care-giver interactions

• Bond


  A set of feelings that ties one person to another
• Attachment


  A close, two-way bond between individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their emotional security
• How do we know if an infant is attached?

  • Desire for close proximity
  • Distress when separated
• How do infants communicate with caregivers?

  • Bodily contact
  • Mimicking
  • Caregiverese (singing)
  • Reciprocity
  • Interactional synchrony
• Reciprocity


  Turn taking behaviour – where a person responds to the other and elicits a response

  • caregiver may pull a funny face, baby laughed in response
• Reciprocity occurs from birth, but increases in frequency after 3 months
• Interactional synchrony


  Synchronized, being in union and doing the same action simultaneously.- often emotions that are mirrored by eachother in some way, often small microlevel actions
• Isabella (1989)

  • Observed 30 mothers and babies and assessed their synchrony – high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality attachment

  suggesting that doing the same thing implies that you're on the same leve - establishing an emotional connection with eachother
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

  • Videotaped and observed 3 week old infants
  • An adult displayed one of three expressions or gestures; open mouth, stick tongue out or purse their lips
  • The infant's response was filmed and labelled by independent observers
  • Babies showed the signs of interactional synchrony from as young as 12-27 weeks old

  study suggests that interactional synchrony occurs in infants when they copy adult's facial expressions or manual gestures
• inter-rater reliability is where two different observers are in agreement - increasing the reliability if other observers have agreed that they have seen the same thing
• how do we know if a baby is attached?


  • baby becomes distressed when separated
  • easily comforted by caregiver
  • enjoyment and pleasure when with caregiver
• caregiver interaction evaluation:

  strength:

  • Meltzoff and Moore's study uses inter-rater reliability meaning that the research is more valid
  • the micro actions were recorded so that researchers can pick up on smaller actions that may have been missed before

  weakness:

  • isabella's research is hard to generalise because of a small sample size
  • individual problems - babies may have undiagnosed developmental issues (autism and ADHD, may not be able to react in a way that can be generalised)
• Schaffer and Emerson (1964) longitudinal study that consisted of sixty Glaswegian infants from working-class backgrounds

  • visit5ed their houses at 12 months old and then 18 months old and analysed the children's behaviour in everyday situations when not in the presence of their adults
  • primary attachment was with the mother but 27% had a joint attachment with both parents

  found that: infants become attached to those who respond sensitively to them (sensitive responsiveness)
• sensitive responsiveness: reacting accurately to the infants signals, responding swiftly to their demands

  • it allows attachment to develop
• Schaffer's four stages of attachment:

  1. asocial stage (0-6 w) where infants cannot differentiate between objects and humans so they respond to everything with a smile
  2. indiscriminate attachment (6w-7m) infants begin to enjoy human company, they respond indifferently to any caregiver but gets upset when interaction stops
  3. specific attachment (7-9m) begin to show preference to certain caregivers. separation and stranger anxiety become prominent
  4. multiple attachment (10-18m) when infants become increasingly independent and form attachments with several people
• separation anxiety: when infants become extremely distressed when separated from their primary caregiver (shown when not being in the same presence)
• stranger anxiety: fear of people who are not the infants primary caregiver (hiding behind their caregiver)
• evaluation of Schaffer:

  strength:

  • research takes place in home of the infants, reactions are natural and not in response of out fear - increasing ecological validity

  weakness:

  • sample cannot be generalised to the public because it only included Glaswegian babies from working class backgrounds
  • mother observes the actions, meaning some results may be invalid because the mother was dishonest - wants her parenting style to be seen as socially desirable
• role of the father: why do babies attach to their mothers more?

  • breastfeeding, skin-to-skin contact
  • maternity is longer than paternity leave
  • mother has more hormonal love than the father
  • higher maternal instinct and creates a stronger bond
• Field (1978): studied face-to-face interactions where mother and father were PCG and father was also SCG.

  • found that the roles of parenting are less gendered, interaction is necessary for primary attachment
• Grossman (2002) studied parents behaviour and quality of attachments to others later in life

  • mother =. better responsiveness has better quality attachment
  • father = better play has a better quality of attachment

  fathers attachment is more related to stimulation and development, becoming a 'playmate'
• evaluation; role of the father:

  stength:

  • Grossman; stated that their are roles between each parents - focuses on equal parenting

  weakness:

  • families with no father figure (same-sex parents or single-mother) implies that they would turn out differently to those who do