Reciprocity

• What is reciprocity?

  When an infant responds to the actions of another person
• Brezelton: describes it as a dance
• What research has been done to investigate reciprocity in infants?

  • Feldman
  • controlled observation on how mothers respond to infants cues
  • mothers pick up on and respond to their babies alertness 2/3 of the time
  • from 3 months, it becomes increasingly frequent and involves both mother and baby paying attention to each other's verbal signals and facial expressions
  • this suggests both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions
• Evaluate Feldman's research into reciprocity.

  + distractions were controlled, so no extraneous variables

  + baby's behaviour does not change in response to being observed

  -hard to interpret baby's behaviour, which movements were intentional and which were not?