Attachment Flashcards
Caregiver- infant interactions- What is Recipriocity?
How two people interact and respond to each other. Mother- infant interaction is reciprocal as they respond to each others signals and elicits a response from the other. ‘Intense and pleasurable interaction’
Babies have ‘alert phases’ which signal when they are ready for interaction.
Mother responds 2/3 of the time.
Caregiver- infant interactions- What is interactional synchrony?
Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a synchronised way.
Meltzoff and Moore found strong correlation between getures/ expressions displayed by mothers and actions displayed by the babies.
Isabella et al found
** high deg of interactional synchrony associated with better quality mother - infant attachment.
Evaluation of caregiver- infant interaction?
Hard to know what’s going on when observing infants.
Studies involving mothers and babies are hard to analysise as we do not know whether a baby’s actions are deliberate or not. So cannot know whether interactions have a special meaning to them or whether the baby is just portraying some actions.
Evaluation of caregiver- infant interactions?
Controlled observations.
Observing mothers and babies are controlled procedures usually filmed at many angles. This enables even the finest of details to be captured and analysed. Also a baby is not aware that it is being observed and so will not show socially desirable behaviours and will not change their behaviours.
This has good internal validity.
Attachment figures- parent infant attachment…
Schaffer and Emerson found majority of babies form attachments to mothers first at around 7 months. And then form secondary attachments a few weeks after.
75% attached to father by 18 months.
Attachment figures- the role of the father…
Grossman carried out a study on parents behaviour and quality of attachments of their child in adolescence.
- Found quality of care from mother affected child’s attachments in adolescence
- Quality of care from father affected child’s quality of attachments in adolescence.
