reciprocity

• What is an attachment?

  Attachment can be defined as an emotional relationship between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the attachment figure.
• What is caregiver-infant attachment?

  - The emotional bond between a young child and a nurturing figure who elicits back a response to their interactions.
• What is reciprocity?


  - caregiver-infant interaction is a two-way/mutual process

  - each party responds to the other's signals to sustain interaction (turn-taking).

  - the behaviour of each party elicits a response from the other.
• What are the two stages of reciprocity?

  1) Alert phases

  2) Active involvement
• What are alert phases?

  - babies signal readiness for interaction with eye contact

  - mothers pick up on and respond to infants 2/3 of the time

  - interaction increases around 3 months, with focus on facial expressions and verbal signals
• What is active involvement?


  - caregiver and infant both initiate involvement and take turns in doing so

  - described as a 'dance'

  - similar to a couple's dance with partners responding to each other's moves (still-faced experiment)