caregiver-infant interactions

Question 1

what is attachment

Answer 1

attachment is a close two way emotional bond between an infant and their caregiver in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security, this develops over the first year and endures

Question 2

sensitive responsiveness

Answer 2

the caregiver responds appropriately to signals from the infant

Question 3

imitation

Answer 3

the infant copies the caregiver’s actions and behaviour

Question 4

imitation study

Answer 4

meltzoff and moore
found that infants between 2 and 3 weeks of age appeared to imitate the facial expressions and hand movements of the experimenter

Question 5

interactional synchrony

Answer 5

infants react in time with the caregiver’s speech, resulting in a ‘conversation dance’

Question 6

interactional synchrony study

Answer 6

condon and sander

provided evidence for this concept by showing how babies do appear to move in time with adult coversations

Question 7

reciprocity

Answer 7

interaction flows back and forth between the caregiver and infant

Question 8

motherese

Answer 8

the slow, high-pitched way of speaking to infants. However, there is no evidence that this influences the strength of an attachment between parent and infant

Question 9

tronick

Answer 9

investigated reciprocity using the still face experiment, this required mothers who had been enjoying a dialogue with their baby to stop moving and maintain a static unsmiling expression

• he found that babies would tempt their mothers into interaction by smiling and pointing, they became distressed when these did not provoke the usual response demonstrating the babies anticipate reciprocity

Question 10

meltzoff and moore

Answer 10

they observed interactional synchrony in infants, an adult displayed one of three gestures and the child’s response was filmed and identified by independent observers

there was an association found between the expression gesture the adult displayed and the actions of the 2-3 week old infants, this suggests that interactional synchrony is an innate ability to aid the formation of attachments

Question 11

limitation 1

Answer 11

problems occur while testing infant behaviour

doubt whether the findings of the research are a result of the tests being hard to replicate

Meltzoff and Moore - infants mouths were in fairly constant motion eg yawning - had to distinguish between normal activity of the infant and the specific imitated behaviour

Question 12

limitation 1 - counterpoint

Answer 12

Meltzoff and Moore - filmed the infants and asked an observer to judge the infant’s behaviour from the video

research involving infants’ behaviour contains difficulties, causing some to question their results as they cannot be easily replicated, however there are ways to combat this by filming to establish inter-rater reliability of the observations

Question 13

limitation 2

Answer 13

one time study - only involved observing behaviour
does not contain any information about it’s developmental importance

reciprocity and interactional synchrony are given names to patterns of behaviours found in caregiver-infant interactions and cannot be useful in trying to understand childhood development as we cannot gage the full understanding on the purpose of these behaviours

this means we are unable to be certain from observation research that reciprocity and synchrony are influential and important for a child’s development

Question 14

limitation 2 - counterpoint

Answer 14

there is evidence from other lines of research to suggest that early interactions are important
for example, Isabella et al found that achievement of interactional synchrony predicted the development of a good quality attachment
this means that, on balance, caregiver-infant interaction is probably important in development