Preschool Assessment of Attachment

The Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) is an instrument for assessing patterns of attachment in 18-month to five-year-old children*. The procedure involves a dynamic-maturational expansion of the Ainsworth classificatory method (Crittenden, 1992). Like the Ainsworth Strange Situation for infants, the PAA involves a 20-minute laboratory procedure and takes three people to carry out (plus the child and mother). Classification is based on careful review of the videotape and takes approximately one-half hour per videotape.

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