Caregiver-infant interactions

• What is reciprocity?

  An infant responding to the action of a caregiver with a similar action, these responses are not necessarily identical
• Who suggested that reciprocity is an important precursor to later communications?

  Brazleton (1979)
• What is interactional synchrony?

  • when an infant mirrors a caregivers action in terms of facial and body movements. Includes imitating emotions and behaviours. - When two or more things move in the same pattern
• What conclusions were drawn from the study of meltzoff and moore? (interactional synchrony)

  Imitation behaviours are innate
• Describe what Piaget suggested about pseudo imitation

  • Infants don’t imitate intentionally
  • Being reinforced (operant conditioning) - repeats behaviour which is rewarded with eg a smile
• What is an attachment?

  Emotional bond between two people, two way process that endures overtime and serves the function of protecting an infant
• Two disadvantages of caregiver infant interactions?

  • ☹️ failure to replicate- koepke et al, failed to replicate m and m’s findings. However, they argued it was because of a lack of internal validity and error in methodology
  • ☹️ infants are constantly moving- difficult to distinguish between general activities and specific imitated behaviour. M and m overcame this by getting observers who didn’t know study aims to judge the infants behaviour
• two advantages/evaluation points of caregiver infant interactions?

  • 😊 intentionality supported- abravanel and DeYong (1991) observed infant behaviour when interacting with objects which simulated tongue movements and opening and closing of the mouth. Found infants made little responses to these objects- only socially respond specifically to humans
  • 😊individual differences- strongly attached infants show greater interactional synchrony