caregiver-infant interactions

• What is attachment

  • A close two-way emotional bond between two individuals in which each sees the other as essential for their own emotional security
  • We can recognise an attachment when people display following behaviours:
  • Proximity = staying physically close to attachment figure
  • Separation distress
  • Secure-base behaviour
• early interactions are meaningful for attachment

  • From very early age babies and caregivers have intense and meaningful interactions
  • The quality of these interactions is associated with the successful development of attachments
  • 2 kinds of interaction:
  • Reciprocity (R)= taking turns to respond
  • Interactional synchrony (IS) = simultaneous imitation
• interactions involve reciprocity (R)

  • R is achieved when baby and caregiver respond to and elicit responses from each other
  • Eg = a caregiver responds to a baby’s smile by saying something and then the baby responds by making some sounds of pleasure
• alert phases are times for interaction (R)

  • Feldman and Eidelman = mothers successfully respond around 2/3 of the time
  • From around 3 months, this interaction becomes more intense and reciprocal
• babies have an active role (R)

  • Traditional views of childhood have seen the baby in a passive role, receiving care from an adult
  • BUT it seems that babies are active pps, both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions and take turns to do so
• Interactions involve synchrony (IS)

  • Feldman = the temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour
  • Eg caregiver and baby mirror each others’ behaviour
• beginnings of interactional synchrony (IS)

  • Meltzoff and Moore
  • Observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks old
  • Adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three gestures - filmed the baby’s response
  • Babies‘ expression and gestures were more likely to mirror those of the adults than chance would predict
• importance for attachment (IS)

  • Isabella et al:
  • Observe 30 mothers and babies together and assessed the degrees of synchrony
  • The researchers also assessed the quality of mother-baby attachment
  • They found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-baby attachment (eg the emotional intensity of the relationship)
• Strength = research on this topic used filmed observations

  • Mother-baby interactions are usually filmed, often from multiple angles - very fine details of behaviour can be recorded and analysed later
  • also babies don’t know they are being observed, so their behaviour does not change in response to observation (generally the main problem for observational research)
  • Means the studies have good reliability and validity
• limitation = in the research there is difficulty observing the babies

  • It is hard to observe babies‘ behaviour because they are not very co-ordinated
  • we just observe small gestures and small changes in expression
  • It is also hard to interpret the meaning of babies’ movements
  • Eg deciding if a hand movement is a response to the caregiver or a random twitch
  • Means we cannot be certain that any particular interactions observed between baby and caregiver are meaningful
• limitation = difficulty inferring developmental importance

  • Feldman = points out that synchrony (and reciprocity) simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time
  • These are robust phenomena in the sense that they can be reliably observe BUT this may not be useful as it does not tell us their purpose
  • Means that we cannot be certain from observations that reciprocity or synchrony are important in development
• counterpoint to difficulty inferring developmental importance

  • evidence from other sources (eg Isabella et al) o suggest that good levels of reciprocity and synchrony are associated with good quality attachments
  • Means that, on balance, these early interactions are likely to have importance for development
• extra evaluation = practical value vs ethics

  • Practical value = research in to early interactions has allowed psychologists to improve the quality of caregiver-infant attachment
  • eg = by parent child interaction therapy
  • BUT this kind of research is socially sensitive = it can be used to argue that mothers should focus just on interacting with their baby and not return to work
  • Means that the practical value may be outweighed by its negative social consequences