Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 25
response, he or she will actively employ behaviors to re-establish contact with the
attachment figure. This strategy is labeled primary because it allows the child to
effectively reduce attachment discrepancies and turn attention to other matters (Main &
Solomon, 1990). In the Strange Situation, a secure strategy is evident in the child's ability
to flexibly coordinate attachment with exploration by using the parent as a secure base.
Thus, when access to the attachment figure is jeopardized, the infant attends to regaining
access, but once access is achieved, attention moves back to exploration. In the AAI, a
secure strategy allows subjects to flexibly deploy attention and to openly process
information about self and parents. This freedom is manifest in subject's abilities to
maintain cooperative and coherent discourse in response to interview questions (Main et
al. 1985).
When a child's model forecasts insensitive response, the attachment system
remains in a state of continued activation. As a result, the child must not only continue to
monitor the attachment figure's availability but must also develop alternative strategies for
regulating their own attachment behavior. These alternative strategies are labeled as
secondary because they involve altering the normal output of the attachment system
(Main & Solomon, 1990). From a control systems perspective, the two most general
secondary strategies involve either deactivation or hyperactivation of the attachment
system. The selection of secondary strategies hinges on the child's models of the
attachment figure's response. If a child's model forecasts rejection, deactivation of
attachment provides a way of minimizing potential conflict with the attachment figure
(Main & Weston, 1981). In the Strange Situation, the infant's avoidant behavior toward
the attachment figure following separation indicates a deactivating strategy.
In the AAI, deactivation is an effort to divert attention from attachment topics by
restricting access to attachment memories, idealizing parents, or devaluing attachment
relationships. Alternatively, if a working model forecasts inconsistent response, the child
may hyperactivate the attachment system. In the Strange Situation, this strategy is
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