Caregiver-infant interactions Flashcards
1
Q
What is Reciprocity?
A
- How two people interact caregiver-infant reaction is reciprocal in that both baby and caregiver respond in each other signals and each get a response from each other
2
Q
What is International synchrony?
A
- Caregiver and infant reflect both actions and emotions of each other and do it in a coordinated way
3
Q
What is attatchment?
A
- A two way emotional bond between two individuals in which each individual sees the other person as essential for their emotional security
4
Q
How can you realise emotional security?
A
Proximity - People stay physically close to their attachment figure
- Separation distress - People show signs of anxiety when a figure leaves their presence.
5
Q
Explain reciprocity?
A
- Birth babies and their mums spend a lot of time together in high pleasurable interactions. An interaction is reciprocity when each responds to the other and elicits a response from them.
- E.g A caregiver will say something when a baby smiles. This is called turn taking.
- Alert phases - Babies have phases where they signal each other and they are ready for an interaction. RS shows mothers pick it up 2/3 times but varied through stress and how alert the mother is.
- From 3 months the interaction becomes more frequent and they both pay attention to each others verbal signals.
6
Q
Explain interactional Synchrony?
A
- Two people are synchronised when they carry out the same action simultaneously. It is the temporal coordination of micro level social behaviour. It takes place when caregiver and baby mirror each others actions
- Meltzoff observed the interactional synchrony of babies as young as 2 weeks old. Babies would mirror the same facial expression as parent.
- Synchrony is important for caregiver-infant attachment.
- Higher levels of synchrony when there are better mother and baby attatchment.
7
Q
Evaluate one strength of caregiver and infant reactions?
A
- Caregiver and infant interactions are filmed in a laboratory.
- Means that things that distract baby can be controlled and they can be observed and analysed later. So hard to miss important things
- Finally babies don’t know they are being observed so their response does not change therefore has good reliability and validity .
8
Q
Evaluate one limitation of caregiver and infant reactions?
A
- Hard to interpret a babies behaviour. Babies lack co-ordination and are immobile. They just do small hand movements and subtle changes in expression. It is see wether a baby is smiling or if it passing the wind. So it is hard to see if they have special meanings.
9
Q
Evaluate one further limitation of caregiver and infant reactions?
A
- Simply observing behaviour does not tell us the importance of development. Feldman points out that ideas like synchrony simply give names to patterns of caregiver and baby behaviours. They can be reliably observed buy may not be useful in understanding a Childs development as it doesn’t tell us the purpose of the behaviours.
