Caregiver-infant Interactions

• What is attachment?

  Begins with the interactions between infants and their caregivers. It is the responsiveness of the caregiver to the infant's signals that has profound effects.
• 3 examples of caregivers:

  • Family caregivers
  • Professional caregivers
  • Private duty caregivers
• What is reciprocity?

  From birth babies and their mothers (or carers) spend a lot of time in intense pleasurable interaction. Babies have periodic 'alert phases' and signal that they are ready for interaction. From about 3 months this interaction tends to be increasingly frequent and involves close attention to each other's verbal signals and facial expressions (Feldman 2007). A key element of this action is reciprocity - each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them.
• Examples of reciprocity:

  • Mum smiles at infant, infant smiles back
  • Mother claps, infant claps after
• What is interactional synchrony?

  Two people are said to be synchronised when they carry out the same action simultaneously, e.g. synchronised swimming. It can be defined as the 'temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour' (Feldman 2007). It takes place when mother and infant interact in such a way that their actions and emotions mirror the other.
• Examples of interactional synchrony?

  • Mother and infant turn heads at the same time
  • Father and baby smile at each other at the same time
• Explain the difference between reciprocity and interactional synchrony:

  • Reciprocity is a description of how two people interact. Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in which both infant and mother respond to each other's signals and each elicits a response from the other
  • Interactional synchrony is where mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated (synchronised) way
• What is a caregiver?

  Any person who is providing care for a child
• What is caregiver-infant interaction?

  The way in which an infant engages with and responds to the person who is providing them care
• What is an attachment?

  An emotional bond between two people. A two-way process which endures over time