L1 - Caregiver - Infant Interactions

Question 1

What is attachment?

Answer 1

an emotional bond between two people - two-way process that endures ovetime

Question 2

What is reciprocity?

Answer 2

• turn-taking’ - two-way mutual process where each party responds to the other’s signals to sustain interaction - behaviour from each party elicits a response from the other
• studies demonstrate that infants coordinate their actions with their caregivers’s actions in a conversational type of way
• regularity of infant’s signals allows a caregiver to anticipate infants behaviour + respond appropiately
• sensitivity to infant behaviour lays foundation for attachment between caregiver + infant in fututre

Question 3

What is interactional synchrony?

Answer 3

• when adults + babies respond in time to sustain communication - caregiver + infant interact in way that actions + emotions mirror each other
• research found that infants as young as 2/3 weeks old imitate specific facial expressions and hand gestures that they saw adults do
• an adult model displayed 1/3 facial expressions/ hand movements. A dummy placed in baby’s mouth during the display to prevent any response. After display dummy removed + infant’s expression filmed - found that there was an association between the infant’s behaviour + adult model

Question 4

What are the strengths of caregiver + infant interactions?

Answer 4

• Murray + Trevarthen got mothers to interact with their babies over a video monitor. In the next part of study babies played tape of their mother so she was not responding to them. Babies tried to attract their mother’s attention but when failed they gave up responding - shows that babies want their mothers to reciprocate
• Abravanal + DeYong observed infant behaviour when interacting with a puppet that looked like human opening mouth + closing. Infant’s made little response to this - shows interactional synchrony is specific social response + babies not just imitating what they see

Question 5

What are the weaknesses of caregiver + infant interactions?

Answer 5

• babies cannot use language to communicate so heavy reliance on psychologists inferences - which may not be accurate. May assume infant trying to communicate with caregiver but cannot be sure
• The expressions tested (tongue sticking out/ yawning/ smiling) are ones that infants frequenlty make so they may not have been deliberately imitating what they saw

Question 6

What are the difficulties when investigating caregiver-infant interaction?

Answer 6

1. Studies found that babies’ attachment behaviour are much stronger in lab settings than in home environment. Therefore studies should take place in natural setting (e.g child’s home) to increase validity
2. Most studies into caregiver-infant interactions are observational so there could be bias in the observer’s interpretation of what they see (observer bias) - can be countered by using more than one observer (inter-rater reliability)
3. Practical issues when investigating caregiver-infant interactions. Infants are often asleep or feeding when psychologists want to observe them. Researchers need to use fewer but shorter observation periods because babies limited working periods.
4. Extra care needs to be taken in relation to ethics when investigating caregiver-infant interactions so as not to affect the child or parents in any way e.g protection from harm, confidentiality.