Both of the "traditions" from which virtually all research on adult attachment stems have their foundations in Bowlby's attachment theory and in Ainsworth's Strange Situation. Indeed, the first and most widely used interview measure of adult attachment -- the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George et al., 1985 ) -- was developed expressly to predict the Strange Situation behavior of respondents' infants. The AAI classifies adults into one of four attachment categories: secure-autonomous, preoccupied, dismissing-avoidant, and disorganized-disoriented. AAI classifications do, in fact, predict patterns of infant attachment, especially for mother-infant dyads (see van IJzendoorn, 1995 ). In general, adults who are secure-autonomous on the AAI have infants who are rated as secure in the Strange Situation, adults who score as dismissing-avoidant on the AAI have infants who are anxious-avoidant, and adults who are preoccupied on the AAI have anxious-ambivalent infants.

The AAI assesses patterns of attachment in parent-children relationships within nuclear families. In particular, it is designed to elicit distal memories, beliefs, and feelings of past relationships with one's parents or primary caregivers. One principal focus of the AAI is to determine how information about past attachment figures is structured, organized, and stored. Instead of focusing directly on the content of the information gleaned from the interview (e.g., whether or not an individual reports positive or negative memories of childhood), the AAI assesses various "states of mind" that presumably reflect the operation of deeper, more "unconscious" internal working models stemming from childhood. . .

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