Caregiver- infant interiactions Flashcards
What is attachment?
An emotional bond between two individuals (primary caregiver and child) in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
What is reciprocity?
A two way mutual process between infant and caregiver, where each person elicits a response from the other
Also known as ‘turn taking’
What did feldman and Eidelmann (2007) find ?
Mothers pick up and respond to baby’s alertness 2/3 of the time
What are alert phases?
signals from babies which indicate that they are ready for a special interaction
What did Findegood et al say on picking up baby’s alertness?
Varies according to skill of mother and external factors such as stress
How were babies traditionally seen, and how are they seen now?
As Passive recipients, but babies and carers both can take on an active role (active involvement)
What does Brazelton et al describe interaction as?
A dance
What is international synchrony?
When caregiver and infant carry out the same action or behaviour simultaneously
They mirror eachother.
What did Meltzoff and Moore observe?
They observed interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks old
What did Meltzoff and Moore find?
Found a correlation between adult behaviour and infant responsiveness
What did Isabella et al assess?
assessed degree of synchrony between 30 mothers and their babies
What did Isabella et al find?
Found high levels of synchrony associated with better quality mother-baby attachment
Why is it a limitation that we don’t know whether infants actions are deliberate?
-hard to interpret baby
-e.g. what is happening, could just be small hand movements or changes in expression
-can’t know what is taking place for babies perspective
-We can’t be certain whether the interactions observed have special meaning
what do these caregiver-infant interaction observations not tell us about?
-Observations don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity,
-Feldman- ideas simply give names to patterns of observable behaviour
-Robus phenonemna in the sense, can be reliably observed but not useful in understanding child development as they don’t tell us purpose
what is a criticism of the weakness that we don’t know the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity?
evidence that synchrony and reciprocity are helpful in mother-infant interactions
Eg Isabella et al