Synchrony and Affective Repair

Question 1

What are infants?

Answer 1

Emotional beings, primed for social interaction

Question 2

How does the self grow?

Answer 2

Out of relationships

Question 3

Wha is insecure attachments negatively correlated with?

Answer 3

Authenticity (insight and awareness of beliefs)

Question 4

What is secure attachment predicted by?

Answer 4

The human nest

Question 5

What is the human nest?

Answer 5

soothing prenatal experiences
breastfeeding on request
affectionate touch
responsivity   
free play
social embeddedness
These are essential for positive child outcomes

Question 6

Do children need non-verbal interactions?

Answer 6

Children need these a lot, too much focus on language
Words are a superficial way of connecting with someone, connection involves levels behind the word
We do not directly see something, always separated from it due to labelling it and giving it a name

Question 7

The parent brain

Answer 7

This is very plastic as it has to be able to show empathy, caring and has to be able to bond with the infant
Adults connect with infants on a non-verbal level

Question 8

What does affect mean?

Answer 8

Something that mediates an organisms interaction with stimuli, capacity of learning that develops on a non verbal level
Not dependent on language, psychophysical
The infant knows the world through affect

Question 9

How many people is affect processing between?

Answer 9

It is dyadic - 2 people
Lasting psychological connectedness is based on dyadic processes: implicit relational knowing means coherence and complexity emerges

Question 10

What can dyadic relations have an effect on?

Answer 10

Brain development and behaviour

Question 11

What is the still face paradigm?

Answer 11

Mother and child engaging together, then the mother doesn’t respond. Baby does everything it can to get attention back, cries, gets stressed. When mother isn’t reciprocating, it is distressing for the infant. They are responsive to social cues and participate in coordinated action. Caregiver unavailability is very stressful, emotional unavailability is worse than physical

Question 12

What interactions occur between dyads?

Answer 12

State of match
Mismatch
Repair
When meaning and intentions are coordinated, it is a match, but not always perfect
Interuption = mismatch, messiness
Shift from mismatch, to match, to repair

Question 13

What are the dyadic processes?

Answer 13

Synchrony - coordination/match

Reparation of mismatch - interactive repair

Question 14

What is synchrony?

Answer 14

A process which coordinates ongoing exchange of sensory and physiological stimuli between parent and child in social interactions
Degree to which psychobiological reactivity is related from moment to moment
Begins early, when infant is born, biological coordination in the womb and then increases in complexity, body movements

Question 15

What does synchrony provide?

Answer 15

A basis for psychological and emotional regulation
Provides input for critical development
Dyadic processing = self regulation (attention) = independent coherent function (empathy)

Question 16

Synchrony before birth

Answer 16

Hormonal exchanges, nutrition

Question 17

Synchrony after birth

Answer 17

Infant will kick if the mother speaks
Gaze
Touch

Question 18

Is synchrony cross cultural?

Answer 18

Yes

Question 19

What does synchrony promote?

Answer 19

Intimacy and joy

Question 20

What organises infant physiology?

Answer 20

Maternal sensitivity to cues
Heart rate changes to match mothers
Maternal touch can lower heart rate if it gets too high

Question 21

What do synchronous interactions at 1, 3 and 9 months predict?

Answer 21

Secure attachments in dyads
Child’s self regulation at 2,4 and 6
Symbolic play and internal state talk
Empathy at 3

Question 22

What does experimental induction of synchrony affect?

Answer 22

Prosocial behaviour
Infant is attached to assistant and faces experimenter. Experimenter and assistant either bounce in or out of synchrony. Adult drops an object, higher rates of helping behaviour from infant in synchronous interaction

Question 23

Tapping synchronous task

Answer 23

74 pairs of 8-9 year old children
tapping task which was synchronous or not, could see each other through a screen
if in synchrony, perceive each other as more similar and felt closer (even though interaction was unconscious)
it promotes self equivalences and blurs conceptual boundaries, triggers release of oxytocin - activates reward centre

Question 24

What does quicker reparation aid?

Answer 24

Infant stress and self-control

Question 25

What are the best functioning dyads?

Answer 25

In match states only 28-34% of the time

Question 26

How quick to repair of mistakes occur?

Answer 26

3-5 seconds but caregiver variation as some caregivers don’t know their infants very well

Question 27

Still face recovery

Answer 27

43 dyads, 5-6 months, additional still face sequence. examined stress and parent responsiveness. infants of responsive parents = looked at parents more, had more regulation of negative affect, repaired quicker, higher regulation of heart rate. engaged more effectively
Infants on unresponsive parents = more negative affect, lower regulation of heart rate, showed avoidant behaviours during reunion

Question 28

How much of our emotions are shared?

Answer 28

80-95% are shared

Question 29

Electric shock experiment

Answer 29

16 married woman were subjected to the threat of an electric shock while holding husbands hand, hand of a male experimenter or no hand
there was less activity in the neural system of stress when holding husbands hand - suggesting that the presence of a familiar person can down regulate the stress of our brain

Question 30

What is the neural basis of emotion?

Answer 30

Amygdala - not fully developed till 3-4, over time it develops connections with the cortex. these connections lead to self regulation - this connection not formed for infants so they rely on the environment

Question 31

fMRI scanner experiment

Answer 31

Children were presented with pictures of their mother or a stranger during fRMI scanning. The children had less amygdala activity if they saw pictures of their mother, this effect was only shown for children

Question 32

Go/no go task

Answer 32

Children shown happy, neutral or fearful faces, participated in a go/no go task where they could only respond to neutral faces. if sitting next to mother, the children had a lower fault rate. Improved the most for the children who showed the most effects on amygdala