Caregiver-infant interactions Flashcards
What is a bond ?
A set of feelings that tie one person to another
What is attachment ?
A close two-way emotional bond between individuals whereby each individual seeks the other as it is essential for their emotional security
How do caregivers interact ?
- bodily contact (skin-to-skin)
- mimicking (expression)
- caregiverse (sounds)
- interactional synchrony
- reciprocity
What is reciprocity ?
- turn-taking behaviour
- a description of how two people react to others
- both caregiver and baby respond to each others signals
What is interactional synchrony ?
Where baby and caregiver reflect the same actions and emotions and do it in a coordinated way
What was Isabella’s study about interactional synchrony ?
- observed 30 mothers and babies
- higher levels of synchrony were associated with better quality attachment
What did Meltzoff and Moore study ?
- videotaped 12-21 day old infants
- an adult displayed one of 3 expressions
- infants response was filmed and labelled by observers
- interaction snychrony happened from as young as 3 weeks
What does Brazelton refer to synchrony as ?
reciprocity is like a dance
What are the strengths of caregiver-infant interactions ?
Filmed observation:
- usually filmed in a laboratory
- this means that films can be observed at analysed later
- picks up more details
- other researchers can share their opinion
- baby doesn’t change there behaviour as they are unaware of observation
What are the limitations of care-giver interactions ?
- infants are difficult to interrupt
- generalised
Difficulty observing babies:
- young babies lack coordination and are mostly immobile
- Difficult to understand small movements
- can’t find the root of why a movement happens
Developmental importance
- Feldman
- synchrony simple gives names to observable patterns
- But aren’t particularly useful in understanding a child’s development
- Because it doesn’t tell us the purpose of the behaviours
