Caregiver Interactions Flashcards
What is attachment?
An emotional bond between two people. It is a two-way process that endures over time, with each individual seeing the other as essential for their own emotional security. Attachment in humans takes a few months to develop and leads to behaviors such as clinging and proximity seeking, serving the function of protecting an infant (secure base).
What is reciprocity?
Turntaking and responding, eliciting a response from the other, but not necessarily responding with the same behaviors. It is a two-way process.
What is interactional synchrony?
Infant and caregiver mirror each other, imitating the same behaviors in a synchronized fashion, moving in time with each other (e.g., both turn heads at the same time or both smile at the same time).
What are alert phases?
From birth, babies signal when they are ready to interact.
How do mothers respond to alert phases?
Mothers typically pick up on and respond to the alertness of their babies (Feldman and Eidelman 2007).
What did Jaffe (1973) demonstrate about infant-caregiver interactions?
Infants coordinated their actions with caregivers in a conversation, moving in a rhythm when interacting with an adult almost as if they were taking turns.
What is the significance of the rhythm in infant-caregiver interactions according to Brazelton (1979)?
The rhythm is important for later communication, as the regularity of infant signals allows the caregiver to anticipate future behavior, laying the foundations of attachment.
What is Interactional Synchrony?
A concept where infants and adults engage in mutual, responsive interactions.
Who observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants?
Meltzoff and Moore observed infants as young as 2 weeks old.
What did Meltzoff and Moore do in their study?
An adult displayed one of three facial expressions or gestures, and the child’s response was filmed.
What were the findings of Meltzoff and Moore’s study?
Babies as young as 12-27 days attempted to imitate facial and physical gestures.
What did Isabella (1989) study?
Isabella observed 30 mothers and infants to assess the degree of synchrony and the quality of attachment.
What was found regarding synchrony and attachment quality?
High levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachments.
What is sensitive responsiveness?
It refers to an adult attending sensitively to an infant’s communications.
What are the strengths of mother-baby interaction studies?
Mother-baby interactions are filmed from multiple angles, allowing for detailed behavior analysis. Babies are unaware of being observed, ensuring their behavior remains unchanged, enhancing reliability and validity.
What is a weakness related to infants’ mouth movements?
Infants’ mouths are constantly in motion, making it difficult to distinguish between imitated behavior and general activity.
What challenge arises from hand movements in infants?
It is hard to determine if a hand movement is a response to the caregiver or a random twitch, leading to uncertainty about the meaning of interactions.
How did Meltzoff and Moore address observational challenges?
They filmed infants and had an observer judge the infants’ behavior without knowing what behavior was being imitated, increasing internal validity.
What was the outcome of Koepke’s (1983) study?
Koepke failed to replicate Meltzoff and Moore’s findings, possibly due to less careful control.
What does Feldman (2012) say about synchrony and reciprocity?
Feldman states that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviors occurring at the same time, which can be reliably observed but may not indicate their purpose.
What is the implication of observing reciprocity or synchrony?
Observations do not confirm that reciprocity or synchrony are important in development.
