AO1 Research into caregiver-infant interactions

• What did Meltzoff & Moore believe?


  They believed that when an infant imitates the caregiver it is intentional (the baby is deliberately copying the caregiver).
• Aim:

  To investigate how new-born infants interact with their caregivers.
• Method:

  Controlled observation - watching a particular behaviour and noting it down. Highly controlled method due to standardised procedures (keeping all settings the same for everyone) and crosses out extraneous variables
• Procedure:

  • Adult model displayed 3 facial expressions 
  • The three facial expressions were mouth opening, termination of mouth opening (return of lips to resting position), tongue protrusion (tongue is coming out), termination of tongue (tongue is back in mouth)
  • The infants responses to the model were video recorded 

  The video recordings were then given to independent judges - they had no affiliation to the research so don’t know the aims of the study, who then decided which facial expression the infants were demonstrating - the video recording does not record what the adult is doing
• Results:

  All scores were greater than 0.92, indicating high inter-rater reliability
• Conclusion:

  Based on the findings, Meltzoff and Moore concluded that the infant intentionally responds to the caregivers actions, even at a very young age.