L1 - Caregiver-Infant Interactions In Humans - Reciprocity & Interactional Synchrony

Question 1

What is meant by attachment

Answer 1

• an affectionate tie that one person or animal forms between himself and another specific one - a tie that binds them together in space and endures over time

Question 2

Behaviours indicative of attachment

Answer 2

• seeking proximity
• distress on separation
• joy on reunion
• general orientation towards each other

Question 3

Seeking proximity

Answer 3

• 2 people who are attached want to be near each other and spend time together
• young baby will try to maintain proximity to caregiver by watching them carefully and howling when they go away
• older/mobile child will crawl after attachment figure in hot pursuit

Question 4

Distress on separation

Answer 4

• young child shows distress when caregiver leaves - even if time period is short
• older kids may miss parents & feel homesick on school trip

Question 5

Joy on reunion

Answer 5

• baby will welcome back attachment figure often by clinging and hugging them- even when gone for 5 mins

Question 6

General orientation towards each other

Answer 6

Both baby and caregiver direct their attention to each other & try to engage each other in activities and interactions

Question 7

Infancy

Answer 7

• period of child’s life before speech begins - usually seen as first year of child’s life and can also be second

Question 8

Key interaction between caregivers and infants

Answer 8

• non-verbal communication - may form basis of attachment
• manner in which each responds to the other that determines the formation of attachment - the more sensitive each is to the other’s signals the deeper the relationship

Question 9

2 main types of caregiver-infant interactions

Answer 9

Reciprocity
Interactional synchrony

Question 10

Babies and mothers interaction

Answer 10

• from birth they spend a lot of time in intense/pleasurable action
• babies have periodic ‘alert phrases’ & signal that they are ready for interaction
• mothers typically pick up on & respond to infant alertness around 2/3 times (Feldman & Eidelman 2007)
• from around 3 months this interaction tends to be increasingly frequent & involves close attention fo others verbal signals & facial expression (Feldman 2007)

Question 11

Reciprocity

Answer 11

An interaction is reciprocal when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them

Question 12

Research in the 1970s

Answer 12

• showed that infants coordinated their actions with caregivers in a kind of conversation
• from birth babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult - almost like they were taking turns like people do when they have a conversation - one talks other listens etc..- reciprocity
• Brazelton et al. (1975) described this as a dance as it’s like a couple’s dance where each partner responds to each others moves
• Brazelton (1979) suggested that the basic rhythm is an important precursor to later communications
• regularity of an infant’s signals allows a caregiver to anticipate the infants behaviour & respond appropriately
• sensitivity to infant behaviour lays the foundation for later attachment between caregiver and infant

Question 13

Interactional synchrony

Answer 13

• interactional synchrony is a type of special interaction between the caregiver and infant
• Two people are said to be synchronised’ when they carry out the same action simultaneously
• Thus the term ‘interactional synchrony’ can be defined as, ‘the temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour’
• in other words, it is a special kind of interaction between caregivers and infants and can be defined as: a reflection of what the other is doing - mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated (synchronised) way.

Question 14

Who studied International synchrony

Answer 14

This concept was studied by Meltzoff and Moore (1977).

Question 15

Meltzoff and Moore (1977) method

Answer 15

• Meltzoff and Moore used a controlled observation
• They selected four different stimuli (three different faces plus a hand gesture) and observed the behaviour of infants in response
• used an adult model who displayed one of three facial expressions or hand movements where the fingers moved in sequence
• dummy was placed in the infant’s mouth during the initial display to prevent any response
• Following the display the dummy was removed and the child’s expression was filmed on video
• To record observations an observer watched videotapes of the infant’s behaviour in real time, slow motion and frame by frame if necessary
• This video was then judged by independent observers who had no knowledge of what the infant had just seen. Each observer was asked to note down all instances of infant tongue protrusions and head movements using 4 behavioural categories

Question 16

What were the 4 behavioural categories

Answer 16

• Mouth opening - abrupt jaw drop opening the mouth across entire extent of lip
• Termination of mouth opening- return of lips to their closed resting position
• Tongue protrusion -clear forward thrust of tongue such that the tongue tip crossed the back edge of the lower lip
• Termination of tongue protrusion -retraction of tip of tongue behind the back edge of the lower
• Each observer scored the tapes twice so that both the intra-observer and inter-observer reliability could be calculated and all scores were greater than 0.92.

