Attachment: Caregiver Infant Interactions - Reciprocity And Interactional Synchrony

Question 1

What Is Reciprocity?

Answer 1

• A description of how two people interact.
• Mother-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both mother and infant respond to each other’s signals and each cause a response from the other.
• E.g mother smiling then baby smiling back.

Question 2

What Is Interactional Synchrony?

Answer 2

• Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this co-ordinated/ synchronised way.

Question 3

Weakness: Hard To Know What Is Happening When Observing Infants.

Answer 3

• There are studies involving observation of interaction between mother and infants many have the same patterns of interaction.
• However the observation has just been hand movements or change in expressions.
• This would be difficult to be confident with the infants’ thought processes and interaction e.g don’t know whether child is trying to show hand signals.
• This means that we cannot really know for certain that the behaviour seen between mother and infant is special.

Question 4

Strengths: Controlled Observations Capture Finer Details.

Answer 4

• Observation of mother-infant interactions are well controlled procedures, with the interactions being filmed from several angles.
• This would allow the researcher to capture finer details of the behaviour and be watched later.
• Babies also don’t know they are being recorded and therefore behaviour remains natural.
• This means that research has good validity.

Question 5

Strength/ Weakness: Observations Don’t Tell Us The Purpose.

Answer 5

• Feldman points out that synchrony simply describe behaviours that occurs at the same time.
• Although the observations reliable it may not be particularly useful as it does not tell their purpose.
• However, there is some evidence that reciprocal interaction and synchrony are helpful in the development of mother-infant attachment as well as helpful in stressful response empathy language and moral development.

Question 6

What Is Attachment?

Answer 6

• Attachment is defined as close two-way emotional bind between two individuals in which each individual sees the other as essential for their own emotional security.
• Displays of attachment include:
  Proximity: People try to stay physically to those whom they are attached to.
  Separation distress: People distressed when an attachment figure leaves their presence.
  Secure-base behaviour: Even when independent from their attachment figure, tend to make regular contact with them. Infant display secure-based when they regularly return to their attachment figure while playing.