CAREGIVER INFANT INTERACTIONS

What must a child have to do in order to survive

They must interact with their parent in order to survive, and from an early age babies have meaningful social interactions with their carers

What do meaningful social interactions do for a child’s development

They have crucial functions for the child’s development - specifically for the development of caregiver-infant attachment. It is the responsiveness of the caregiver to the infants signals that has an effect on attachment

What are 2 key interactions between the child and carer

• Reciprocity

• Interactional synchrony

Reciprocity

This is where the infant and caregiver respond to each others signals + elicit a response from each other.

In reciprocity, what do the infant and carer pay close attention to

Each others verbal signals and facial expressions. Either can initiate reactions and appear to take turns in doing so. Babies have alert phases and signal they’re ready for interactions, which mothers pick up on and respond to 2/3 of the time

Reciprocity - Brazelton 1979

He described the interaction like a dance where each one responds to the actions of the other. 

Reciprocity - Tronick

• Conducted a still faced experiment + produced similar findings where babies would use a number of methods to try to get their mothers to return their interaction, e.g. smiling and pointing.

• However, when this wasn’t responded to, they’d get increasingly frustrated and distressed, showing that infants expect their actions to reciprocated, and how important it is

Interactional synchrony

Where the caregiver and infant interactions mirror each other - they carry out the same actions simultaneously; the more time they spend together, the more synchronised they become

Interactional synchrony - Isabella 1999

She observed 30 mothers and their infants + found that higher levels of interactional synchrony were associated with better quality mother-infant attachment

Interactional synchrony - Meltzoff and Moore 1977

They showed interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks. An adult displayed specific facial expressions and the babies response was filmed. An association was found between the adult and baby’s expression. Suggests the baby’s mirroring is an innate mechanism

WEAKNESS - hard to know what is happening when observing infants

• Many studies of mothers and infants show some patterns of interaction, however, what’s being observed is merely hand movement/change in expression.

• It’s hard to be certain based on these observations, what is occurring from the infants perspective, e.g. is the infants imitation of the adults signals conscious and deliberate?

• Means we can’t know for certain if behaviour in mother infant interaction has meaning

STRENGTH - Controlled observations

• Uses controlled observations. Important as they capture fine detail.

• Observations of mother-infant interactions are well controlled procedures, with mother & infant being filmed from different angles.

• Ensures fine details of behaviour can be recorded and analysed.

• Furthermore, babies don’t know they’re being recorded so their behaviour doesn’t change in response to a controlled observation - no demand characteristics.

• Strength as it means research has high validity.

WEAKNESS - Observations of synchrony don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity

• They don’t tell us the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity.

• Feldman 2012 pointed out that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviours that occur at the same time.

• These are robust phenomenon in the sense that they can be reliably observed, however, this may not be useful as it doesn’t tell us their purpose.

• However there’s some evidence that reciprocal interaction is helpful in development of mother-infant attachment, stress responses, empathy, language and moral development

WEAKNESS - Issues testing mothers & babies in laboratory environment

• Mothers and babies may feel uncomfortable in the unfamiliar setting of a lab, so their behaviour may lack ecological validity, and not be typical, resulting in it being unrepresentative of how they’d be in a natural setting.

• Also, babies make difficult participants as they can’t follow instructions + can be tired, uncooperative, hungry or upset.

WEAKNESS - Issues getting different researchers to observe and record behaviour

• Different researchers may interpret movements + facial expressions of infants in different ways.

• This means findings may not be consistent or reliable.

• This is a weakness as it lacks validity and is subjective

RECIPROCITY SUMMARY

• Caregiver-infant interaction is reciprocal - each persons interactions affect the other.

• Refers to the process in which behaviour is matched during an interaction e.g. smiling back when someone smiles at us.

• Infants can also signal alert phases e.g. eye contact to show they’re ready for an interaction.

• Both infant + mother can take an active role + initiate and respond during interactions and they appear to take turns doing so.

• Brazelton 1979 described this like a dance where each one responds to the actions of the other

INTERACTIONAL SYNCHRONY SUMMARY

• Caregiver & infant interactions make eachother - they carry out the same actions simultaneously.

• Infant + caregivers behaviours + emotions are synchronised as they move in the same/a similar pattern.

• Behaviours become ‘in tune’ with each other. More time spent together = more synchronised.

• Meltzoff + Moore 1977 showed interactional synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks. So did Isabella et al.