Question 17

Intra-observer vs inter-observer

Answer 17

• Intra-observer - if the same observer observed again
• Inter-observer - if different observers observe and correlate

Question 18

Meltzoff and Moore finding

Answer 18

• infants as young as two to three weeks old, imitated specific facial gestures and that there was an association between the infant behaviour and that of the adult model.
• In a later study - demonstrated the same synchrony with infants only three days old - since infants this young are copying facial expressions is suggesting that interactional synchrony is likely to be innate (inborn or nature) rather than learned.

Question 19

Meltzoff and Moore counter

Answer 19

• Piaget (1962) argued that infants this young cannot imitate intentionally - instead are just doing a ‘pseudo - imitation’
  i.e. copying because there is a reward e.g. the caregiver smiling rather than it being due to interactional synchrony
• Piaget argued that true imitation happened after the child was a year old

Question 20

Meltzoff and Moore support

Answer 20

• Murray and Trevarthen (1985) research
• In this study two-month-old infants first interacted via a video monitor with their mother in real time
• In the next part of the study the video monitor played a tape of the mother so that the image on the screen was not responding to the infants’ facial and bodily gestures
• The results were one of acute distress from the infants
• The infants tried to attract their mothers’ interest but, gaining no response, turned away - this shows that an infant is actively eliciting a response rather than just displaying a response that has been rewarded
• This study shows the importance of interactional synchrony

Question 21

Evaluation of Caregiver-Infant interactions through reciprocity & Interactional synchroncy

Answer 21

strengths
- Is the behavioural intentional or just imitative?
- Value of research
weaknesses
- problems with testing infant behaviour
- failure to replicate
- individual differences

Question 22

Is the behavioural intentional or just imitative?

Answer 22

• Another method to test the intentionality of infants is to see how they respond to inanimate objects
• Abravenal and DeYoung (1991) observed infant behaviour when interacting with two objects - one simulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening and closing
• They found that infants between the ages of 5 and 12 weeks made little response to the objects - this study shows that babies do not just imitate what they see - it is in fact a social: response to other humans showing both reciprocity and interactional synchrony.

Question 23

Value of research

Answer 23

• the importance of studying caregiver- infant interactions such as interactional synchrony and reciprocity is that it shows how if forms the basis for social development.
• Meltzoff (2005) has developed a ‘like me’ hypothesis of infant development based on his research on interactional synchrony
• from this the baby associates their imitation with feelings and thoughts of others which then ultimately leads understanding how others think and feel (Theory of Mind)
• thus are able to construct relationships
• therefore a strength of this research is that it explains how children begin to develop a theory of mind and are able to conduct relationships

Question 24

problems with testing infant behaviour

Answer 24

• there is doubt on the findings of infant behaviour studies (such as the study conducted by Meltzoff and Moore) because it is difficult to reliably test their behaviour.
• Infants mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently e.g. tongue sticking out, yawning, smiling etc.
• This makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours.
• However, to overcome these problems, Meltzoff and Moore asked an independent judge to view the babies tapes without knowledge of what the infant had seen.
• This research therefore highlights the difficulties in testing infant behaviour, but also suggests one way of increasing the internal validity of the

Question 25

failure to replicate

Answer 25

• Other studies such as Koepke et al (1985) failed to replicate Meltzoff and Moores findings although Meltzoff argued that Koepke study was not controlled carefully enough.
• Furthermore, Marian et al (1986) tried to replicate Murray and Trevarthen’s study and found that infants could not distinguish live interactions from videotaped interactions of their mother
• although Marian did argue that the problem may lie with the procedure rather than the babies ability to imitate their caregivers.

Question 26

individual differences

Answer 26

• when studying interactional synchrony, there is some variation between infants behaviour - for example, Isabella et al (1989) found that more strongly attached infant-caregiver pairs showed greater interactional synchrony
• Heimann (1989) showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth onwards have been found to have better quality relationships at three months
• although there is a problem of cause and effect here in terms of whether it is the imitation which leads to interactional synchrony which then leads to better quality relationships or is there other factors involved?