Caregiver-Infant Interactions

Question 1

What is developmental psychology

Answer 1

A branch of psych concerned with the progressive behavioural changes that occur in individuals across their lifespan

Question 2

What is attachment

Answer 2

An emotional bond between 2 people (a two way process that endures over time)

Question 3

What is ‘reciprocity’ (turn taking)

Answer 3

A two-way, mutual process, where each party responds to the other’s signals to sustain interaction
-> the behaviour from each elicits a response from the other.
- studies show that infants coordinate their actions with their caregivers actions
-> regularity if an infants signals allows a caregiver to anticipate the infants behaviour + respond appropriately, laying a foundation for later attachment

Question 4

What is interactional synchrony

Answer 4

When adults and babies respond in time to sustain communication
-> caregiver & infant interact in a way that their actions & emotions mirror each other
- young infants imitate specific facial / hand gestures they see adults do

Question 5

Evaluation of caregiver and infant interactions

Answer 5

(+) Murray and Trevarthen (1985)
(+) Abravanal & DeYong (1991)
(-) Babies cannot use language to communicate
(-) expressions tested are ones infants make
(-) there are difficulties investigating the interaction

Question 6

Murray & Trevarthen (1985) video monitor

Answer 6

-> got babies to interact with their mother over a monitor
-> then babies were played a tape of their mother (so she didn’t respond to them)
- babies tried to attract their mothers attention but when this failed, they gave up responding
-showed that babies want their mothers to reciprocate

Question 7

What did Abravanal & DeYong observe

Answer 7

• infant behaviour when interacting with a puppet that looked like a human mouth opening + closing
• infants barely responded to this (so they don’t just imitate what they see - interactional synchrony = a specific social response)

Question 8

Babies can’t use language to communicate so psychologists are relying on their (…)

Answer 8

Inferences
-> they can’t be sure that infants are actually trying to communicate with their caregiver

Question 9

Expressions tested (tongue sticking out, yawing etc) are ones frequently made by infants so…

Answer 9

(-) they may not have been deliberately imitating what they saw

Question 10

Difficulties investigating interactions

Answer 10

• babies attachment behaviours are much stronger in lab settings than at home (4 validity, should be natural setting study)
• interactions are observations (so observational bias, fixed with more than one observer -inter-rather ability)
• extra care needs to be taken to do w ethics e.g. protection from harm etc