Caregiver-infant interactions in humans: reciprocity and interactional synchrony
● Attachment is a two way enduring emotional bond that develops between the infant
and the caregiver early in the infant’s life. It develops as a result of their two-way
communication.
● This process of responding to each other builds emotional bonds and ultimately results
in the infant showing distress when separated from the caregiver.
Types of interactions
● Interactional synchrony- Infant and caregiver reflect each other's actions and emotions
in a coordinated manner.
● A behaviour linked to this is reciprocity. Reciprocity- is interaction wherein the adult and
infant continuously respond to each others actions and can initiate or respond to
communication.
● Interaction can also occur via direct imitation where the infant mimics/copies the adult’s
behaviour exactly (i.e: smiles elicit smiles).
● Sensitive responsiveness is when the adult pays close attention to the infant’s
communication and responds in an appropriate manner (i.e: providing milk, changing).
● Caregiverese is where adults modulate their voice, slowing it down and raising the pitch
to make it almost song-like. Most adults will do this when encountering an infant.
● Bodily contact (physical contact, often skin-to-skin) is seen as important in bonding,
particularly in the first few hours of life.
Evaluation
★ Melzoff and Moore (1977) had an experimenter display facial gestures such as sticking
their tongue out, opening mouth in shock, and manual gestures such as opening and
closing their hand to infants between 12 and 21 days old. Infants responses were
recorded and rated by people blind to the aims of the experiment. The ratings showed
that these infants imitated the experimenter. This suggests that the ability to observe and
imitate develops very early on in infants, potentially as a way to develop an attachment
bond with their caregiver.
★ Papusek et al (1991) Showed that the tendency to produce caregiverese (high pitched
baby talk) is common across American, Chinese, and German mothers. This suggests
that some aspects of caregiver-infant interactions in the development of attachment are
not culturally biased but are universal to all or many cultures and thus may be innate
within infants and caregivers.
★ Modern techniques of studying attachment tend to use multiple observers, providing
inter-rater reliability and reducing potential for bias.
★ They also often have a system of video cameras to document and slow down
micro-sequences of interactions between caregivers and infants that may not be
observable in real time. This also allows other researchers to more easily review the
evidence at a later date.
★ An issue with studies on infant-caregiver interaction is that infants are unable to
communicate their thoughts and emotions, so findings depend on inferences about
internal mental states based on observations of infant behaviour. This is unscientific as it
, is subjective and so some studies could suffer from observer bias, that is an
interpretation that matches the observer’s preconceptions rather than what they were
actually viewing.
★ Also researcher are unable to claim intentionality (that imitation behaviour is deliberate)
as it may be an unconscious automatic response.
★ Social sensitivity is a concern when investigating child rearing techniques as some
parents may find their life choices criticised, such as mother who return to the workplace
shortly after giving birth. Findings may lead new parents to blame themselves if their
attachment is not strong or their children do not develop according to the models (see
below).
➔ Schaffer and Emerson (1964): The Glaswegian baby study- collected the data of 60
babies and their families over the course of a year via monthly observations and
interviews, with a follow-up visit at 18 months. Two types of behaviour were looked at,
stranger distress (signs of discomfort when around a stranger and ability to distinguish
between familiar and unfamiliar people) and separation anxiety (signs of discomfort
when the caregiver moved to another room, showing the development of an attachment
bond). They found separation anxiety in the majority of babies by 25-32 weeks, with
stranger anxiety occurring in most babies approximately one month later. In the 18
month follow-up 87% of babies had developed multiple attachments. The strongest
attachments tended to be to the mother, particularly those with consistent
caregiver-infant interaction.
➔ This suggested to the researchers that attachment occurs in stages in all babies,
perhaps being a biologically controlled process. Also the quality of caregiver interaction
has a direct impact on the strength of the attachment for infants and their caregivers.
Evaluation
★ This study used only white, working class Scottish babies from Glasgow, so cannot be
generalised to babies of other classes or cultures (or even babies living in other cities in
Scotland) so lacks external validity.
★ Study was carried out in the 1960s so now may lack temporal validity as childrearing
practices have changed significantly over the last 50 years.
★ Has high ecological validity as children were studied in their own homes, and high
mundane realism as strangers visiting the home would have been a fairly normal
occurrence for the babies, as would have been the caregiver leaving the presence of the
infant
★ By incorporating self-report into the study researchers were able to use the process of
triangulation (using two different research methodologies -interview and self-report- and
finding the same results), so greater internal validity.
Stages of attachment identified by Schaffer
● Schaffer and Emerson identified four stages of attachment through their longitudinal
observation study. The named these Asocial, Indiscriminate, Specific, and Multiple.
, 1. The Asocial (pre-attachment) stage occurs from 0-6 weeks of age. Babies in
this stage respond to objects in a similar way to humans, such as by
smiling, however babies tend to be more content with certain individuals and
humans in general compared to objects.
2. The Indiscriminate (diffuse attachment) stage occurs from 6 weeks to 7 months.
In this stage babies can be handled by strangers without distress, however,
can discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals, with
preference for familiar adults. No separation or stranger anxiety.
3. The Specific (or discriminate attachment) stage occurs from 7-9 months
onwards. Babies in this stage experience separation and stranger anxiety, and
they demonstrate a preference for one primary caregiver such as their mother.
4. The Multiple stage occurs after 9 months of age. Babies in this stage can be
observed to be attached to more than one individual, including brothers,
sisters, and grandparents. Fear of strangers also decreases.
Multiple attachments and the role of the father
● Schaffer found that the primary attachment figure was the mother 65% of the time. In
30% of cases the mother and someone else (i.e: the father) were both primary
attachment figures, but only in 3% of cases was the father the primary attachment figure.
This may be due to cultural and temporal reasons (i.e: is it part of living in Glasgow or in
the 1960s?) or potentially biological reasons.
● The role of mothers and fathers have changed in Western cultures since the 1960s, with
mother more likely to work and father more likely to help with a greater proportion of the
childrearing that previously was done by the mother. This is likely to have an impact on
attachment patterns in infants.
● Bowlby (1988) reasoned that if patterns of attachment are a product of how their mother
has treated them, it could be anticipated that the pattern they develop with their father is
the product of how their father has treated them. Bowlby suggests that fathers can fill a
role closely resembling that filled by a mother but points out that in most cultures this is
uncommon. Bowlby argues that in most families with young children, the father's role
tends to be different. According to Bowlby, a father is more likely to engage in physically
active and novel play than the mother and tends to become his child's preferred play
companion.
● Field (1978) conducted research which compared the behaviours of primary caretaker
mothers with primary and secondary caretaker fathers. Face-to-face interactions were
analysed from video footage with infants at 4 months of age. Overall, it was observed
that fathers engaged more in game playing and held their infants less. However, primary
caretaker fathers engaged in significantly more smiling, imitative grimaces, and imitative
vocalizations than did secondary caretaker fathers and these were comparable with
mothers’ behaviour. This suggests that men who take on the role of primary caregiver
change their interactional style to be more like that of a mother in terms of comfort and
sensitive responsiveness.
