caregiver-infant interactions

• from an early age, babies have meaningful social interactions with carers which are important to develop attachment
• reciprocity is how two people interact and forms the basis of communication between an infant and their caregiver. an infant can become distressed if reciprocity isn't shown which suggests infants aren't passive in their interactions with a caregiver
• Tronick's 'still face' studies provided evidence for reciprocity. he had a sample of mothers and their 2-3 month old infants and the mothers were asked to interact with their children in their usual ways. at a signal from the experimenter the mother stopped all interaction, stayed still and adopted a neutral facial expression. the infant tried to resume reciprocal communication and became distressed. when normal communication resumed, the child was still wary
• Maccoby (1980) identified four characteristics of attachment:

  1. seeking proximity to the caregiver- especially in times of stress
  2. distress on separation- protest and anxiety when infant is parted from the caregiver
  3. joy on reunion with the primary caregiver
  4. orientation of behaviour towards the primary caregiver
• interactional synchrony is a form of communication between infant and caregiver that involves mimicry
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977) conducted the first systematic study of interactional synchrony and found that infants as young as 2-3 weeks old imitated specific facial and hand gestures
• Meltzoff et al’s (1977) the study was conducted using an adult model who displayed one of three facial expressions or hand movements where the fingers moved in a sequence. a dummy was placed in the infant's mouth during the initial display to prevent any response. after the display, the dummy was removed and the child's expression was filmed. they found that there was an association between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model
• A limitation of Meltzoff and Moore’s research is the difficulty in testing infant behaviour. Infants mouths are constantly moving, therefore it’s difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviour which means the internal validity of the data is poor because its unclear if the synchrony was intentional or not
• Isabella et al (1989) observed 30 mothers and infants together and assessed the degree of synchrony. The researchers also assessed the quality of mother-infant attachment. They found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality infant-mother attachment
• Le Vine et al (1994) reported that Kenyan mothers have little physical interactions or physical contact with their infants, but such infants have a high proportion of secure attachments
• Observational studies are good for caregiver-infant interactions because they’re well controlled with both participants being filmed. This ensures the very fine details of behaviour can be recorded and later analysed
• Babies don’t know or care that they’re being observed, so their behaviour doesn’t change in response to a controlled observation. Therefore the research can be said to be high in validity since it’s more likely the infants behaviour is in response to the caregiver are a genuine reflection of their interactions
• An issue with the studies is that what’s being observed is merely movements or changes in expression. It’s extremely difficult to be certain whats taking place from an infants perspective