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Mary Ainsworth was born in December 1913 in Glendale, Ohio. She attended the University of Toronto, where she earned her BA in 1935, her MA in 1936, and her PhD in developmental psychology in 1939.
Ainsworth jointed the Canadian Army, where she reached the rank of Major in 1945. After the army, she taught at the University of Toronto. Her interests in attachment led her to Uganda, where she was a Senior Research Fellow at the East African Institute for Social Research. Here she was able to study cultural differences in attachment formation in infants. After several other academic positions, she settled at the University of Virginia in 1974, where she remained the rest of her academic career. Ainsworth has received many honors, including the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Child Development in 1985 and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the APA in 1989. She wrote numerous books and articles, including Child Care and the Growth of Love (1965, with John Bowlby, London: Penguin), Infancy in Uganda (1967, Baltimore: John Hopkins), and Patterns of Attachment (1978, with M. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum). One of her important contributions to psychology was her research on early emotional attachment. Her "strange situation" room that infants are placed in during attachment testing is a standard procedure. |
For information about Mary D. Salter Ainsworth and her work
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