caregiver-infant interaction

• Reciprocity is when an infant responds to the actions of another person in the form of turn-taking. The actions of one person elicit a response from the other.
• From around three months old, according to Feldman (2007), reciprocity increases in frequency as the infant and caregiver pay increasing attention to each other's verbal and facial expressions. 
• Brazelton (1979) suggests that showing this sensitive responsiveness, whereby the caregiver pays attention sensitively towards the infant's behaviour, will lay the strong foundations for attachment to develop later between the caregiver and infant.
• Interactional synchrony is when infants mirror the actions or emotions of another person, for example, their facial expressions. This mirroring can also be referred to as imitation or simply copying the adult's behaviour.
• Meltzoff and Moore (1983) proposed that there is some primitive capacity for matching the acts of others. Such an ability would be an important building block for social and cognitive development. They claim that intentional interaction is innate. 
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

  Aim: to examine interactional synchrony in infants. They wanted to find out if these interactions were innate. 
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977)


  Method: using a controlled observation, an adult model displayed one of three facial expressions, or a hand gesture. To start with, the child had a dummy placed in his/her mouth to prevent a facial response. Following the display from the adult model, the dummy was removed and the child's expressions were filmed. 
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977)


  Results: there was a clear association between the infant's behaviour and that of the adult model. 
• Later research by Meltzoff and Moore (1983) found the same findings in three-day-old-infants.  

   

  Conclusion: these findings suggest that interactional synchrony is innate and reduces the strength of any claim that imitative behaviour is learned. 
• Piaget (1962) believed that true imitation only developed towards the end of the first year and that anything before this was a kind of 'response training', the infant repeating a behaviour that was rewarded (result of operant conditioning). This suggests that the infant is only partaking in pseudo-imitation because they do not consciously translate what they see into a matching movement. 
• In a study by Murray and Trevarthen (1985), two-month-old infants first interacted via a video monitor with their mother in real time
• The study then had the video monitor play a tape of the mother, where the image on screen did not respond to the infant's facial and bodily gestures
• The infants in the study showed distress when the image on the screen did not respond to their gestures
• The infants tried to attract their mother's interest, but upon gaining no response, they turned away
• This study demonstrates that the infant is actively eliciting a response rather than displaying a response that has been rewarded, showing that the infant is an active and intentional partner in the mother-infant interaction.
• Recent research found that only infants in secure attachments engage in interactional synchrony. Isabella et al. (1989) found that the more securely attached the infant, the greater the level of interactional synchrony. This suggests that not all children engage in interactional synchrony and Meltzoff and Moore's research may have overlooked individual differences which could be a mediating factor. 
• Recent research by Koepke et al. (1983) failed to replicate the findings of Meltzoff and Moore (1983). Suggests the results are unreliable and more research is needed to validate their findings. 
• Marian et al. (1996) replicated the study by Murray and Trevarthen and found that infants couldn't distinguish live from videotaped interactions with their mothers, suggesting that the infants are not actually responding to the mother. 
• Abravanel and DeYong (1991) observed infant behaviour when 'interacting' with two objects, one simulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening/closing. They found that infants of median age 5 and 12 weeks made little response to the objects, suggesting that infants do not just imitate anything they see and that it is a specific social response to other humans.