Caregiver Interactions

• Attachment:

  • An emotional bond with another person.
  • The earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers continuously impact life.
• Reciprocity:

  • A form of interaction between infant and caregiver involving mutual responsiveness, with both infant and mother responding to each other's signals and eliciting a response from the other.
• Reciprocity: Feldman (2007):

  • Reciprocity can be seen in interactions from 3 months old.
• Interactional Synchrony:

  • When an infant mirrors the actions of another person, such as their facial expressions and body movements.
  • Interactional Synchrony is copying behaviour, whereas reciprocity is turn taking in non verbal and verbal signals.
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977):

  • Aims:
  • To investigate interactional synchrony between infants and caregivers.
  • Procedure:
  • They conducted a series of controlled observations using babies (6-27 days old).
  • The babies were exposed to 4 stimuli, 3 facial gestures, and 1 manual gesture.
  • The babies' response to these gestures was observed and filmed.
  • An independent observer, who did not know what the infant had just seen, was asked to note all instances of tongue protrusions and head movements using some behavioural categories.
  • More than one observer scored the recording (greater inter-rater reliability).
• Meltzoff and Moore: Findings:

  • Babies aged 12-27 days old could imitate both facial expressions and manual gestures.
  • Meltzoff and Moore concluded that the ability to imitate serves as an important building block for later social and cognitive development.