Attachment (Caregiver-infant interactions) Flashcards
What is reciprocity?
where infants and caregivers coordinate their actions in a kind of conversation. Where each person leans forwards and speaks and the other follows afterwards. The sensitivity towards the infant builds later attachments between the two.
What did Brazelton (1977) suggest about reciprocity?
That basic rhythm is an important precursor for later communications.
What is interactional synchrony?
There is a slightly different kind of infant and caregiver response. Meltzoff and Moore conducted the first systematic study and found infants as young as 2 to 3 weeks old imitated specific hand gestures and facial features. An adult model displayed 3 different expressions or hand movements. During the initial display a dummy was in the mouth of the infant to reject any response, the following display it was removed and the child’s expressions were later filmed. They found that there was a later association between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model.
Was it a pseudo imitation?
Meltzoff and Moore suggested that the imitation is intentional, however, Jean Piaget argued and stated that only true imitation began towards the end of the first year and anything before that was ‘response training’ where the infant is repeating a behaviour that is rewarded. E.g a infant may stick out his tongue after seeing a caregiver do this and then see them smile which is experienced as rewarding.
Problems with testing infant behaviour limitation -
One problem is there are reasons to have doubts about the reliability of using infants behaviours in order to evaluate the research. Infants mouths are fairly in constant motion and the expressions being observed occur frequently therefore it is difficult to distinguish between general activity and and specific imitated behaviour. To overcome these issue Meltzoff and Moore measured the responses by filming infants and then asked an unaware observer to measure the infants behaviour from a video, therefore does show ways of increasing internal validity.
Supported by Infants reaction to inanimate objects strength -
To test the intentionality of the infants they must respond to inanimate objects (unliving things (toy)) Abravanel and DeYong observed infants interacting behaviour with two objects: one stimulating tongue movements and the other using their mouth to open/close. Infants of a median age of 5-12 weeks made little response to these objects. Therefore suggesting that there is a specific social response to humans and don’t just imitate anything they see.
