Care-giver infant interactions Flashcards
What is an attachment bond?
A strong, long lasting emotional bond formed between a baby and their main caregiver.
What are the three behaviour that babies show when the have a strong attachment with their caregiver?
Safe base
Separation anxiety
stranger anxiety
What is safe-base behaviour?
When children treat their caregiver as someone they can quickly return to whenever they are scared or anxious.
Children who see humans as a safe base, explore their surroundings only if their caregiver is near by.
What is separation anxiety?
When children become distressed when they are separated from their attachment figure.
What is stranger anxiety?
When children display distress in the presence of unfamiliar people and prefer the company of their attachment figure.
What are the two methods used in attachment research?
Natural experiments- observational techniques ( longitudinal studies), frame-by-frame video analysis.
Animal studies
Evaluation of natural experiments.
- Researchers cannot control extraneous variables so can’t directly test cause and effect.
Evaluation of longitudinal studies.
+ Deeper insights into behaviour by seeing how it changes over time.
+ Gives insights into how early experiences shape behaviour.
+ More reliable results
- Attrition
Evaluation of animal studies.
- Results may not generalise to humans
- Unethical as they can cause distress to animals.
What is reciprocity?
The infant and caregiver take turns in interacting with each other.
What is interactional synchrony?
The infant and caregiver perform similar actions in time with each other.
What was Shchaffer and Emersons stages of attachment?
Pre-attachment (0-3months)- babies don’t show any preference to one person.
Indiscriminate(3-7 months)- Babies recognise familiar people.
Discriminate (7-9 months)- Babies form a strong attachment with just one caregiver.
Multiple (9+ months)- babies form attachments with multiple people.
Explain Schaffer and Emersons research into the stages of attachment.
They conducted a longitudinal observation of 60 babies and their families.
They found that the attachments followed the 4 main stages, and babies formed multiple attachments.
The main attachment figure was not always the main caregiver and strong attachments were formed when caregivers were sensitive and responded to the needs of their baby.
It suggests a biological influence in the formation of attachments as babies go through the same staged at around the same time.
Evaluation of Schaffer and Emersons research.
- Research may have been prone to observer bias because the observational design.
- May suffer from social desirability bias
+ Results had a high ecological validity- because it was a naturalistic observation.
What did Codon and Sander show about baby and caregiver interactions ?
They showed that babies and mother displayed reciprocity and interactional synchrony.
But it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between the interactions and the strength of the attachment.