Caregiver-infant interactions Flashcards
(13 cards)
What is reciprocity?
A description of how two people interact.
Caregiver-infant interaction is reciprocal in that both caregiver and baby respond to each others signal and each elicits a response from the other
What are alert phases?
When babies signal that they are ready for a spell of interaction.
3+ months interaction becomes increasingly frequent
Involved both mother and baby paying close attention to each others verbal signals and facial expressions
What does research say about mothers and alert phases?
Mothers typically pick up on and respond to their babies alertness around 2/3 of the time.
Varies according to skill of the mother and external factors
What is active involvement?
Both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions and appear to take turns in doing so.
Babies take on active role
What is interactional synchrony?
When mother and infant act in such a way that their actions mirror one another.
What did Meltzoff and Moore observe?
Beginnings of interactional synchrony
Babies - as young as 2 weeks old
Adult displayed one of three facial expressions or one of three distinctive gestures.
Baby response filmed and labelled by independent observers
What did Meltzoff and Moore find?
Babies expression and gestures were more likely to mirror those of the adults more than chance would predict
What did Isabella et al study for interactional synchrony’s importance for attachment?
Observed 30 mothers + babies together
Assessed the degree of synchrony
Assessed the quality of mother-baby attachment
What did Isabella et al find?
High levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother-baby attachment
What is an evaluation for caregiver-infant interactions?
Filmed observations
Usually filmed in laboratory
Other activity that might distract a baby can be controlled.
Using film - observations can be recorded and analysed later.
Unlikely researcher will miss seeing key behaviours
More than one observer can record data and establish inter-rater reliability of observations
Babies don’t know they are being observed, so behaviour will not change in response to observation.
Data collected should have good reliability and validity
What is an evaluation for caregiver-infant interactions?
Difficulty observing babies
Hard to interpret a babies behaviour
Young babies lack coordination
Much of their bodies are immobile
Movements being observed are small hand movements or subtle changes in expression.
Difficult to determine what is takin gplace from baby perspective
Meaning we cannot be certain that the behaviours seen in caregiver infant interaction shave a special meaning
What is an evaluation for caregiver-infant interactions?
Developmental importance
Observing a behaviour does not tell us its developmental importance
Feldman
Points out that ideas like synchrony simply give names to patterns of observable caregiver and baby behaviours.
Not robust phenomena - can be reliably observed but still not particularly useful in understanding child development - does not tell purpose of behaviour
Meaning we cannot be certain that reciprocity and synchrony are important for a childs development
What is an evaluation for caregiver-infant interactions?
Counterpoint to developmental importance
Evidence from other lines of research - suggesting early interactions are important
Isabella et al
Achievement of interactional synchrony predicted the development of a good quality attachment
Meaning caregiver-infant interaction is probably important in development
