Caregiver-Infant Interactions in Humans

• Reciprocity


  The child and the parent (in most research this is the mother) pay attention to each other's verbal and non-verbal signals, taking it in turn to initiate the sequence
• Interactional Synchrony


  The child and parent are in harmony with their verbal and non-verbal signals, mirroring each other
• A child will have more than one attachment figure, forming multiple attachments to key people in their life
• Research has often overlooked the role of the father in attachment
• Caregiver-infant interactions is an often overlooked part of the course but has come up several times as extended answer questions: i.e. 8 and 16 marks
• Research support for caregiver-infant interactions

  • Feldman and Eidelman (2007)
  • Isabella et al. (1989)
• Feldman and Eidelman (2007)


  • An observational study which found that mothers responded to their babies in a reciprocal way two-thirds of the time
• Isabella et al. (1989)


  • Better quality of maternal care was associated with higher levels of mother-infant synchrony
• Both of the above studies were naturalist observations which means that they are both high in ecological validity however the observer effect may have decreased this validity to some extent
• Stages of attachment developed by Schaffer and Emerson

  1. Stage 1: Asocial stage (0-few weeks old) - the baby does not really distinguish between human and non-human objects

  2. Stage 2: Indiscriminate attachment (2-7 months old) - the baby prefers familiar adults but is happy to be comforted by any adult

  3. Stage 3: Specific attachment (7 months onwards) - the baby now prefers one specific adult and shows separation anxiety and stranger anxiety

  4. Stage 4: Multiple attachments (8/9 months onwards) - the baby enjoys being with people they are familiar with rather than just one specific caregiver all the time
• Schaffer and Emerson (1964)


  • A naturalistic observation of 60 babies from the same housing estate in Glasgow over an 18 month period
  • The results showed that 50% of babies showed separation anxiety towards their PCG in the first 25-32 weeks
  • The babies showed the strongest attachments to those who gave them the highest quality of care i.e. responding to them sensitively, interacting with them etc. rather than to those who spent the most time with them
• Most of the observations were carried out by the parents of the babies which gives the study good external validity and eliminates any chance of the observer effect invalidating the findings
• This was a longitudinal design which means that changes and progress could be tracked over time giving the study good internal validity
• All of the families were from the same council estate in Glasgow which limits the generalisability of the findings
• The findings may lack temporal validity as families are very different now to how they were in the early 1960s e.g. blended families, same-sex parents, single parents