Caregiver-Infant Interactions

• What is the definition of attachment?

  A close emotional bond between two people
• How is attachment shown in behavior?

  Through strong emotional bonds over time
• What is the definition of reciprocity?

  Each person responds and elicits a response
• What are the components of reciprocity?

  • Alert phase: Babies signal readiness for interaction
  • Active involvement: Caregiver and baby take turns initiating interaction
• How did Brazleton describe mother-infant interactions?

  As a 'dance' where both play active roles
• What is the definition of interactional synchronicity?

  Actions and emotions mirror each other
• What was the procedure in Meltzoff and Moore's study on interactional synchronicity?

  • Adult model displayed facial expressions or hand movements
  • Dummy placed in infant's mouth to prevent response
  • Dummy removed, infant's expression filmed
• What did Meltzoff and Moore find regarding infant behavior?

  There was an association with adult model behavior
• What does the ability to mirror indicate according to Meltzoff and Moore?

  It is an innate behavior for communication
• What were the findings of Isabella et al regarding synchrony?

  • Observed 30 mothers and infants
  • Higher synchrony linked to better attachment quality
  • Securely attached pairs showed more synchrony in the first year
• C-I Interactions AO3 - Questionable Reliability


  • What is being observed is merely hand movements of changes in expression
  • Cannot be certain that the infants were actually engaging in interactional synchrony or reciprocity
  • Piaget - true imitation (interactional synchrony) is developed at the end of the first year and anything before this was response training (infant repeating behaviour that was rewarded as a results of operant conditioning). Piaget believed that infants behaviour was pseudo imitation - the infant had not consciously translated what they see into a matching movement
• C-I Interactions AO3 - Fine detail

  • Controlled observations often capture fine details, with both the mother and infant being filmed, often from multiple angles
  • This ensures that fine details of behaviour can be recorded and later analysed
  • Babies are unaware that they are being observed so their behaviour does not change in response to controlled observations which is generally a problem for observational research
  • This is a strength because it means that the research has high internal validity as it is measuring what it is intending to measure
• C-I Interactions AO3 - Not found in all cultures


  • Le Vine et al reported that Kenyan mothers have little physical interactions or physical contact with their infants but such infants have high proportions of secure attachments
  • This means that the research may be ethnocentric and therefore cannot be generalised to a wider population