Attachment: Caregiver Infant Interactions - Reciprocity And Interactional Synchrony Flashcards
1
Q
What Is Reciprocity?
A
- A description of how two people interact.
- Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both mother and infant respond to each other’s signals and each cause a response from the other.
- E.g mother smiling then baby smiling back.
2
Q
What Is Interactional Synchrony?
A
- Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this co-ordinated/ synchronised way.
3
Q
Weakness: Hard To Know What Is Happening When Observing Infants.
A
- There are studies involving observation of interaction between mother and infants many have the same patterns of interaction.
- However the observation has just been hand movements or change in expressions.
- This would be difficult to be confident with the infants’ thought processes and interaction e.g don’t know whether child is trying to show hand signals.
- This means that we cannot really know for certain that the behaviour seen between mother and infant is special.
4
Q
Strengths: Controlled Observations Capture Finer Details.
A
- Observation of mother-infant interactions are well controlled procedures, with the interactions being filmed from several angles.
- This would allow the researcher to capture finer details of the behaviour and be watched later.
- Babies also don’t know they are being recorded and therefore behaviour remains natural.
- This means that research has good validity.
5
Q
Strength/ Weakness: Observations Don’t Tell Us The Purpose.
A
- Feldman points out that synchrony simply describe behaviours that occurs at the same time.
- Although the observations reliable it may not be particularly useful as it does not tell their purpose.
- However, there is some evidence that reciprocal interaction and synchrony are helpful in the development of mother-infant attachment as well as helpful in stressful response empathy language and moral development.
