Caregiver & Infant Interactions- Topic 1 Flashcards
(12 cards)
How does the meaningful interactions babies have with their carers impact a child’s development?
They have important functions for the child’s social development, in particular for the development caregiver- infant interaction.
What is meant by altricial and precocial?
-altricial is what human babies are, they are born at a relatively early stage of development and so need to form bonds with adults who will protect and nurture them.
-precocial is what animals are, they are born at advanced stage of development, e.g foals are able to walk and run soon after birth.
What is one of the key interactions between caregiver and infants?
NON VERBAL communication. Communicating without words and sometimes without sounds, this interaction may form a basis of attachment between an infant and caregiver.
What is meant by reciprocity?
Each person responds to the other one and elicits a response from them, in a turn taking conversation usually non verbal.
What happens at around 3 months of the baby’s life?
The interaction between mother and infant becomes increasingly frequent and involves close attention to each others verbal signals and facial expressions.
What is meant by interactional synchronicity?
When mother and infant interact in such a way that their actions and emotions mirrors each other, including behaviour.
What is meant by alert phases?
Babies have periodic alert phases in which they signal, e.g make eye contact that they are ready for a spell of interaction. FELDMAN et al research’s found that mother typically respond and pick up to their babies alertness around 2/3 of the time, although this varies according to the skill of the mother and external factors such as stress.
What is meant by active involvement?
Traditional views of childhood have portrayed babies in a passive role, receiving care from an adult. However, it seems that babies as well as caregivers actually take an active role. Both caregivers and infants can initiate interactions and appear they take turns in doing so. BRAZLETON described mother and infant interactions as a dance because it’s just like dance partners where each respond to each others moves.
What is the evidence for interactional synchrony ?
MELTZOFF & MOORE conducted the first systematic study of international synchrony and found that infants as young as two to three weeks old imitate specific facial and hand gestures. Study used an adult mode, who displayed one of three facial expressions or hand movements during that a dummy was placed in the in the infants mouth to prevent any response. The dummy was removed and the child’s facial expressions were filmed, they found that there was an association between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model.
What did Isabella observe and found about attachment ? And what does this study suggest about interactional synchrony ?
Observed 30 mothers and babies together and assessed the degree of synchrony. The researcher also assessed the quality of mother-baby attachment. She found that high levels of synchrony were associated with a better quality mother and baby attachment e.g the emotional intensity of the attachment.
-study suggests that interactional synchrony is essential for the formation of attachment between mother and infant and supports the ideas that the quality of interaction influences attachment security.
What are some limitations of caregiver & infant interactions?
-it’s hard to know what’s happening when observing infants. Most of the time the interactions being observed are merely hand movements or changes in expression and so it’s extremely difficult to be certain, based on these observations what is taking place from the infants perspective.
-simply observing a behaviour doesn’t tell us its developmental importance. This is an issue because it’s subjective and can be argued to be an incomplete explanation.
What are some strengths of caregiver & infant interactions?
- the observations are generally well conducted procedures. Both the mother and the infant are being filmed, often from multiple angles. Ensuring that very fine details of behaviour can be recorded and later analysed. Furthermore babies don’t know or care that they are being observed so their behaviour doesn’t change in response to controlled observation. It is a strength because it means that there is no potential for demand characteristic increasing validity.
- Isabella found that the achievement of interactional synchrony predicted the development of good quality attachment.
