Caregiver-infant interactions in human Flashcards
what is Proximity-Seeking Behaviour
(an infant’s desire to keep close proximity to a particular individual)
what is Separation Protest
(an infant’s distress if he or she is separated from that person)
What does the attachment figure give the infant a sense of
The attachment figure gives an infant a sense of comfort and security (usually the child’s mother)
what does altricial mean
humans are altricial, born at a relatively early stage of development.
Human infants need to form attachment bonds with adults who will protect and nurture them, due to their helplessness as neonates.
What does the ‘still face’ experiment teach us about connection?
The ‘still face’ experiment is a powerful study which shows our need for connection from very early in life.
The still face experiment gives an insight into how a parent’s reactions can affect the emotional development of a baby.
Early in our lives we were learning about other people’s reactions and how our behaviour can affect others.
what do Interactions between a carer and an infant do for the infant
help to
develop and maintain attachment bonds
What is reciprocity
caregiver-infant interaction is a two-way/mutual process, where the action of one elicits a response from the other (turn-taking)
Give an example of reciprocity
smiling back at someone who smiles at us (the response is not necessarily similar though).
what is interactional synchrony
infants move their bodies in tune with the rhythm of carers’ spoken language (carrying out actions simultaneously), often mirroring/imitating what the other is doing in terms of their facial and body movements.
What did Meltzoff & Moore (1977)
study
In a controlled observation (under laboratory conditions), an adult model displayed 1 of 3 facial expressions (tongue protrusion/mouth opening/lip protrusion) or a hand gesture. The infant’s behaviour was filmed on video.
What did Meltzoff & Moore (1977)
find
Results showed an association between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model – evidence for interactional synchrony. Infants as young as 2-3 weeks old imitated these specific facial and hand gestures.
What did Meltzoff & Moore (1977)
find in the follow study
In a follow up study, Meltzoff and Moore (1983) found the same synchrony with infants only 3 days old, ruling out the possibility that the imitation behaviours are learned, i.e. they must be innate.
who further study interactional synchrony
Isabella et al. (1989)
what did Isabella et al. (1989) research further strengthen
Further strengthened the notion of interactional synchrony reinforcing attachment bonds, by finding that infants with secure attachments demonstrated more evidence of interactional synchrony during their first year of life.
what did Isabella et al. (1989) research further suggest
This research suggests that high levels of synchrony are associated with better quality mother-infant attachment.
:) One strength of research into caregiver-infant interactions is that behaviour is usually filmed in a laboratory e.g. Meltzoff and Moore, increasing its reliability and validity:
The fact research takes place in a laboratory means that anything that might distract the infant can be controlled.
Recordings can also be analysed later, and several times if need be, so it is unlikely that researchers will miss seeing key behaviours.
Inter-observer reliability can be established as more than one observer can analyse the recordings, enabling them to compare and correlate their data.
:( Problems with testing infant behaviour (i.e. in Meltzoff & Moore’s study)
Infants mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently (tongue sticking out, yawning, smiling). This makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours.
To overcome these problems, Meltzoff and Moore measured infant responses by filming infants and then asking independent observers to judge the infants’ behaviour (e.g. mouth opening, tongue protrusion) from the video (in real time, slow motion or frame by frame).
This helped because
The person doing the judging had no idea what behaviour was being imitated – they were blind to the adult model’s behaviour. This increased objectivity and reduced bias, thus strengthening internal validity.
Each observer scored the tapes twice so that both intra-observer and inter-observer reliability could be calculated. All scores were greater than 0.92 (a strong positive correlation).
The behaviour in these studies has been shown to be intentional
animate objects.
Young babies lack coordination, so it is difficult to know whether a movement such as a hand twitch is random or triggered by something the caregiver has done.
One way to test the intentionality of infant behaviour is to observe how they respond to in
:( However, recent research by Koepke et al. (1983) failed to replicate the findings of Meltzoff and Moore.
E: This lack of research support suggests that the results of Meltzoff and Moore are unreliable.
C: More research is required to validate their findings.
:( Furthermore, interactional synchrony is not found in all cultures…
Le Vine et al. (1994)
E: Kenyan mothers have little physical contact or interactions with their infants, but such infants do have a high proportion of secure attachments.
C: This undermines the idea that interactional synchrony is necessary for attachment formation (and suggests that it may not be innate).
