Caregiver-infant Interaction Research Flashcards
What did Meltzoff and Moore research?
They researched interactional synchrony in two-week old infants
What were the results of Meltzoff and Moore ?
The infants showed an ability to synchronise their facial expressions with a researcher
What did Meltzoff and Moore conclude?
They concluded infants are born with the ability to interact as their survival depends on it. Supports interactional synchrony.
What did Feldmans research support+find?
Supports reciprocity. Found from around three months. 2/3 of exchanges are reciprocal.
What did Brazelton research support?
Supports reciprocity. He identified green in no Reciprocity is like a dance- turn taking between infant and cat giver helps to understand others intentions.
What did Isabella find+support?
Supports interactional synchrony. The higher interactional synchrony the better quality of attachment
What did Brazelton find?
Identified trend in mother-baby interactional synchrony. Videotapes of 12-month baby pairs play behaviour was examined up to 5 months of age.
Supporting Evidence for Imitatjon being Innate
One strength of the research conducted by Meltzoff and Moore is that there is further research to suggest imitation behaviours by babies are innate.
For example, Murray and Trevarthen (1985) conducted a study using two month old infants. They interacted with their mothers vie a video monitor in realtime, the video monitor played a tape recording of their mothers so that the image on the screen was not responding to the infant’s gestures.
The result was acute distress, the infants tried to interact with their mothers but gaining no response, turned away.
This suggests that imitation .behaviour is innate because it suggests that the infant is actively eliciting a response rather than exhibiting a restonse that has been rewarded. If there was an element of reward in the process, it would suggest the behaviour had been learnt.
As a consequence, this strengthens the credibility Meltzoff and Moore’s original research and conclusion that reciprocal synchrony is innate.
What are problems with testing infant behaviour?
One issue with the research into early caregiver- infant interactions is that it may lack internal validity.
For example, what are often being observed is merely hand movements or changes in expression. As in Meltzoff and Moore’s and Brazelton’s observational research.
This is an issue because it is difficult to be certain what is taking place from the infant’s perspective; because they do not have the necessary language skills to communicate the meaning behind their behaviours. We cannot truly know that behaviours seen have a special meaning. Therefore we may not be measuring what we set out to.
As a consequence, this reduces the credibility of the research into caregiver-infant interactions.
The purpose of asynchrony and Recipircocity
One issue with the original research into Synchrony and Reciprocity is that it does not tell us the purpose of these behaviours in caregiver-infant interactions.
For example, Brazelton and Meltzoff and Moore’s research describes the behaviours in detail but does not tell us why they occur.
However, furtherresearch has highlighted severalreasons these behaviours occur. For example, Isabella (1989) demonstrated the importance of interactional synchrony when they found high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality infant-mother attachment. In addition there is some evidence to suggest that behaviours are helpful in the development of attachments, empathy, stress responses, language and moral develooment.
As a result, the value of the original research into caregiver-infant interactions is still credible.
