Caregiver-infant interactions

• What is attachment?

  An emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the attachment figure
• What is a caregiver?

  Any person who provides care for a child
• What is caregiver-infant interactions?

  Ways in which an infant engages with and responds to the person providing care
• What behaviours measure attachments?

  • proximity seeking
  • separation anxiety
  • strange anxiety
  • reunion behaviour
  • caregiver as a secure base
• What is proximity seeking?

  Wanting to be close to the attachment figure
• What is separation anxiety?

  Distress caused when being apart from caregiver
• What is stranger anxiety?

  Distress caused when being around unknown individuals
• What is reunion behaviours?

  Displaying pleasure when reunited
• What is 'caregiver as a secure base'?

  Using the caregiver as somewhere to return to
• What are the types of caregiver-infant interactions?

  Reciprocity and Interactional Synchrony
• What is reciprocity?

  • two way, mutual process where each individual responds to the other's signals
  • turn-taking between caregiver and infant
  • helps in building attachment
• What is interactional synchrony?

  • caregiver and infant mirror each other's facial expressions, movements and emotions
  • both engage in the same action in unison
  • involves coordination
  • the better the synchrony = the stronger the attachment
• What is a key study in Caregiver-infant interactions?

  Meltzoff & Moore 1997
• What was the aim of the study into caregiver-infant interactions?

  To investigate how newborn infants interact with their caregivers and whether imitation is intentional
• What was the method for Meltzoff & Moore's study

  • sample - 60 infants aged 12-21 days

  exposed to 4 different stimuli

  • mouth opening
  • termination of mouth opening
  • tongue protrusion
  • termination of tongue protrusion

  experimenters performed these actions and infants' responses were recorded

  observers analysed videos in slow motion and frame by frame

  independent observers assessed the recordings to remove bias
• What were the findings from Meltzoff & Moore's study

  • infants imitated facial and manual gestures
  • imitation was intentional and not a reflex
  • inter-rater reliability was greater than 0.92 indicating a high agreement between observers
• What conclusion can be drawn for Meltzoff & Moore's study

  Infants intentionally respond to caregivers' actions suggesting an innate ability to form attachments
• Evaluation of Caregiver-infant Interactions - Control

  P - High control in research

  E - Observations generally follow well controlled procedures with both the caregivers and infants being filmed often from multiple angles. This shows how fine details can be recorded and thus analysed easily and objectively
• One weakness of Meltzoff & Moore's study

  P - Difficulty in testing infant behaviour

  E - Infants' mouths are in constant motion and they constantly make and change their expressions. It is difficult to distinguish between general activity and their interactions
• One strength of Meltzoff & Moore's study - supporting research

  P - The existence of further research

  E - Abravanel & DeYoung 1991