At - Caregiver-infant interactions Flashcards
What is an infant?
First 1-2 years of life - the period before speech begins.
What are caregiver-infant interactions?
The interactions - verbal or non-verbal communications - that form the basis of attachment between an infant and caregiver where each party responds to the other.
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 necessarily the same/similar as in interactional synchrony. A turn-taking, mutual process.
The more sensitive the parties are to each others signals…
…the deeper the relationship.
What is interactional synchrony?
When 2 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 attachment?
A close 2-way emotional bond between 2 individuals where each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security. It endures over time and serves to protect the infant.
It leads to certain behaviours such as clinging and proximity-seeking, and serves the function of protecting an infant.
How are interactional synchrony and reciprocity different?
The responses to the pair aren’t necessarily similar in reciprocity.
Who did the still face experiment?
Meltzoff and Moore (1977).
What experiment did Meltzoff and Moore do?
The still face experiment in 1977.
Describe Meltzoff and Moores 1977 still face experiment
Controlled observation.
They selected four different stimuli (three different faces plus a hand gesture) and observed the behaviour of infants in response.
An observer watched videotapes of the infant’s behaviour in real time, slow motion and frame by frame if necessary.
This video was then judged by independent observers who had no knowledge of what the infant had just seen.
Each observer noted all instances of mouth opening, termination of mouth opening, tongue protrusion and termination of tongue protrusion.
Each observer scored the tapes twice so that both intra-observer and inter-observer reliability could be calculated.
All scores were greater than .92.
Define caregiver:
Any person who is providing care for a child, such as a parent, grandparent, sibling, other family member, childminder and so on.
