caregiver infant interactions

• what does attachment mean

  an emotional relationship between two people characterised by proximity seeking
• how is attachment formed 


  through social interactions known as reciprocity and international synchrony
• what are the three types of attachment behaviours

  proximity

  separation distress

  secure base behaviour
• what does reciprocity mean

  how two people interact
• how is international synchrony shown in infant interactions

  -through simultaneous action

  -feldman 2007 described it as temporal coordination

  -behaviour and emotions are mirrored
• what did meltzoff and moore do

  conducted the first systematic study of interactional synchrony
• what were the findings of meltzoff and moore

  infants imitated specific facial and hand gestures
• what was the procedure for meltzoff and moore

  a dummy was placed in the infants mouth during the initial display to prevent any response

  following the display the dummy was removed and the child’s expression was filmed
• what is reciprocity under infant interactions

  2 way system.

  behaviour of one triggers a response in the other.

  alert phases are used to signal that they are ready to interact.
• what is a strength of tronick et al for reciprocity 


  supporting evidence P

  mother kept a static face at smiling infants E

  infants became distressed because the behaviour wasn’t reciprocated E

  therefore it supports the idea that reciprocity is expected by infants and needed for a sense of security L
• what is a limitation of meltzoff and moore observations of babies 


  difficult in testing infant behaviour P

  infants mouths are constantly moving E

  reduces internal validity of the data E

  therefore using a film observation can increase the internal validity and solve this issue L
• what is abother limitation of meltzoff and moore 


  not found in all cultures P

  Le vine et al reported kenyan mothers have little interactions with their infants E

  research may be ethnocentric and ignores how attachment may be formed within other cultures E

  therefore research needs to reflect everyone L