Caregiver Interaction - Meltzoff and Moore

• Reciprocity


  Responding to the action of another with a similar action, where the action of one elicits a response from the other
• Interactional Synchrony 


  When two people interact they tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and body movements (eg smiling)
• Meltzoff and Moore (1997) - Aim 


  To investigate reciprocity between infants and their caregivers
• Meltzoff and Moore (1997) - Procedure 


  A serious of controlled observations of babies between 16 and 21 days old

  Exposed to 3 facial gestures and 1 manual gesture

  Observed by Independant observers who had no knowledge of what the baby had seen - used a number of behavioural categories to note all instances of tongue protrusion and head movement

  Each observer scored the recordings twice
• Meltzoff and Moore (1997) - Findings 


  Babies aged 12-27 days old could imitate both facial expressions and manual gestures

  The ability to imitate serves as an important building block for later social and cognitive development
• Infants have been found to interact with their caregivers in a two-way conversational way, often taking it in turns

  Brazelton (1979) - this rhythm has been found to be a precursor to later communications

  Sensitivity to each others interactions lay foundations for later attachment between caregiver and infant
• Strength - multiple different observers scoring twice creates inter-rater reliability and intra-observer reliability
• Strength - Lab study so controlled observation
• Strength - behavioural categories were clearly defined listing specific actions that can be observed and recorded
• Limitation - Problems with testing infant behaviour 


  Difficulty distinguishing between general activity and specific imitated behaviours

  However Independant observers were used so increased internal validity of the data
• Limitation - Failure to replicate 


  Subsequent studies have been unable to replicate the same findings

  Marian et al (1996) - replicated study by Murray and Trevarthen and found that infants couldn’t distinguish between live interactions with mother and those on film - suggests they’re not responding to adult
• Strength - Is the behaviour intentional

  Abravanel and DeYong (1991) - another way used to test intentionality of infant behaviour is to observe how they respond to inanimate objects - tongue movements and mouth opening or closing

  Findings - infants of a median age of 5-12 weeks made little response to objects - concluding that infants do not just imitate what they see and its a social response to other humans
• Strength - Individual differences

  Within interactional synchrony, there was some variation between infants

  Isabella et al 1998 - the stronger the attachment to the caregiver, the greater the interactional synchrony - suggesting a relationship between interactional synchrony and strength of attachment