Caregiver infant intercations

• What is reciprocity?

  Where mother and infant respond to each other's signals and elicit a response from one another
• What is interactional synchrony?

  • Where mother and infant reflect and mirror both actions and emotions of the other. This is in a co-ordinated/synchronised way
  • Feldman defined it as: the temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour
• What are the types of intercations?

  • Reciprocity
  • Interactional synchrony
• Research support for interactional synchrony- Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

  • Observed the beginnings of IS in infants as young as 2 weeks
  • Adult displayed 1 of 3 facial expressions or distinct gestures
  • Child's response was filmed and identified by independent observers
  • Found an association between the expression/gesture displayed by adult and action of baby
  • Therefore suggests IS plays a role in the formation of attachment
• What did Isabella et al find in terms of synchrony and attachment?

  • Observed 30 mothers and infants together
  • Assessed degree of synchrony and quality of mother-infant attachment
  • Found high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality attachment
  • Therefore suggests IS is imperative in attachment and may lead to better quality if mother is highly responsive
• Strength of controlled observations (AO3)

  • Mothers and infants tend to be filmed from multiple angles
  • babies don’t know or care that they are being observed
  • reduces the likelihood of demand characteristics and social desirability bias which are normally a problem for observational research
  • Recording the interactions ensures that fine details can be recorded and later analysed
  • As angles can be used where the caregiver can’t be seen, this reduces the likelihood of researcher bias.
  • ensures that the research has good internal validity and so we can make valid conclusions about the importance of caregiver-infant interactions
  • It also means that the research can be replicated to check reliability of the results.
• Limitation (AO3)

  • Many studies involving observation of the interactions between mothers and infants have shown the same patterns of interaction
  • However, what is being observed is merely hand movements or changes in expression.
  • we can’t conclude that we fully understand the meaning of caregiver-infant interactions and we can’t know for certain that they have a special meaning
  • suggested that infants may instead be showing pseudo-imitation
  • idea that the infant isn’t truly imitating the behaviour of the caregiver, Instead, they are repeating a behaviour that has been rewarded
  • (the caregiver often smiles and laughs when they imitate)
  • Therefore, the infant has not consciously translated what they see into a matching movement.
• Counterargument against the idea of psuedo-imitation?

  • Abravanel and DeYong (1991) observed infant behaviour when ‘interacting’ with two objects, one simulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening/closing.
  • FOUND infants made little response infant interactions to the objects
  • suggests that infants don’t imitate everything they see; it is a specific social response to other humans.
  • Therefore, the interactions may have a special meaning.
• Limitation on observing IS and R, purpose (AO3)

  • Feldman points out that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time
  • They are robust phenomena that can be reliably observed, but this may not be particularly useful as it doesn’t tell us their purpose (why they are done).
  • Therefore, we can’t understand why infants reciprocate and imitate their caregivers, so we can’t be certain that they have a special meaning
• Alert phases

  • Where babies signal during reciprocity/reciprocal processes that they are ready for a spell of interaction
  • Feldman and Eidelman found mothers typically pick up and respond on their baby's alertness on 2/3rds of the time
  • This may vary on the skill of the mother and external factors such as stress
  • From 3 months this interaction becomes frequent
• Active involvement

  • Babies as well as caregivers take on an active role, not passive
  • Both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions, they take turns