Attachment - Caregiver-infant Interactions Flashcards
What is reciprocity?
A description of how 2 people interact. Mother-Infant interactions is reciprocal in that both mother & infant respond to each others signals & each elicits a response from the other
What is interactional synchrony?
When the Mother-Infant reflect both the emotions & the actions of one another & do this in a co-ordinated (synchronised) way
From how many months old does the mother & baby start to frequently reciprocate?
3 months
Do babies tend to take a passive or active role in interactions?
Active as pointed out by Brazelton et al
How does interactional synchrony take place?
When the mother & infant interact in such a way that their actions & emotions mirror the other
What did Meltzoff & Moore do to test interactional synchrony?
They observed infants as young as 2 weeks old, the adult displayed one of 3 facial features & the children’s face was filmed & identified by independent observers & they found an association between the expression/gesture of the adult & the child.
What did Isabella et al do to test interactional synchrony?
They observed 30 mothers & infants together & assessed the degree of synchrony. They assessed the quality of the mother-infant attachment & found that high levels of interactional synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachment
What are the strengths of this research into caregiver-infant interactions?
The observations were generally well-controlled procedures as the mother & infant were filmed from multiple angles so very fine details were captured - increases the ecological validity & inter-rater reliability
Babies dont care if they are being filmed so their behaviour doesn’t change in response to a controlled observation
What are the limitations of this research into caregiver-infant interactions?
It is hard to know what is happening when observing infants as what is being observed is merely hand movements or changes in expression so it cant really be known what the infant thinks
Observations also dont tell the purpose of synchrony or reciprocity as they can be reliably observed but it isnt useful to tell the purpose of them
