Attachment

Attachment

1. Caregiver-infant interaction

   • Reciprocity
     • Babies and mothers spend a lot of time in intensive interaction. Babies have an 'alert phase' and signals that are ready for interaction
     • Reciprocity occurs when each person responds to the other and elicits a response
     • From 3+ months the interaction is frequent and involves close attention facial expressions and each others verbal signals. Both mother and child can initiate action and they appear to take turns in doing so
   • Interactional synchrony
     • People are synchronised when they carry out the same action at the same time. This happens when mothers and babies mirror each others actions and emotions
     • Interactional synchrony is important for development of infant-mother interaction
   • Evaluation
     • When observations are taking place it is difficult to know if the interactions have special meaning. The child could just be making movements the don't mean anything
       • This reduces the validity of the theory
     • Research is done under controlled conditions
       • This ensures a lot of detail is recorded and therefore increases the validity