Caregiver Infant Interactions in humans: reciprocity and interactional synchrony

Question 1

What is Reciprocity

Answer 1

A description of how two people interact. Both mother and infant respond to each other’s signals and elicit a response from each other. Occurs when infant and adult respond to each other’s actions with a similar action

Question 2

Explain the study Murray and Trevarthan (1985)

Answer 2

Evidence for reciprocity in infant caregiver interactions. When mother went still faced, baby became increasingly distressed and started to cry and try to get attention. Show that babies require attention and respond to social cues to be able to work.

Question 3

Define Interactional synchrony

Answer 3

Mother and infant reflect the actions and emotions of the other in a coordinated way. Mirror what the other is doing in terms of facial and body movements, Includes imitating the emotions as well as behaviors.

Question 4

Explain the study Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

Answer 4

Imitation in caregiver infant interactions. Model made facial expressions that the baby imitated back to them. Babies were able to closely imitate specific facial expressions, this shows they are innately social and interactional synchrony occurs.

Question 5

A strength of caregiver infant interactions

Answer 5

There is research supporting interactional synchrony where there are limited demand characteristics

Question 6

An issue with caregiver infant interactions

Answer 6

The use of the observational method

Question 7

Another issue with caregiver infant interactions

Answer 7

We need to consider the consequences of research in this area