caregiver infant interactions

Question 1

what is reciprocity

Answer 1

• babies have periodic alert phases and signal when they are ready for interaction, mother picks up on that.( felderman and eidalmen.)
• from 3 months interaction signals increase invloving closer attention to facial expressions and non verbal signals .
• an interaction is reciprocal when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them.

Question 2

describe interactional synchrony

Answer 2

• temporal co-cordination of micro-level social behaviour( feldman)
• when mother and infant interact with each other in a way that emotions and actions mirror each other.

Question 3

what did meltzoff and moore observe about interactional synchrony

Answer 3

the beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks old.

• adult displayed one of three distinct gestures or facial expressions
• was filmed and observed
• found an association between the expressions or gesture the adult displayed and the action of the baby

Question 4

why is interactional synchrony important.

Answer 4

for the development of the mother-infant attachment.
-isabella etal observed 30 mothers and infants they found that high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality of mother-infant attachment( e.g emotional intensity of the relationship)

Question 5

evaluations of care giver-infant reactions

Answer 5

its hard to know whats happening when observing infants: hand movement or changes in expressions are observed however its difficult to be certain based on these observation whats taking place from the infants perspective. e.g if infants imitation of adults hand signals are deliberate and conscious .cant be certain behaviours seen in mother- infant interactions have a special meaning.

observations dont tell us purpose of synchrony: feldman points out how synchrony and implication reciporcity simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time.

test done to see if behaviour is intentioanl by observing how they react toinatimate objects, interacting with two objects one simulating toungue movements and found that they made little response to the objects therefore infants doent just imiyaye everything they see -specific social respinse to other humans.

controlled observation capture fine details e.g both mother and infant recorded from multiple angles and can be analysed later,babies dont care or know therefore behaviours wont change in controlled observation