Attachment as an Organizational Construct

Assumptions concerning the nature of constructs underlying developmental research are often only implicit, yet they guide data collection and inter-pretation of results. For example, a number of researchers have provided data concerning int-correlations among behaviors presumed to be in-dices of attachment (e.g., Coates, Anderson Hartup 1972; Maccoby Feldman 1972). Noting that such index behaviors do not intercorrelate highly, do not show temporal stability, and are strongly influenced by context, critics have on-cluded that the attachment construct itself is want-ing, that concepts such as attachment relationship and affective bond are superfluous, and that varying patterns of attachment behavior among infants are