Reciprocity & Interactional Synchrony Flashcards
What is infancy?
The period of child’s life before speech begins
What are the 2 types of caregiver-infant interactions?
Reciprocity
Interactional Synchrony
What is reciprocity?
When a person responds to the action of another with a similar action
Who has researched into reciprocity?
Feldman & Eidelman
Brazelton
What did Feldman & Eidelman (2007) find about reciprocity?
That babies have periodic alert phases and signals that they are ready for interaction (at 3 months)
Mothers tend to pick up and respond to infant alertness 2/3 of the time
What did Brazelton (1970s) suggest about reciprocity?
Described it as a “dance” and suggested that sensitivity to infant behaviour lays the foundation for later attachment between caregiver & infant
What is Interactional synchrony?
When the baby and caregiver interact they mirror what the other is doing such as their facial and body movements, and imitating emotions and behaviours.
Who studied Interactional synchrony?
Meltzoff & Moore (1977)
What did Meltzoff & Moore (1977) do?
Controlled observation where an adult model (observer couldn’t see) displayed different expressions to see how the baby would respond
Infants as young as 2 weeks imitated specific facial gestures
What are the strengths of Meltzoff & Moore’s study?
Intra & inter observer reliability of 0.92 - no bias & study was accurate
Research support - Murray & Trevarthen (1985)
What did Murray & Trevarthen (1985) do?
Infants shown video monitor of their mother, then shown a pic of mother which didn’t respond
No response caused distress from the infants and they tried attracting mother’s interest- suggest infants actively eliciting a response
What is the weakness of Meltzoff & Moore’s (1977) study?
Piaget (1962) argues infants cannot imitate intentionally and that it was PSEUDO-IMITATION
What is pseudo-imitation?
When infants only copy the caregiver for a reward
What are the strengths of caregiver-infant interactions?
Meltzoff & Moore (1977) + strengths of this
Abravenal & DeYoung (1991) - imitation is a specific social response to other humans
What are the weaknesses of caregiver-infant interactions?
Piaget (for Meltzoff & Moore)
Problems testing infant behaviour
Failure to replicate (Koepke - 1985) couldn’t replicate Meltzoff’s experiment & findings
Individual differences
What are the problems when testing for infant behaviour?
Infants’ mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions tested frequently occur - cannot tell if it is generic or specific behaviour
How are there individual differences in caregiver-infant interaction?
Isabella et al (1989) found that more attached infants & caregivers showed greater Interactional synchrony - CANNOT BE GENERALISED TO EVERYONE
