AO1 - Reciprocity & Interactional Synchrony

• Reciprocity refers to the process in which a behaviour is matched during an interaction e.g. smiling back when someone smiles at us.
• Feldman (2007) suggests that reciprocity can be seen in interactions from 3 months of age.
• Meltzoff & Moore (1997) demonstrated that babies as young as 12-27 days attempt to imitate facial and physical gestures.
• Interactional synchrony refers to how a parent’s speech and infant’s behaviour become finely synchronised so that they are in direct response to one another.
• Feldman (2007) claimed interactional synchrony was symbolic exchanges between a parent and the child.
• Brazelton et al (1975) identified trends in mother-baby interactional synchrony.
• Brazelton et al (1975) discovered 3 types of play which show signs of interactional synchrony.
• Isabella & Belsky (1991) claim that caregiver-baby pairs who develop secure attachments, display more synchronous behaviour than babies with insecure attachments.
• The word reciprocal means two-way, or something that is mutual.
• Reciprocity is a form of interaction between an infant and caregiver where both are responding to each other’s signals and each elicits a response from the other.
• Interactional synchrony is when two people interact and tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and body movements.
• Heimann (1989) showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth onwards have been found to have a better quality of relationships at 3 months.
• Babies have 'alert phases' where they are ready for interaction - like making more direct eye contact with their caregiver.
• Feldman & Eidelmann (2007) found that mothers pick up on their babies alertness around two-thirds of the time.
• Attachment is a two-way emotional bond between a caregiver and an infant characterised by behaviour such as proximity-seeking.