Care-giver & Infant Interactions

• define reciprocity


  • how two people interact with each other
  • a baby may show signals that elicit a response from the primary care-giver
  • they take turns to respond like a conversation
• alert phases and research in reciprocity

  • babies have a periodic alert phase -> when they make a signal e.g. making eye contact to suggest that they are ready to interact
  • research shows that mother typically pick up on signals 2/3 of the time - Fieldman & Eildman 2007, but this can vary with environment e.g. stress - Finegood et al 2016
  • from 3 months old this interaction becomes more frequent and involves both the mother and baby paying close attention to each others verbal signs & facial expressions
• psychologists believe that caregiver-infants interactions are important in the child's social development
• define interactional synchrony


  • caregiver and baby reflect both their actions and emotions and do this in co-ordinated way.
  • carrying out the same action simultaneously - acting as a mirror
• research into interactional synchrony - part 1

  • Meltzoff & Moore 1977 ->
  • observed that beginning of interactional synchrony in babies that are 2 weeks old.
  • When an adult would use o 1 of 3 facial expressions or gestures
  • the babies' response was recorded -> filmed and labelled by individual observers.
  • findings: significant associations between the adults expressions/gestures and the baby mirroring them
• research into interactional synchrony part 2

  importance of attachment

  • interactional synchrony is important for the baby's development with an attchment to its caregiver
• research into interactional synchrony part 3

  Isabella 1989

  • observed mothers and babies and assessed the degree of interactional synchrony
  • also assessed the quality of attachment between each mother and baby
  • findings: better levels of synchrony due to better levels of mother-baby attachment
• strength of care-giver & infant interactions -> filmed observations

  strength: the filmed observations were conducted in a laboratory which minimizes the distractions because of the control within the study

  • key point: a baby's behavior doesn't change when they are being filmed
  • you can refer back to the footage when needed, and more than one person can review the footage to gain inter-rater/observer reliability

  this is a strength because the data collected with have validity and reliability (inter-rater reliability & internal validity)
• limitation of care-giver interactions -> difficulty observing babies

  limitation: hard to interpret the babies' behaviour as they have no co-ordination as they are immobile

  • the behaviour of the baby via movement or expression cannot be defined as it is perspective

  this is a limitation because we cannot be certain if the behaviour seen through caregiver-infant interactions have a special meaning
• weakness of care-giver interactions -> developmental importance

  weakness: observing a baby's behaviour doesn't tell us information about its development

  • Feldman 2012 - synchrony & implication reprocity see patterns in babies behaviour but not particularly useful -> no purpose

  this is a weakness because we cannot be certain that the behaviours seen in caregiver-infant interactions have a special meaning
• counterpoint to developmental importance-> caregiver-infant interactions

  counterpoint: evidence from other lines of research to suggests that early interactions are important

  • Isabella et al 1989 ->found that achievement of interactional synchrony predicted development of good quality attachment

  this means that on balance, caregiver-infant interactions are probably important for development
• discussion to caregiver-infant interactions -> Practical Value vs. Ethics

  discussion:

  research into caregiver-infant interaction has practical applications in parenting skill training

  • Crotwell 2013-> found that 10-minute parent-child interaction therapy improved interactional synchrony
  • sample was 20 low income mothers and pre-school children

  on the other hand: research into caregiver-infant interaction is socially sensitive because it can be used to argue when a mother should return back to work because it will be harmful to the baby if the attachment is not developed