caregiver infant interactions

• attachment definition-

  emotional bond between 2 people
• what is reciprocity?

  • turn taking and responding
  • eliciting a response from the other but this doesn’t necessarily mean responding with the same behaviours
  • two way
• interactional synchrony:

  • infant and caregiver mirror each other
  • move in time with each other
• what is an alert phase?

  from birth babies signal when they are ready to interact
• meltzof and moore

  • observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks old
  • an adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures
  • child’s response was filmed
  • findings - babies as young as 12-27 days would attempt to imitate facial and physical gestures
• Jaffe - reciprocity

  • demonstrated that infants coordinated their actions with caregivers in a conversation
  • from birth babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult almost as if they were taking turns as people do when having a conversation
• Brazelton - reciprocity

  • this rhythm is important for later communication
  • the regularity of the infants signals allows the caregiver to anticipate future behaviour
  • lays foundations for attachment
• isabella - interactional synchrony

  • observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed the degree of synchrony
  • the researchers also assessed the quality of mother - infant attachment
  • they found high levels of synchrony were associated with better mother - infant attachments
• interactional synchrony definition-

  adults and babies respond in time to sustain communication
• imitation definition-

  infant mimics / copies the adult’s behaviour
• sensitive responsiveness-

  adult attends sensitively to the infant‘s communication
• what are the strengths of caregiver-infant interactions?

  • mother - baby interactions are usually filmed from multiple angles -> very fine details can be recorded and analysed later -> babies dont know they’re being observed and so their behaviour doesn’t change
  • Meltzoff and Moore overcame the weakness that we cant be certain that interactions are meaningful by filming infants and asking an observer to judge the infant’s behaviour when they dont know what behaviour is being imitated -> increases internal validity
• a weakness of the caregiver - infant interactions:

  Infants' mouths are constantly moving, making it difficult to distinguish between imitated behaviour and general activity.
• a weakness of caregiver - infant interactions

  It's difficult to determine the significance of any particular interactions.
• a weakness of caregiver - infant interactions

  Koepke failed to replicate Meltzoff and Moore's study findings.
• a weakness of caregiver - infant interactions

  It's challenging to infer the developmental importance of interactions.
• a weakness of caregiver - infant interactions

  Feldman argues that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time, which can be reliably observed but may not be useful as it doesn't indicate their purpose.