Caregiver-Infant interaction

• Infancy

  The period of a childs life before speech begins

  • Usually first 1-2 years of life
• Attachments form due to survival


  Long term - Emotional relationships

  Short term- Food, comfort, protection
• 4 Characteristics of attachment

  1. Seeking proximity
  2. Secure based behavior
  3. Separation distress
  4. Joy upon reunion
• Secure based behavior

  Infants regularly return to their attachment figure while playing
• Alert phases

  Babies signal (e.g eye contact) that they are ready for a spell of interaction
• Fieldman and Eidelman 


  Mothers typically pick up on babies alert phases around 2/3 of the time
• Interaction between child and caregiver increases at 3 months
• T. Brazelton et al (1975)


  Describe the interactions between caregiver and child as a dance
• Interaction synchrony

  Caregiver and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this is coordination
• Feldman 2007 interactional synchrony


  'The temporal coordination of micro-level social behavior'
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977) - Interactional synchrony

  1. Selected three different facial expressions (stimuli)
  2. Observed the reactions of infants to these expressions
  3. A video taken allowed an independent observer unaware of the expression pulled
  4. Observers had to note all instances of mouth opening and tongue pertrution
  5. Each tape was watched twice
• EVALUATION - Strength - Filmed observations

  • Recorded twice, Unlikely to miss anything
  • High Inter-rater reliability due to more than one observer
• EVALUATION - Weakness- observing babies

  • Babies lack coordination so hard to interpret
  • Cant be sure the behavior has special meaning
• EVALUATION- Weakness- Developmental importance

  Feldman (2012)- cant be sure of the developmental importance of these behaviors
• EVALUATION - Weakness - Counterpoint

  Isabella et al (1989) - Achievement of international synchrony predicted a strong attachment