Caregiver Interactions

• Attachment - Enduring and reciprocal emotional bond that ties two people.

  Interactional synchrony - where an infant and an adult responds to the actions of another person perfectly in time with one another to sustain communication.

  Reciprocity - where infants and caregivers respond to each others signals which elicits a response (turn taking).
• Meltzoff and Moore

  Investigated interactional synchrony and reciprocity in infants. Controlled observation - adult showed 3 facial expressions and child's response was observed and rated by an independent judge. They found an association between the adult and the baby suggesting interactional synchrony is innate.
• Evaluation

  Babies cannot communicate so inference is needed in order to draw conclusions.

  Research has practical issues as babies are often asleep or being fed.

  Research has a real world contribution to understanding the importance of caregiver infant interaction helping parents understand the importance of social interaction. However, this may make parents feel bad about being a working parent.

  The research is very well controlled and children do not respond to social desirability or demand characteristics - increasing the internal validity of the results.