Caregiver-infant Interactions Flashcards
What is an attachment?
An attachment can be defined as a close two way emotional tie or bond between two people.
What does the word infant mean?
‘Infant’ is a Latin word meaning without speech so an infant is a child who does not speak.
During the first year of life, they must communicate without talking so they do this by crying or cooing.
When is an infant attachment stronger?
The more sensitive and responsive the caregiver is to the infants cues, the stronger their attachment.
What is reciprocity?
Reciprocity is when the caregiver on the infant do the same or different action at different times. Both the caregiver and the child can initiate interactions and they appear to take turns in doing so.
What did Brazleton et al (1975) describe reciprocity as being?
Describe this interaction as a dance because it’s just like a couples dance for each partner respond to each other’s moves.
What is interactional synchrony?
When the caregiver and infant carry out the same interaction at the same time. It takes place when the mother and infant interact in such a way that their actions and emotions mirror each other.
What did Feldman define interactional synchrony as?
The temporal coordination of micro – level social behaviour.
Outline one study of infant – caregiver interactions. (4 marks)
Meltzoff and Moore (1977) observed interactional synchrony in infants as young as two weeks old. An adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures. The child’s response was filmed and identified by independent observers. An association was found between expression or gesture the adult had displayed and the actions of the babies. This demonstrates the existence of interactional synchrony between caregiver and infant.
Describe the study Isabella et al (1989) conducted into interactional synchrony.
Interactional synchrony is important for the development of mother-infant attachment. Isabella et al. (1989) observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed the degree of synchrony. The researchers also assessed the quality of mother-infant attachment. They found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachment.
Evaluation point one:
(+) large amounts of supporting research.
Many students of interactions between mothers and infants have shown the same patterns of interaction (Gratier, 2003). This large amount of consistent evidence makes findings reliable and therefore more likely to be correct (valid).
Evaluation point 2:
(+)Well-controlled studies.
Observations of caregiver – infant interactions have generally well – controlled procedures, with both caregiver and infant being filmed often from multiple angles. This ensures that find detail details of behaviour can be recorded and later analysed giving lots of information, and thus improving our understanding of caregiver – infant interactions.
Evaluation point 3:
(+) Good external validity.
Babies don’t know or care that they are being observed so their behaviour does not change in response to being observed. This means that the behaviour observed and recorded will be their natural behaviour, so the findings about the caregiver – infant interactions should generalise to real life. However, the caregiver is likely to be affected by the observer due to social desirability bias. This is where the caregiver will change their behaviour so it is unnatural meaning the external validity is lowered.
Evaluation point 4:
(-) descriptive not explanatory.
Feldman 2012 points out that synchrony and by implication reciprocity largely describes behaviours that occurred at the same time, but this may not be particularly useful as it does not tell us their full purpose. This limits are understanding of these processes and of caregiver – infant interaction in general.
(+) However, there is some evidence that reciprocity and synchrony are helpful in the development of mother – infant attachment, as well as helpful in stress responses, empathy, language and moral development.
Evaluation point 5:
(-) It is hard to know what is happening when observing infants.
It is difficult to be certain, based on observations, what is taking place from an infant perspective E.G.is the infant imitation of adult signals conscious and deliberate? We cannot know if that behaviour is seen in mother – infant interaction of any special meaning so cannot be sure if these behaviours are important or not and so they may be wrong.
Evaluation point 6:
(-) Socially sensitive research.
Research into mother – infant interactions suggest that children may be disadvantaged by particular child – rearing practices.mothers who return to work shortly after their child is born would be restricting the opportunities for interactional synchrony which was shown to be important in developing the infant – caregiver attachment. They suggest that mother should not return to work too soon and has socially sensitive implications as it implies that if they do return to work too soon, they may in some way be harming their bond with their child and/or the future development of their child.
Describe Schaffer and Emerson (1964) study into parent-infant attachment.
Schaffer and Emerson found that most babies became attached to their mothers first at around seven months on average and within a few weeks or months for secondary attachments to other family members including the father. In 75% of the infant studies and attachment was formed with a father by the age of 18 months. This was determined by the fact that the infants protested when their father walked away – a sign of attachment.
Describe the role of the father.
Grossman (2002) carried out a longitudinal study looking at both parents’ behaviour and its relationship to the quality of children’s attachments into their teens. Quality of infant attachment with mothers but not fathers was related to children’s attachments in adolescence suggesting that father attachment was less important. However, the quality of fathers’ play with infants was related to the quality of adolescent attachments. This suggests that fathers have a different role in attachment – one that is more to do with play and stimulation, and less to do with nurturing.
Fathers as primary carers.
There is some evidence to suggest that when fathers do take on the role of being the main caregiver, they adopt behaviours more typical of mothers. Field (1978) filmed 4-month-old babies in face-to-face interactions with primary caregiver mothers, secondary caregiver fathers and primary caregiver fathers. Primary caregiver fathers, like mothers, spent more time smiling, imitating and holding infants than secondary caregiver fathers. This behaviour appears to be important in building an attachment with the infant and thus it seems that fathers can be the more nurturing attachment figure. The key to attachment relationship is the level of responsiveness not the gender.
Evaluation point 1:
(-) What is the role of the father?
Research into the role of fathers and attachment is confusing because different researchers are interested in different research questions. Some psychologist are interested in understanding the role father’s half as a second attachment figures and sees fathers behaving differently from mothers and having a distinct role. Other researchers are more concerned with the father as a primary attachment figure and have found that father can take on a maternal role. This is a problem as it means psychologist cannot easily answer the simple question, what is the role of a father?
Evaluation point 2:
(-) If fathers have a distinct role, why aren’t children without fathers different?
Grossman found that fathers a secondary attachment figures had an important role in their children’s development. However, other studies such as MacCallum and Golombok (2004) have found that children growing up in single or same-sex parent families do not develop any differently from those two-parent heterosexual families. This would seem to suggest that the father’s role as a secondary attachment figure is not important.
Evaluation point 3:
(-) Why don’t fathers generally become primary attachments?
The fact that fathers tend to not become the primary attachment figure could simply be the result of traditional gender roles, in which women are expected to be more caring and nurturing than men. Therefore, father simply don’t feel they should act like that. On the other hand, it could be that female hormones, such as oestrogen, create higher levels of nurturing and therefore women are biologically pre-disposed to be the primary attachment figure.
