6.1. Caregiver-infant Interactions

Question 1

Reciprocity

Answer 1

From birth, babies and their caregivers spend a lot of time in intense and highly pleasurable interaction. An interaction is said to show reciprocity when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them.
This kind of reciprocal interaction is also sometimes called turn-taking. It is an essential part of any conversation, otherwise people would talk over each other.

Question 2

Interactional Synchrony

Answer 2

Takes place when a caregiver and baby interact in such a way that their actions and emotions mirror each other. This suggests that infants imitate specific actions made by adults.

Question 3

Meltzoff & Moore

Answer 3

Observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in babies as young as two weeks old. An adult displayed one of three expressions or one of three distinctive gestures. The babies response was filmed and labelled by independent observers.

Question 4

Meltzoff & Moore Results

Answer 4

Results strongly suggested that babies imitated the adult precisely.
-the babies were not just showing reflex actions (waited for dummies to be taken out)
-there was no prompt - the babies reacted after a wait period when the researcher’s face was blank.
-the babies were not practiced because the mothers knew nothing about the study before-hand.

Question 5

Tronick’s Still Face experiment

Answer 5

Tronick’s experiment demonstrates that very young infants initiate social exchange. It also shows that they have sone sense of relationship between facial expression and emotion

Question 6

One strength of caregiver-infant interactions

Answer 6

Usually filmed in a laboratory
Having filmed interactions means that more than one observer can record and establish the inter-rather reliability of observations, also observations can be analysed later, therefore it is unlikely that researchers will miss seeing key behaviours. Furthermore, babies don’t know they are being observed so their so their behaviour does not change in response to observation.
Good reliability and validity

Question 7

One limitation of caregiver-infant interactions

Answer 7

Hard to interpret a baby’s behaviour.
Young babies lack co-ordination and much of their bodies are almost immobile.
But also difficult to determine what is faking place from the baby’s perspective.
Cannot be certain that behaviours have special meaning.

Question 8

Second limitations of caregiver-infant interactions is that observing