Attachment

• Attachment


  Close emotional bond between two people which is shared by mutual affection and they have a desire to maintain proximity
• How attachment is shown

  • Reciprocity
  • Joy on reunion
  • Seeking proximity
  • Distress on separation
  • Strong emotional tie that develops over time (between infant and primary caregiver)
• Babies have meaningful social interactions with their caregivers
• Reciprocity


  Interaction is reciprocal when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them
• Interactions between infant and caregiver

  1. Reciprocity

  2. Interaction tends to be increasingly frequent and involves close attention to each others verbal signals and facial expressions (around 3 months) - Feldman ( 2007 )

  3. Babies and their mothers spend a lot of time in intense and pleasurable interaction, babies have periodic alert phases and signal that they are ready for interaction, mothers typically pick up on and respond to infant alertness around 2/3 of the time (at birth) ( Feldman / Eidelman ( 2007 )
• Interactional Synchrony


  Involves imitation, moving in the same, or a similar pattern
• Interactional Synchrony


  • 3 days old infants imitate the facial expression of adults
  • Higher levels of synchrony associated with better quality mother-infant attachment
• Evaluation


  • Good validity in research as baby's not influenced by others and natural behaviour is observed, controlled observations which are recorded
• Reciprocal interaction and synchrony

  • Helpful in the development of mother-infant attachment e.g. stress responses, language, empathy, moral development
• Lack of consent
• Babies still learning/not fully developed - babies develop at different times
• Feldman (2012): 'Synchrony describes behaviour that occurs at the same time but do we not know its purpose'
• Interactions between mother-infant difficult to be certain what is being observed and what they mean
• IS - Meltzoff and Moore ( 1983 ) : 300 infant imitate facial expressions of adults
• IS - Isabella et al ( 1989 ) : found higher levels of synchrony associated with better quality mother-infant attachment, correlational - emotional intensity
• IS - Brazelton ( 1969 ) : infants have an innate need to interact with others
• IS - Stern ( 1985 ) : infants are born with an innate ability to recognise faces and respond to them