Caregiver and infant interactions:

• STRENGTH:

  • Interactions filmed in lab
  • other activity distracting baby can be controlled
  • films= recorded and analysed later
  • unlikely observer will miss seeing key behaviour
  • more than one observer can observe the data establish inter-rater reliability
  • babies dont know they are being watched so their behaviour is not changed
  • research used has good validity and reliability
• LIMITATION:

  • hard to interpret baby behaviour
  • they lack coordination's and are immobile
  • observe small hand movements
  • dont know if they are smiling or passing wind
  • hard to determine the baby's perceptive
  • ie a twitch could be random or could be triggered by a caregivers actions
  • difficult to determine meaningful interactions or not
• LIMITATION:

  • does not tell us developmental importance
  • Feldman= simply gives names to observable caregiver and baby behaviours like synchrony
  • robust phenomena in the sense that it produces reliable observations but does not tell us the importance in development or the purpose
  • cannot be relied on observational research alone that interactional synchrony and reciprocity is important in development.