Summary
Summary AQA A Level Psychology - Paper 1 - Attachment - Caregiver-Infant Interactions
- Module
- Attachment
- Institution
- AQA
complete revision notes for aqa a level psychology - paper 1 - attachment - caregiver-infant interactions
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Caregiver-Infant Interactionsattachment is an emotional relationship between two people characterised by proximity seeking
(wanting to be near each other), resulting in a feeling of security when in the presence of each other
RECIPROCITY AND INTERACTIONAL SYNCHRONY
Reciprocity:
- ‘two way.’
- the behaviour of one triggers a response in the other.
- e.g. caregiver picking baby up when it cries.
Interactional Synchrony:
- ‘simultaneous action.’
- behaviour is mirrored.
- e.g. the caregiver and the infant maintaining eye contact.
Research into Reciprocity:
tronick (1975) developed a procedure known as ‘the still face’ experiment. in this procedure the
caregiver is instructed to stop interacting with their child (simply staring at them). this causes
distress in the child indicating that they were expecting reciprocity.
Research into Interactional Synchrony:
meltzoff and moore (1977) found that babies as young as two weeks would mirror the facial
expressions shown by adults.
Conclusions:
- babies seem to expect reciprocity (tronick).
- babies seem to be hard-wired to engage in interactional synchrony (melzoff and moore).
therefore…
- reciprocity and interactional synchrony may be innate (something babies are born with).
- reciprocity and interactional synchrony might be necessary for a healthy relationship to form
between infant and caregiver.
Evaluation:
- a methodological issue when observing the facial expressions of babies is that babies faces
are constantly moving so it’s difficult to judge if they really are showing evidence of
reciprocity/interactional synchrony.
- meltzoff and moore’s findings are not reliable as koepke et al (1983) did not replicate their
findings. however, this might have been due to poor controls.
- infants do not show reciprocity/interactional synchrony towards inanimate objects as
abravanel and deyong (1991) looked at how infants interacted with two objects which
simulated things such as opening/closing of the mouth. the infants didn’t respond to these
objects. this adds support to the idea that reciprocity/interactional synchrony serves a
purpose to help develop bonds with the caregiver.
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