Caregiver- infant interiactions

Question 1

What is attachment?

Answer 1

An emotional bond between two individuals (primary caregiver and child) in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
(two way mutual process)

Question 2

What is reciprocity?

Answer 2

A two way mutual process between infant and caregiver, where each person elicits a response from the other
Also known as ‘turn taking’

Question 3

What did feldman and Eidelmann (2007) find ?

Answer 3

Mothers pick up and respond to baby’s alertness 2/3 of the time

Question 4

What are alert phases?

Answer 4

signals from babies which indicate that they are ready for a special interaction

Question 5

What did Findegood et al say on picking up baby’s alertness?

Answer 5

Varies according to skill of mother and external factors such as stress

Question 6

How were babies traditionally seen, and how are they seen now?

Answer 6

As Passive recipients, but babies and carers both can take on an active role (active involvement)

Question 7

What does Brazelton et al describe interaction as?

Answer 7

A dance

Question 8

What is international synchrony?

Answer 8

When caregiver and infant carry out the same action or behaviour simultaneously
They mirror eachother.

Question 9

What did Meltzoff and Moore observe?

Answer 9

They observed interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks old

Question 10

What did Meltzoff and Moore find?

Answer 10

Found a correlation between adult behaviour and infant responsiveness

Question 11

What did Isabella et al assess?

Answer 11

assessed degree of synchrony between 30 mothers and their babies

Question 12

What did Isabella et al find?

Answer 12

Found high levels of synchrony associated with better quality mother-baby attachment

Question 13

Why is it a limitation that we don’t know whether infants actions are deliberate?

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

what do these caregiver-infant interaction observations not tell us about?

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

what is a criticism of the weakness that we don’t know the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity?

Answer 15

evidence that synchrony and reciprocity are helpful in mother-infant interactions
Eg Isabella et al

Question 16

What is a strength of caregiver infant interactions?

Answer 16

• Use well controlled procedures, as they are usually filmed in laboratory
• Very fine details of behaviour can also be recorded and later analysed > unlikely to miss key behaviours
• babies also can’t display demand characteristics
• establish inter-rater reliability of observations
  > increased internal validity