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Attachment - A-Level Psychology notes
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AttachmentCaregiver-infant interactions stage
Attachment An emotional bond between 2 people that endured over time. A 2 way process leading to proximity-seeking.
Caregiver Any person who provides care for a child
Reciprocity Where the actions of one partner elicit a response from the other partner.
Key study: Brazelton 1979
Reciprocity is shown in Brazelton’s ‘frozen face’ study where the infant becomes distressed if the mother stops
reciprocating with them and adopts a passive face.
Interactional When interacting with each other people tend to mirror each other’s facial (emotions) and body
Synchrony movements.
Key study: Meltzoff and Moore 1977 – Interactional synchrony
Procedure: they carried out a controlled observation where an adult displayed 3 different facial expressions (tongue
protrusion, mouth opening and lip protrusion) and 1-hand gesture to see if the infant would imitate it.
Findings: Infants as young as 2-3 weeks old imitated these specific gestures. In a later study, it was found 3 days old
infants showed the same interactional synchrony. This suggests that imitation behaviour is an innate ability not
learned.
Imitation infant mimics/copies the adult’s behaviour
Sensitive responsiveness adult attends sensitively to infant’s communications
Key study (against): Piaget 1962 – pseudo-imitation
Piaget argues true imitation only develops at the end of the first year. Interactional synchrony is ‘response training’.
This is pseudo-imitation: not consciously translating what they see into a matching movement.
Key study (for): Murray and Trevarthen 1985
Procedure: 2 month old infants interacted with their mother via a video monitor in real time. A pre-recorded video
tape of their mother played the mother’s facial and bodily gestures which didn’t respond to those of the infant.
Findings: Infants showed real distress when their gestures didn’t elicit a meaningful response. This suggests the
infant is an active partner in interaction rather than just displaying rewarded responses.
Evaluation:
+ Research explain how children begin to understand mental states
+ Research suggests a relationship between synchrony and attachment
+ Reciprocity influences the child’s physical, social and cognitive development
+ Heimann showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth onwards have been found to
have a better quality of relationship at 3 months. However, it isn’t clear whether the imitation is a cause or
an effect of this early synchrony.
+ Babies don’t know/care that they are being observed so they don’t portray any demand characteristics
which means the research has good validity.
- Behaviour may be by intentional response
- Testing behaviour in children because their mouths are in constant motion
- Failure to replicate research findings into intentional synchrony
- What is being observed is merely hand movements or changes in expression so it is extremely difficult to be
certain what is taking place from the infant’s perspective so we can’t know for certain if these interactions
are meaningful
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