Infant-Caregiver Flashcards
Define caregiver
Any person who provides care for a child
Define Infant
Usually refers to a child’s first year of life
Define caregiver-infant interactions
Refers to the communication between a caregiver and an infant. It’s believed to be important on the basis of attachment for the child’s social development.
What are the 5 behaviours of the infant and caregiver
-Bodily Contact
-Mimicking
-Caregiverese
-International synchrony
-Reciprocity
Define why Bodily contact is important
Often encouraged immediately after birth to help form that bond straight away.
Define Mimicking
Infant copied the primary caregiver in order to learn behaviours and reactions at appropriate times
Define Caregiverese
The tone of the primary caregiver uses when communicating with the infant
Define Interactional Synchrony
When the infant and caregiver reflect actions and emotions at the same time in a coordinated way. They mirror eachother in terms of their facial and bodily movements.
Define Reciprocity
A turn taking mutual relationship, is a response to a response that is appropriate and based on cues given. From around three months, these become more frequent and include more communication skills over time
Outline Isabella’s (1989) study into interactional synchrony
Observed and asked 30 mothers and babies and assed their synchrony. High levels of synchrony were associated with better quality attachment.
Outline a difference and similarity between reciprocity and interactional synchrony
S- They both show the infant learning when to use specific actions and emotions as-well as to form an attachment with the primary caregiver.
D- Reciprocity is turn-taking where as interactional synchrony is coordinated
Outline Meltzoff and Moore’s (1977) study into interactional synchrony
They videotaped 12-21 day-old infants for three weeks. An adult displayed one of three gestures, the infant’s response was filmed and labeled by independent observers, Babies showed the signs of interactional synchrony from as young as three weeks.
What were the three gestures given to the babies in Meltzoff and Moore’s (1977) research into interactional synchrony
- Sticking out tounge
- Opening Mouth
- Plain face
Explain why in Meltzoff and Moore’s (1977) study, they recorded the babies reactions
To increase the reliability of their finding’s as other people can see them then reducing experimenter bias, as-well as to increase validity as its replicable and the results are easily shown.
Explain the Limitations of Meltzoff and Moore’s (1977) study into interactional synchrony
-its hard to interpret a babies behaviour as most of their body is immobile and lacks co-ordination
-Can also be a result of pseudo-imitation,
These weaken the validity of the research
Define Pesudo-Imitation
Interactional synchrony not due to attachment but as a consequence of operant conditioning (learned behaviour)
studies of reciprocity (R) and interactional synchrony (IS) can be repeated to get similar results. what does this tell us?, do we know the purpose?, why is it a problem?
This tells us that both (R) and (IS) are similar, This is done to create attachments. However, we don’t know why as they cant articulate their reasoning.
Define Social Desirability Bias
Doing things that the people around you want to see
What are the key terms in the strength of the baby being unaware that it’s being recorded.
No factor of demand characteristics and no social desirability bias.
What increases the reliability and validity of Meltzoff and Moore’s (1977) study into interactional synchrony
It was filmed in a lab to allow for inter-rather-reliability (more than one person observing/ peer review)
