caregiver-infant interactions

caregiver-infant interactions

1. From birth babies and their mothers (or other caregivers) spend a lot of time in highly pleasurable interactions. An interaction is said to show reciprocity- both caregiver and baby respond to each other's signals and each elicits a response from the other.

   • Babies have "alert phases" in which they signal (e.g. making eye contact) that they are ready for a spell of interaction. Research shows that mothers pick up on and respond to their babies alertness around 2/3rds of time (Feldman and Eidelman)
     • Active involvement: traditional views of childhood have portrayed babies in a passive role, receiving care from an adult. however, it seems like they both take an active role. Both caregiver and baby can initiate interactions and they take turns in doing so. T. Berry Brazelton et al. (1975) described this interaction as a "dance" because it's like a couples dance where each partner responds to the other person's moves.

2. international synchrony: caregiver and baby reflect both the actions and emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated way. Defined as the "temporal co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour" (Feldman). Caregiver and baby's actions/emotions mirror the other.

   • synchrony begins: Meltzoff and Moore (1977) observed the beginning of international synchrony in babies as young as 2 weeks old. An adult displayed one of 3 facial expressions or one of 3 different gestures. The babies response was filmed and labelled by individual observers. Babies facial expressions/gestures more likely mirrored the adults.

3. Evaluation: strength is that caregiver-infant interactions are usually filmed in a laboratory. This means that babies won't be distracted by other activities, as it's controlled. Also using films means that observations can be analysed later. Therefore, it's unlikely that researchers will miss seeing key behaviours. Having filmed interactions means that more than one observer can establish the inter-rater reliability of observations. Finally, babies don't know they are being observed, so their behaviour doesn't change in response to being observed.