caregiver infant interactions Flashcards
what is the definition of attachment
A close 2-way emotional bond between two individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
why do we form attachments
Human babies are ALTRICIAL (born and early stage of development). Therefore we need to form bonds with adults who will protect and nurture us.
Short term benefits = survival
long-term benefits = emotional relationships
reciprocity
Reciprocity is a two way interaction were caregiver and infant respond to each other’s signals. Babies have alert phases where they signal they are ready for interaction. Caregivers pick up on the signals and respond (Fieldman 2007, found mothers respond to alertness 66% of the time).
Fieldman also found interaction is more frequent from 3+ months.
Babies take an active not passive role in interaction.
what did Brazelton say about caregiver infant interactions
described interaction as a dance
study into reciprocity
Still face experiment
- 2 minutes
- caregiver stopped responding to baby signal
- baby tries to get caregivers attention and to reciprocate
- babies became emotionally distressed when mothers stopped responding to signals
what is interactional synchrony
Mother and child reflect both the actions and emotions of each other (mirroring each other)
believed to start as early as 2 weeks old
who studied interactional synchrony
Meltzoff and Moore
study into interactionl synchrony
- videotaped 12-21 day old babies who watch adult actor perform different facial expressions
- lip protrusion
-tongue protrusion
-mouth opening
observers who were blind to aims watched and coded babies facial expresisons
findings of sutdy into interactional synchrony
Babies facial expressions matched experiments significantly more that would happen by chance
evals
Best of observations into caregiver infant interactions is that they generally use well controlled procedures with both mother and infant being filmed. Le Vine et al found that Kenyan mothers have a little physical interaction also contact with their infants. However, such infants do have high proportion of secure attachment this suggests mothers should not return to work so soon as they may be considered a bad mother, or alternatively, maybe made to feel guilty for returning to work.
evals
weakness of observing infant interactions is that there are issues with cause and affect fieldsman points out that synchrony and reciprocity simply describes the behaviours that occur. This is a strength because the observed behaviour can be checked through inter-observer reliability, which means each observers categorisation of behaviour is consistent with each other. This increases the reliability of the studies as the conclusions about behaviour are consistent.
evals
weaknessof research into Mother infant interaction is that it could be considered unethical as it is socially sensitive, for example, Meltzoff and Moore filmed they experiment in a laboratory. This is a weakness as it shows that this explanation of caregiver infant interactions is culturally biased to western norms as it does not consider how attachments are formed in other cultures and only considers attachment in a western society that for this explanation is not universal, and cannot be applied to other cultures, reducing the validity of the research as all cultures should be taken in account in order to generalise them as much as possible.
evals
A weakness of observations is that they don’t tell us. The purpose of synchrony and reciprocity. Isabella found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother infant interactions. This is a weakness because it is difficult to know if the observable imitation behaviours are deliberate or random this decreases the internal validity as these observations as we cannot be sure the cause and effect behind the behaviours, and therefore we cannot be sure that we have measured what we set out to measure, that caregiver infant interactions are reciprocal and synchronised
