caregiver-infant

Question 1

reciprocity

Answer 1

a description of how two people interact
- caregiver interaction is reciprocal in that both care-giver and baby respond to each others signals and each elicits a response from the other

Question 2

interactional synchrony

Answer 2

caregiver and baby reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a synchronised/co-ordinated way

Question 3

alert phase (IS)

Answer 3

babies have periodic phases in which they signal they are ready for an interaction
- Feldman states that mothers pick up on these stages 2/3s of the time and that this interaction becomes frequent from 3 months

Question 4

active involvement (IS)

Answer 4

• babies and caregivers take on an active role, both take turns initiating interactions

Question 5

Meltzoff and Moore

Answer 5

• 3 different faces and 1 hand gesture & observed the infants response
• observers watched a video of the infants behaviour in real time, slow-motion, frame by frame
• the behaviour was judged by independent observers who had no knowledge of what the infant had just seen
• each observer was asked to note all instances of togune and head movements into the following categories: mouth opening (+ termination) same with tounge protrusion

results: an association between the gesture or expression of the adult and the actions of the babies

Question 6

contradicting evidence from Piaget

Answer 6

• said infants repeated this behaviour because they were rewarded for it
• an infant may stick out its tongue after the caregiver did, this would make the caregiver smile which is rewarding to the infant and so next time the infant does the same thing to get the reward
• pseudo-imitation: the infant had not consciously translated what they saw into a matching movement, they just did it because of the reward

Question 7

strength: methodology

Answer 7

• controlled methodology
• most caregiver-interaction studies are filmed in a laboratory
• video footage can be shared across other researchers to confirm they’re all interpreting a similar thing
• overall making the study less subjective

Question 8

limitation: infants reactions

Answer 8

difficult to interpret a young babies behaviour
- often make similar emotions when experiencing other emotions such as having wind may be interpreted as smiling
- babies lack communication so we struggle to interpret many of their behaviours anyway

Question 9

Tronick

Answer 9

still face experiment
- mother is told to face her baby and hold a “still face”
- not allowed to react to babies behaviours
- in general the baby will become agitated by failed attempts to evoke a reaction in the mother
- demonstrates the importance of reciprocity for the childs well-being

Question 10

limitation of tronick

Answer 10

• ethical issues
• causes psychological harm to the young infants

Question 11

proximity

Answer 11

people try to stay physically close to their attachment figure

Question 12

seperation distress

Answer 12

people show signs of axniety when an attachment figure leaves their presence

Question 13

secure-base behaviour

Answer 13

even when we are independent of our attachment figure we tend to make regular contact with them
babies display secure-base behaviour when they regularly return to their attachment figure whilst playing