Care-giver infant interactions

• Proximity- babies try to stay physically close to attachment figure

  Separation distress- people show signs of anxiety when an attachment figure leaves their presence.

  Secure-base behaviour- even when indecent of attachment figure, we make regular contact with them 
• reciprocity - Jaffe et al

  -infants coordinate their actions with caregivers in a kind of conversation (turn taking)

  -babies are active in this process, active phases- babies are looking for interactions, these are more frequent at 3 months 

  still face experiment- mother plays with baby, smiling and talking to them, the mothers shows a ‘still face’, and a lack of responsiveness. Baby looked confused and keeps trying to get mothers attention.
• international synchrony- meltzoff and moore 

  -care giver an baby mirror actions and emotions

  study 1- adult displayed facial expressions or distinctive gesture. 2 week old babies responses were filmed, looked at by independent observer, there was a significant association between expression shown by adult and baby

  study 2- same experiment with 3 day old baby, same results found

  Suggest these responses aren’t learned but inate
• A strength is filmed observations, they are usually filmed in labs so usual distractions can be controlled, this means there is less extraneous variables so a higher validity. More than one observer can view it, and establish interrater reliability.
• limitation is it is hard to observe babies, babies lack coordination and are mostly immobile, so they are small or subtle movements and expression changes making it hard to interpret a baby’s behaviour, it’s also hard to know if a baby is twitching or something has triggered the movement
• A limitation of the research is, it doesn’t give us developmental importance. Ideas like synchrony and reciprocity just give names to patterns of observable caregiver and infant interactions, observing these behaviours doesn’t tell us the purpose of them. We can’t be sure they’re important for a child’s development. However, evidence from other research suggests early interactions are important, Isabella found achievement of interactional, synchrony, protected the development of a good attachment quality
• this research could be socially sensitive, it could be argued that when the mother returns to work to soon after having a baby, it may risk damaging their babies development so mothers may feel bad for returning to work, even if they have to, to have a sustainable income