Caregiver-Infant Interaction Flashcards
Caregiver & Primary Attachment Figure?
Caregiver: Any person who provides care for a child (e.g. parent, sibling)
Primary AF: Person who has formed the closest bond.
What is Caregiver-Infant Interaction?
- It is concerned with how children & adults change as they get older.
- Looks at various influences on development such as parents (environmental-nurture) & genes (biological-nature).
What is Attachment?
A strong emotional, reciprocal bond between the child & primary care-giver.
–> a 2 way process that endures over time.
–> serves the function of protecting the infant.
–> Template for all future relationships.
Reciprocity
1) Reciprocity is achieved when baby & caregiver respond to & elicit responses from each other. (e.g. caregiver responds to baby’s smile by saying smthin & baby responds by making noises).
2) Mothers successfully respond around 2/3 of the time (Feldman & Eidelman). From around 3 months this interaction becomes more intense & reciprocal.
3) Babies are active pps - both caregiver & baby can initiate interactions & take turns to do so.
Jaffe
Infants co-ordinated their actions with the care-giver in a kind of conversation. Babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult almost as if they’re taking turns.
Interactional Synchrony
1) Ppl are synchronised when they carry out the same actions simultaneously - caregiver & baby mirror each others’ behaviour.
2) Meltzoff & Moore - observed the beginnings of I.S in babies.
3) Isabella et al. observed 30 mothers & babies together & assessed the degree of synchrony.
Meltzoff & Moore - Procedure
1) Conducted a controlled observation - to record video tapes of infants (2-3 weeks old) behaviour in real time, slow motion & frame by frame.
2) Stimuli - 3 different facial expressions & a hand gesture.
3) categories - mouth opening, mouth closed, tongue protrusion.
4) Each observer scored the tape twice so that intra-observer & inter-observer reliability could be calculated –> having 2 observers agree makes it more reliable.
5) Found babies’ expressions & gestures were more likely to mirror those of the adults than chance would predict.
Meltzoff & Moore - Counterpoint
1) M & M proposed that this imitation was intentional, but Piaget disagreed.
2) Piaget believed true imitation only developed toward the end of the first year & a kind of ‘response training’ - infant repeating a behaviour that is rewarded (e.g. infant sticks out tongue - mother smiles, encouraging the behaviour).
Isabella et al.
1) Observed 30 mothers & babies together & assessed the degree of synchrony.
2) Researchers also assessed the quality of mother-baby attachment.
3) Found high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-baby attachment.
Strength of Research - Filmed Observation
1) Use of filmed observations - mother-baby interactions are usually filmed - won’t miss anything & very fine details can be recorded & analysed later.
2) Babies don’t know they’re being observed - their behaviour doesn’t change in response to observation.
—> Therefore the studies have good reliability & validity.
Limitation for Research - Observing Babies
1) Difficulty in observing babies - hard to observed their behaviour since they aren’t very co-ordinated - we just observe small gestures & small changes in expression.
2) Also hard to interpret the meaning of babies’ movements - e.g. deciding whether hand movement is a response to caregiver or random twitch.
3) So we cannot be certain that any particular interactions observed between baby & caregiver are meaningful.
Limitation - Inferring Development Importance
Evaluation - Practical Value vs Ethics
