Caregiver-infant interactions

• reciprocity is a description of how 2 people interact. caregiver-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both caregiver and infant respond to each other's signals & elicits a response from the other.
• interactional synchrony is where a caregiver and baby reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated way
• Reciprocity-

  • babies have periodic 'alert phases' in which they signal they are ready for a spell of interaction.
  • Traditional views of childhood have portrayed babies in a passive role, receiving care from an adult. However, it seems that babies as well as caregivers can initiate interactions & they appear to take turns doing so.
• Attachment can be recognised when people display the following behaviours:

  • proximity- people try to stay physically close to their attachment figure
  • separation distress- people show signs of anxiety when an attachment figure leaves their presence
  • secure base behaviour- even when we are independent of our secure attachment figures we tend to make regular contact with them.
• Evaluation of caregiver-infant interactions:

  1. caregiver-infant interactions are usually filmed in a lab. This means that other activities which may distract a baby can be controlled. Also, using films means that interactions can be analysed later, therefore it is unlikely that any key behaviours will be missed. It also means that more than one observer can view and analyse the data giving the studies high inter-observer reliability. Babies also don't know that they are being studied so data collected during this type of research is both reliable and valid.
• Evaluation of caregiver-infant interactions:

  1. It's hard to interpret a baby's behaviour as they can't tell you what they are doing or why so it's all based on adult assumptions. We cannot be certain that baby actions have a special meaning.
• Interactional synchrony: Meltzoff and Moore

  Procedure- An adult model would display 1 of 3 facial expressions or hand movements. The child's response was filmed.

  Findings- Babies' expressions & gestures were more likely to mirror those of the adults more than chance would predict.
• Meltzoff & Moore Eval points:

  1. Filmed in a lab experiment
  2. Replicated their study and found the same results 6 years later (counterpoint- however other researchers have been unable to replicate their findings)