Caregiver infant reactions Flashcards
(16 cards)
What is interactional synchrony?
When a caregiver and infant interact infants mirror the other
- move in the same pattern to sustain communication
What is Reciprocity?
caregiver-infant interaction is a two-way/mutual process; each party responds to the other’s signals to sustain interaction
- behaviour of each party elicits a response from the other
What was the aim of Meltzoff and Moore’s study
investigate how early infants are able to mirror adults
What was the method of Meltzoff and Moore’s study
Six infants aged of 12-21 days were each shown three facial gestures (e.g., smiling) and one manual gesture (e.g., raising hand).
Responses were videotaped and scored by observers who did not know which gesture the infants had seen the adult do.
What were the results of Meltzoff and Moore’s study
Results showed that infants of this young age were able to mirror all four gestures.
What was the conclusion of Meltzoff and Moore’s study
suggests that synchronised behaviours are innate.
What was the aim of Brazelton et al’s study
investigate the reciprocal social interactions between mothers and their young infants
What was the method of Brazelton et al’s study
Sample of 12 mother-infant pairs who were seen repeatedly over the infant’s first five months of life.
During each videotaped session, mothers would come from behind a curtain to play (using lots of positive facial expressions) with their infant for 3 minutes.
Mothers would then leave, and recording would continue for 30 seconds whilst the infant was alone.
Mother would then return for a second, 3-minute face-to-face interaction. The mothers were instructed to sometimes present a still, unresponsive face.
What were the results of Brazelton et al’s study
Found that when the mothers were carrying out the face-to-face interactional play, the infants moved their bodies in smooth, circular patterns and looked frequently at their mothers.
When the mothers stopped responding to them, the infants’ movements became jerky and they averted their gaze, followed by a short period of attempting to get their mother’s attention, until finally they curled up and lay motionless.
What was the conclusion of Brazelton et al’s study
suggests that reciprocal behaviours are crucial to attachment formation
What are strengths of research into caregiver-infant interactions
Practical applications
Research has high control
What are limitations of research into caregiver-infant interactions
Problems with testing infants’ behaviours
Low population validity
Evaluate practical applications as a strength of research into caregiver-infant interactions
P: Led to successful applications such as antenatal classes.
E: Professionals involved in prenatal and neonatal care and pregnancy / childcare courses, apps etc encourage parents to interact with their babies. This aids healthy attachment formation in childhood which often continues throughout life and extends to later relationships. This reduces welfare and social services benefits and mental health care costs to the NHS as individuals will be more likely to be happier, typically functioning adults.
E: This is a strength as this is a valuable contribution to society and helps to reduce long term costs of social services.
Evaluate high control as a strength of research into caregiver-infant interactions
P: Controlled observation and therefore is a highly controlled procedure.
E: Interactions are filmed from different angles. This means that very fine details can be recorded and analysed later.
E: Strength of research into caregiver-infant interactions because several researchers can re-watch the video clips as many times as is necessary to ensure that all behaviours are recorded. Therefore findings about caregiver-interactions have high internal validity.
Evaluate problems with testing infants’ as a limitation of research into caregiver-infant interactions
P: It is difficult to reliably test and is open to observer bias.
E: Infants’ mouths are fairly in constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently by chance
E: Limitation as it makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific behaviours (synchronised or reciprocal), and as a result there is a great deal of interpretation of what babies are actually doing.
Further E: However, to overcome this issue Meltzoff and Moore measured infant responses by filming infants and then asking an observer to judge the infants’ behaviour from the video. The person judging was not made aware of what behaviour was being imitated. This technique increased the internal validity of their findings, which in turn strengthens the validity of the claim that infants do imitate caregivers’ behaviours.
Evaluate low population validity as a limitation of research into caregiver-infant interactions
P: research has low population validity.
E: Meltzoff and Moore’s sample consisted of six infants and Brazelton et al studied 12 mother- infant pairs. Both very small sample sizes and may and may not be representative of all infants.
E: Limitation because the findings about caregiver-infant interactions may be difficult to generalise to other infants
Also because of the small sample size, the conclusions drawn about imitation being innate and reciprocity may not be valid.
L: This reduces the validity of the claim that caregivers and infants communicate via interactional synchrony and reciprocity.
