Contingency perception and misperception in infancy: Some potential implications for attachment

A theoretical analysis is presented in which the four major attachment patt erns (A, B, C, and D) are viewed as adaptations to particular forms of earl y contingency experience. The author proposes that human infants analyze co ntingency experience on the basis of two computations of conditional probab ility, one prospective and one retrospective. Ideally, when these computati ons do not agree, the direction of disagreement Provides information as to how the infant should adjust effective behavior and/or how potential contin gent consequences should be redefined. The author also proposes that the sp ecific patterns of insecure attachment (A, C, and D) are a result of parent al responsiveness that is by nature inconsistent or out of balance and that the infant interprets this imbalance as his or her misperception of a bala nced contingency. The observed symptoms of attachment insecurity are seen a s consistent with specific attempts by infants to adjust behavior and/or di scrimination according to the direction of imbalance in conditional probabi lities they have experienced in interactions with their caretakers.