4.1.3 Attachment Flashcards
What is attachment?
A close, two-way emotional bond between two individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their won emotional security.
This can be shown through proximity, separation distress and secure-base behaviour.
When does attachment first begin?
With the interactions between babies and caregivers.
Why do psychologists think caregiver-infant interactions are important?
For the successful development of attachments
Provides supporting evidence for social learning theory
They are important interactions for the child’s social development (in particular attachments between babies and their caregivers).
What is reciprocity?
A description of how two people interact. Caregiver-infant interactions is reciprocal in that both caregiver ad baby respond to each others signals, and each elicits a different response from the other.
What are the principles of reciprocity?
Interaction flows both ways between adult and infant.
Both mother and baby play an active role in these interactions.
This is often referred to as turn-taking.
What is an alert phase?
When babies signal, using social releasers, that they are ready for a spell of interaction. Mothers typically respond to this.
What is active involvement?
Both caregivers and babies play an active role in the interaction and both initiate responses (turn-taking).
What is interactional synchrony?
When caregiver and baby reflect and mirror the actions and emotions of the other, and do this in a co-ordinated way.
What are the principles of interactional synchrony?
Interactions and emotions of caregiver and infant mirror each other (imitation)
Adults and babies respond in time to maintain synchrony (temporal co-ordination)
What is temporal co-ordination?
When caregiver and baby co-ordinate their responses in time to create synchrony in their imitation
Who conducted a study on the interactional synchrony between caregivers and babies?
Melzoff and Moore
What is the aim of Melzoff and Moore’s study?
Ton investigate imitation of facial expressions in two and three week old infants.
What was the method used in Melzoff and Moore’s study?
Infants presented with a set of three facial expressions (tongue pull, lip protrusion, and open mouth) and one hand movement (sequential finger movement).
After, a dummy was removed from the infant’s mouth and the child’s immediate response was recorded.
Independent judges were asked to rate the infants responses for likeness to any of the four target behaviours, unaware of which behaviours they had been exposed to.
What were the results of Melzoff and Moore’s study?
There is a significant association between the model’s behaviour and the behaviour produced by the child, with children able to imitate specific facial expressions or hand movements.
What did Melzoff and Moore conclude from their study?
Very young infants will spontaneously imitate facial and hand movements of adult models.
This suggests that such imitation behaviours in babies are not learned and must be innate.
It shows how the infant is an active and intentional partner in the mother-infant interaction.
