IS THE STRANGE SITUATION TOO STRANGE FOR JAPANESE INFANTS?

A recent Sapporo study revealed that some cultural context peculiar to Japanese mothers and infants would constrain and reduce the validity of the Strange Situation procedure and the ABC typology for Japanese infants. Although this conclusion seemed to be supported by studies in West Germany and Israel, Sroufe criticized the validity and generality of the Sapporo study. He Claimed that there were theoretical and methodological problems in the Sapporo study. However, by comparing the data from the two other Japanesse studies, his criticism was refuted. In respect of the proportion of attachment types, the data from these two studies did not agree with that of the Sapporo study, (they were comparable to U. S. results), however, the observed or inferred behavior patterns in the strange situation were quite congruous with that of the Sapporo study. Key words: Strange situation, Japanese infants, Attachment Strange Situation procedure and the ABC typology developed by Ainsworth and Wittig (1969) are considered reliable and a valid measurement of the quality of mother-infant attachment in the United States. However, its applicability to non-American samples is not without problems (Lamb et aI, 1984). In this article, the applicability of the Strange Situation procedure and the ABC typology for the Japanese infants will b