Infant-caregiver interactions

• Attachment

  An attachment is a close two-way emotional bond between two individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security.

  Attachment in humans takes a few months to develop.
• Attachment

  Individuals who are attached show a series of different behaviours:

  • PROXIMITY: people try to stay physically close to those to whom they are attached
  • SEPARATION DISTRESS: people are distressed when an attachment figure leaves their presence
  • SECURE BASED BEHAVIOUR: when tend to make regular contact with our attachment figures even when we are independent.

  Infants display secure-based behaviour when they regularly return to their attachment figure while playing
• Infant-caregiver interactions

  One of the key interactions between infants and 

  caregivers is their non-verbal communication.

  Such interactions may form the basis of attachment.

  It’s the manner in which each responds to the other that determines the formation of attachment – the more sensitive each is to the other’s signals, the deeper the relationship.
• Reciprocity

  Reciprocity refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions.

  Research in the 1970s demonstrated that infants coordinated their actions with caregivers in a kind of conversation. From birth babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult almost as if they were taking turns.

  Brazelton: This basic rhythm is an important sign to later communications. The regularity of an infant’s signals allows a caregiver to anticipate the infant’s behaviour and respond appropriately.
• Reciprocity

  Smiling is an example of reciprocity – when a smile occurs in one person it triggers a smile in the other.

  Tronick et al: Asked mothers who had been enjoying a dialogue with their baby to stop moving and maintain a static, unsmiling expression on their faces. Babies would try to tempt the mother into interaction by smiling themselves, and would become puzzled and increasingly distressed when their smile did not provoke the usual response.
• Interactional synchrony

  Interactional synchrony is when two people interact in a mirror pattern in terms of their facial and body movements. This includes imitating emotions as well as behaviours.
• Interactional synchrony

  Meltzoff & Moore (1977) observed the beginnings of 

  interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 

  weeks. An adult displayed one of three facial 

  expressions or one of three distinctive gestures.

  The child’s response was filmed and identified by 

  independent observers. An association was found between the expression or gesture the adult had displayed and the actions of the babies.

  In a later study Meltzoff & Moore (1983) demonstrated the same synchrony with infants only three days old.
• Interactional synchrony

  Isabella et al: Securely attached mother infant pairs had shown more instances of interactional synchrony in the first year of life suggesting that strong emotional attachments are associated with high levels of synchrony.

  Heimann: Infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth onwards have been found to have a better quality of relationship at 3 months. However, it isn’t clear whether the imitation is a cause or an effect of this early synchrony.
• Real or fake?

  Meltzoff & Moore = imitation is intentional (i.e. the infant is deliberately copying what the other person is doing)

  However, Piaget believed that true imitation only develops towards the end of the first year and that anything before this was a kind of “response training” – all that the infant is doing is repeating a behaviour that was rewarded the first time
• Evaluation - AO3

  (-) Problem with testing infant behaviour

  Many studies involving observation of  interactions between mother and infant have shown the same pattern of interaction (Gratier, 2003) 

  HOWEVER

  Hand movements, changes in expression etc. mainly observed. It is difficult to be certain what is taking place from the infant’s perspective. Is the infant’s imitation of adult signals conscious and deliberate or no?

  = We can’t really know for certain that behaviours seen in mother-infant interaction have a special meaning or if they’re just random.
• Evaluation - AO3

  (+) Controlled observations capture fine details

  Well controlled procedures with mother and infant being filmed from multiple angles allows every fine detail of behaviour to be recorded and later analysed.

  Do you think babies make good participants?

  YES! They don’t know or care that they are being observed so show no demand characteristics (usually a problem for observational research)

  = good validity of research
• Evaluation - AO3

  (-) Research into mother-infant interactions is socially sensitive

  It suggests that children may be disadvantaged by particular child-rearing practices.

  Specifically mothers who return to work shortly after a child is born restrict the opportunity for achieving interactional synchrony.

  = This suggests that mothers should not return to work too soon - this has obvious socially sensitive implications