Caregiver - infant interactions

• From birth, babies signal when they are ready to interact.

  Alert Phases
• Caregiver - infant interaction is reciprocal i.e. each persons interactions affect eachother.

  Reciprocity
• Caregiver and infant signals synchronise i.e. they occur at the same time.

  Interactional Synchrony
• can be seen as communications and interactions between parents and babies that are baby led.

  Social Releasers
• • a particular type of emotional bond between a child and the principle caregiver.

  Attachment
• • It is characterised by reciprocal affection, a desire for proximity, and selectivity


  Attachment
• • Strong, enduring, emotional, and reciprocal bond between two epople

  Attachment
• • Seeking proximity
  • Distress on separation
  • Joy on reunion
  • Orientation of behaviour


  Maccoby (1980) - Four characteristics of attachment
• • Babies also produce social releasers like smiling to elicit a response from the caregiver.
  • Early communiction between parents and newborns is structured around the babys cry and can vary according to the babys needs.
  • Interactions between very young babies and adults are baby led, with the adult responding to the behaviour of the baby
• • From a very early age babies and caregivers have intense and meaningful interactions
  • The quality of these interactions is associated witht he successful development of attachments.
  • Two kinds of interaction: reciprocity and interactional synchrony.
• • From birth, babies move in a rhythm when interaction with an adult almost as if they were taking turns. Some researchers say this is like a conversation.
  • Brazelton suggested this basic rhythm is an important precursor to later conversations.
  • Trevathen suggested that turn taking in the infant-adult interaction is as important for the developer of social and language skills.


  Reciprocity
• • Tronick et al asked mothers who had been enjoying a dialogue with their baby to stop moving and maintain a static, unsmilling expression on their faces. Babies would try tempt their mother into interaction by smiling themselves and would become puzzled and increasingly distressed when their smile did not provoke the usual response.


  Research on reciprocity
• • Psychologists have described a slightly different interaction between infants and caregivers called interactional synchrony.
  • This is when two people interact in a mirror pattern in terms of their facial body movements.
  • This includes imitating emotions as well as behaviours.
  • Feldman defines it as ‘the temporal coordination of micro-level social behaviour’.


  Interactional synchrony
• • Meltzoff and Moore (1977) observed the beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants as young as two weeks. An adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures.
  • The child’s response was filmed and identified by independant observers. An association was found between the expression or gesture the adult had displayed and the actions of the babies.
  • In a later study, they demonstrated the same synchrony with infants that were only three days old.


  Research on Interactional Synchrony