interractions

• an infant is someone in the period of their life before they have developed speech
• attachment is the emotional bond that exists between a child and their primary caregiver
• what four key behaviours of attatchment did maccoby identify ?

  seeking proximity to primary care giver, both caregiver and infant experience distress on separation, both experience pleasure being reunited, general behaviour orientation to caregiver
• how is the basis of attachment formed ?

  interaction between the caregiver and infant, the more sensitive to each others signals the deeper the attachment
• non-verbal interaction is key in caregiver-infant interaction, there is two types reciprocity and interactional synchrony
• whats reciprocity?

  responding to an action with another, actions of one partner cause the response action. Infants coordinate their actions with caregivers
• why is reciprocity important ?

  builds the skills for later communication, regularity of infants signals enables caregiver to predict infant behaviour and respond sensitively, the sensitivity to the infants behaviour is what forms the basis of quality of later attachment
• whats interactional synchrony?

  mother and infant mirror facial expressions and body language when interacting, its thought that infants do this on purpose, it is important for development of attachment
• whats the difference between reciprocity and synchrony?

  reciprocity is a reaction, synchrony is an imitation
• aim of meltzoff and moore ?

  to investigate at what age interactional synchrony and imitation occurs
• procedure of meltzoff and moore ?

  controlled observation, four different stimulis presented consisting of three different faces and a hand gesture where fingers moved in a sequence, 2-3 week old infants were presented with one of three facial expressions or the hand movement from an adult model, researchers filmed the infants response and it was then judged by independent observers who had no knowledge of what the baby has seen
• why did meltzoff and moore film infant behaviour ?

  rewatch multiple times to check for inter-observer reliability
• why is it important observers had no prior knowledge ?

  to prevent expectancy effects (seeing what they want to see) , prevents observer bias (expecting them to imitate a certain action)
• inter-observer reliability is calculated by correlating the two observer scores, if +0.80 suggests good inter observer reliability
• meltzoff and moore findings ?

  all scores calculated were greater than +0.92, infants as young as two to three weeks imitated specific facial and hand gestures
• meltzoff and moore conclusion ?

  there is an association between infant behaviour and that of the adult role model, this supports the idea of interactional synchrony
• strength of controlled observations ?

  high internal validity as procedure is well controlled and mother/infant are filmed often from multiple angles which means the fine details can be recorded and analysed
• weakness of controlled observations ?

  as behaviour is observed in a controlled environment the studies may not reflect real world behaviour
• strength of research into reciprocity and synchrony ?

  evidence they are important in the development of attachment, important in development of empathy, moral reasoning and language, studies have real life implication to parenting, parents need to be aware on how to interract with their baby
• the results of correlational studies suggest that high levels of interactional synchrony cause quality attachment, Isabella (1989) observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed their degree of synchrony and the quality of attachment, there was a positive correlation therefore suggesting a relationship between the two and supporting the theory
• weakness of correlational studies used for synchrony and quality attachment?

  cannot infer cause and effect, synchrony may cause attachment but attachment may cause synchrony, there is no sure way to tell.other factors may be involved which causes a relationship to appear between the two
• supporting research that imitation is intentional?

  murray and treverthen (1985), 2 month old children were shown a pre recorded video of their mother on a monitor so the mother could not respond to the infants face and body expressions, infants became distressed due to this and after attempting to gain attention but failing they turned away, this shows the infant is actively seeking a response and suggests it is an active and intentional partner in the mother-infant interaction
• the theory of intentional synchrony argues that infants imitate their caregivers behaviour on purpose