you used, so your values can be checked.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled two-column sketch of record R3 with a short explanation. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counts, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Describe records R3 and R4 only as the course describes them, name people only by role, write every age as a range rather than a deadline, and never label a real child with an attachment classification or a temperament type. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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