Caregiver-infant Interactions

Question 1

Reciprocity and Interactional Synchrony:

Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

Answer 1

carried out a study of Interactional synchrony found that infants as young as 2/3 weeks old imitated specific face suggesting that this behavioural response must be innate

Question 2

Reciprocity and Interactional Synchrony:

Piaget (1962)

Answer 2

argued that this was instead a form of ‘response training’ where the infant repeated behaviours that were rewarded (i.e caregiver smiling) and thus the infant didn’t consciously translated what they saw into a matching movement

Question 3

Reciprocity and Interactional synchrony:

Murray and Trevarthen (1985)

Answer 3

in their study there was an infant and either a live video of their mother or just a recorded video and in the condition with the non-live recording, infants became distressed due to receiving so response from the mother showing that infants are active participants in interactions