Psychology - Attachment

Psychology - Attachment

1. Caregiver- infant interactions

   • Reciprocity
     • Both mother and infants interactions are reciprocal when each respond to each other's signals and elicit responses from the other
     • Mothers pick up on infants ' alert phases' two thirds of the time
       • Alert phases are when infants are ready to interact and therefore elicit a response from their caregiver
         • Traditional views say that infants play a passive role
           • However both mother and infant can initiate interaction and they appear to take turns in doing so
             • Brazleton et al describes this as a 'dance'
   • Interactional Syncrony
     • Mother and infant reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a coordinated way
       • Can be defined as the temporal co-ordination of micro level social behaviour
         • Feldman 2007
     • Carrying out actions simulataniously
     • Meltzoff and Moore
       • Beginnings of these interactions occurred as young as two weeks old
         • They found that a child's response was associated to the particular gesture of facial expression
     • High levels of Synchrony were associated with strong mother infant attachment
       • Isabella et al. (1989)