3.1 Caregiver-infant interactions Flashcards
What is attachment?
An emotional bond between two people. it is a two way process that endures over time. It leads to certain behaviours such as clinging and proximity seeking and serves the function of protecting an infant.
What is a caregiver?
Any person who is providing care for a child, such as parent, grandparent or childminder.
What is interactional synchrony?
When two people interact they tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and body movements. This includes imitating emotions as well as behaviours.
What is reciprocity
Responding to the action of another with a similar action, where the actions of one partner elicit a response from the other partner. The responses are not similar.
Summarize caregiver infant interactions
reciprocity - taking turns as in a conversation
interactional synchrony- coordinated behaviour
Meltzoff and moore- baby face study, shows the above.
Evaluate caregiver infant interactions
testing infant behaviours is difficult as they are in constant motion
Meltzoff and moore’s study is not great and is hard to replicate
babies do not respond to inanimate objects.
Problems with testing infant behaviour
What happened in Meltzoff and Moores study
Parent faces children and pulls a face. Scientists then observe how quickly it copies them.
what did Meltzoff and Moore claim, surrounding infant attachment?
said that infants and mothers showed interaction synchrony at 2 weeks
what did Piaget (1962) claim, surrounding infant attachment?
it was impossible for infants and mothers to show interaction synchrony at 2 weeks as infants developed this ability at around 12 months old
before this period operant conditioning was responsible for attachment
what are the limitations into research surrounding, ‘is the infant aware’ ?
how do we know what the infant is thinking
what are the strengths into the research surrounding, ‘is the infant aware’?
attachment research is often observational
infants don’t know/care about being observed; their responses don’t change so there are no demand characteristics making the research extremely valid
what does research suggest as the most important factors for mother-infant attachments?
What other things can these factors be important for also?
synchrony and reciprocity
stress responses, empathy, language development and moral development
explain the Minnesota parent-child project
this was used by Sroufe to show the continuity hypothesis
over many years, mother-child pairs have been followed. The study uses questionnaires and videos of them interacting to collect data
The mothers were always made aware of when they were being filmed
naturalistic observation
