The DMM describes self-protective strategies and patterns of information processing in greater detail than any other attachment-informed model.
The Strange Situation Procedure was first used by Ainsworth and Wittig (1969) to assess individual differences in the responses of 56 middle-class non-clinical infants aged 11 months to the departure of a caregiver.
Hence the apparently unruffled behaviour of the type A infants was understood by Ainsworth as a mask for distress, a point later evidenced through studies of heart-rate (Sroufe & Waters 1977).
On the other hand, this finding implied that the quality of the attachment behaviour elicited by this anxiety differed in systematic ways as a function of the infant's caregiving environment.
The founder of attachment theory, John Bowlby, had argued that ‘given certain adverse circumstances during childhood, the selective exclusion of information of certain sorts may be adaptive.
Like Ainsworth's previous doctoral students, Crittenden found that ‘not all infants can be placed easily into the three categories described above’; she proposed that the Avoidant (A) and Ambivalent/Resistant (C) responses can be regarded as excluding ‘some classes of information’ relevant to ‘the activation of the attachment system’.
[4] Crittenden worked from ‘a basic premise of ethology – that universal behaviours often serve functions that promote survival’.
For Crittenden, Secure (B) infants utilise both kinds of information with little distortion: they respond to the caregiver's cues, and can communicate their distress, but also gain comfort when this is available.
By contrast, Crittenden proposes that both kinds of information can be split off from consciousness or behavioural expression as a ‘strategy’ to maintain the availability of an attachment figure.
[8] In her study, Crittenden noted that the infants who had experienced both abuse and neglect in her sample tended to ‘show an A/C pattern as do a few who are only abused and also a few who only neglected’[9] Yet Crittenden also observed some infants who did not fit well into an A, B, C or A/C classification; they did not appear able to effectively manage their behaviour in the service of maintaining the availability of their caregiver in the Strange Situation Procedure.
By ‘trauma’, Crittenden refers to the psychological experience of emotionally or physically threatening circumstances that cannot be subjected to effective information processing.
[11] Though termed 'insecure', Crittenden councils that the Avoidant (A) and Ambivalent/Resistant (C) strategies should not be regarded as in themselves disordered or problematic, so long as they are not misapplied over time through too general an application to situations where they are inappropriate.
Whilst Ainsworth had discovered a universal distinction in human emotion regulation between Secure (B), Avoidance (A) and Ambivalence/Resistance (C), in her later work Crittenden develops the idea of A and C as dimensions.
This child becomes cognitively organised, and prioritises her thoughts over her feelings knowing that thinking protects her and displaying negative emotions endangers her.
There are many reasons why a carer may be unpredictable, including distractibility, substance misuse, domestic violence or psychological illness.
This baby learns that her negative emotions when exaggerated are more likely to get results so she becomes affectively organised, trusting and prioritising her feelings over her thoughts.
This is the essence of the ‘C’ pattern, which is a twofold strategy: first, exaggerate my feelings of sadness, fear or anger, and then keep changing the problem.
Typically, in childhood, aggressive outbursts will be counterpoised with displays of helplessness or coy behaviour that disarms potential retaliation.
This has the effect of keeping the attachment figure locked in an irresolvable struggle, as the child continually switches between anger/aggression and appeasement/comfort seeking to maintain the carer's attention.