Caregiver - Infant interactions

• Attachment= a close 2 way emotional bond between 2 individuals, in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security, attachment in humans takes a few months to develop and is reciprocal.
• ATTACHMENT BEHAVIOURS

  1. PROXIMITY= people try to stay physically close to those they are attached to
  2. SEPARATION DISTRESS= people are distressed when an attachment figure leaves
  3. SECURE BASE BEHAVIOUR= explore the environment but return to attachment figure for comfort.
• Human babies are altricial= born at an early stage of development

  Precocial animals= born at an advanced stage of development, eg able to walk
• Short-term benefit- survival

  Long-term benefit- emotional relationships act as a template for later relationships
• TWO TYPES OF INTERACTION

  1. Reciprocity
  2. Interaction synchrony
• RECIPROCITY- ALERT PHASES

  • babies have 'alert phases' which signal they are ready for interaction
  • (Feldman and Eidelman 2007) Mothers pick up on and respond to alertness 2 out of 3 times
  • (Finegood et al 2016) dependent on the skill of the mother and external factors such as stress
  • (Feldman 2007) around 3 months, interactions become more intense and frequent, involving both parties paying close attention to earn other verbal signals and facial expressions
• ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT

  • babies are more active than passive
  • (Brazelton et al 1975) interaction described as a 'dance' each partner responds to the others move
• INTERACTIONAL SYNCHRONY

  • (Feldman 2007) 2 people tend to mirror each other
  • (Meltzoff and Moore 1977) 2- 3 week infants imitated facial and hand gestures, adults displayed 1/3 facial or hand expressions, a dummy was placed in the infant's mouth to prevent response, following display, the dummy was removed, child's expression was recorded which increases inter observer reliability, found association between infant behaviour and adult model
• IMPORTANCE FOR ATTACHMENT

  • important for the development of caregiver-infant attachment
  • (Isabella et all 1989) observed 30 mothers and infants, assessed the degree of synchrony, assessed the quality of mother-infant attachment, and found high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality infant-mother attachment.