Developmental: Caregiver - Infant Interactions

Question 1

What is Attachment?

Answer 1

An enduring 2 way emotional bond to a specific other person, normally a parent and child.
- from an early age, babies have meaningful social interactions with carers.

Question 2

What are the 3 ways an attachment can be shown through?

Answer 2

1. Stranger anxiety
2. Separation anxiety
3. Seeking proximity

Question 3

How do we know an attachment has formed?

Answer 3

• Bodily contact
• Mimicking
• Interactional synchrony
• reciprocity

Question 4

What is reciprocity?

Answer 4

How 2 people interact (e.g. the infant and mother respond to each others signals and each elicit a response from the other)

Question 5

What did Feldman and Eidelman find about Reciprocity?

Answer 5

Found babies have ‘alert’ phrases, signalling they are ready for interaction - mothers pick up on this and respond (2/3 of time)
Feldman also found that from 3+ months, interaction tends to be more frequent - more facial expression and verbal signals

Question 6

What is Interactional Synchrony?

Answer 6

Mother and infant reflect others emotions and actions in a co-ordinate (synchronised) way.

Question 7

What did Meltzoff and Moore find about Interactional synchrony?

Answer 7

Observed beginning of IS as young as 2 weeks old. Adults displayed 1 of 3 facial expressions and child’s response was filmed

Question 8

What’s one strength of the studies into caregiver - infant interactions?

Answer 8

• controlled procedures, with the mother and infant being filmed. This means fine details can be recorded and later analysed. Also babies don’t know or care they are being filmed, so this doesn’t change their behaviours. This means behaviour has good validity.

Question 9

What are some of the weaknesses of caregiver - infant interactions?

Answer 9

• one weakness is that it is difficult to know what they mean by these interactions (e.g. a arm movement is difficult to know if this is deliberate, and imitation of an adult or not) so can’t know for certain that behaviours have a special meaning
• unethical as socially sensitive - Isabella et al (1989) found high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant interactions. This suggests mothers shouldn’t return to work so soon as may be considered a bad mother or made to feel guilty
• don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony or reciprocity - so able to describe these terms and observe them, but may not be useful as does not tell us the purpose. However there is some evidence that reciprocal interaction and synchrony are helpful in the development in attachment.