Caregiver-Infant Interactions Flashcards
What is reciprocity?
Where the mother and infant respond to eachothers signals and each elicits a response from the other
What is intersectional synchrony?
Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and they do this in a coordinated synchronised way
What is the research that supports caregiver-infant interactions?
Meltzoff and Moore
What was Meltzoff and Moores study?
They observed the beginnings of intersectional synchrony in infants as young as two weeks old. An adult displayed one of three facials gestures or expressions. The child’s response was filmed and identified by independent observers. An association was found between the expression or gesture the adult had displayed and the actions of the babies
What are the problems with testing and observing infants behaviour?
Difficulty in reliably testing infant behaviour
Infants mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions is that are tested occur frequently (tongue sticking out, yawning) this makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours
Provides evidence of caregiver infant interactions being somewhat questionable
Perhaps infants don’t respond to the caregivers in the way the theory suggest
How does Meltzoff and Moores research adopt controlled methods?
They filmed the activity of the infant and the adult from multiple angles
Multiple assessments could be made by the independent observers as assessors can rewind and pause certain parts of the recording to make closer observations
Infants will not know or care that they are being observed so their behaviour will not change in a controlled environment
High internal validity
The results are more than likely reflecting what is being measured not some other extraneous variable
How do individual differences affect Meltzoff and Moore’s research?
Isabella et al found that more strongly attached infant caregiver pairs showed greater international synchrony and strength of attachment. This means that there are other factors that need to be considered when measuring intersectional synchrony in infants as not all infants respond to caregivers in the same way
Why are observations bad in Meltzoff and moores study?
Observations don’t tell us the purpose of the synchrony. For example, Feldman points out that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time. These can be reliably observed, but it doesn’t tell us the purpose of these care giver infant interactions. This means that further research into this area may be needed to explain the purpose of these interaction
