Attachment Paper 1

Question 1

What is reciprocity?

Answer 1

Process in which behaviour is matched during an interaction - smiling back when someone smiles
3 months + interactions tend to be more frequent
Close attention to verbal signals and facial features (Feldman 2007)
Both caregiver and infant can initiate interactions, take turns while doing so
Brazelton (1974), compared it to a dance where each partner responds to each other’s moves

Question 2

What are caregiver infant interactions?

Answer 2

Responsiveness of caregiver to infants signals has profound effects on attachments they form
Important for social development

Question 3

What is interactional synchrony?

Answer 3

Caregivers speech and infants behaviour become finely synchronised
In direct response to one another

Question 4

Reciprocity study - Condon and Sander (1974)

Answer 4

Frame by frame recordings analysed of infants moving whilst adults talked
Found infants coordinated actions in sequences with adults speech to create a turn taking convo

Question 5

Interactional synchrony study - Isabella et al

Answer 5

Observed 30 mothers and infants together to assess degree of synchrony and mother infant attachments
Found high levels of synchrony associated with better quality mother infant interactions

Question 6

Evaluating caregiver infant interactions - disadvantage (2 marks)
hard to know what’s actually happening

Answer 6

Hard to know what’s happening when observing infants
Impossible to tell if imitation/turn taking is conscious or deliberate
Don’t fully know if behaviours seen have a special meaning or are just coincidence