Attachment:
Caregiver-Infant Interactions:
● Infancy: a period of a child’s life before speech begins, tending to refer to the child’s first year
of life
● Caregiver: any person who is providing care for a child, such as parent, grandparents, sibling,
other family member, childminder, and so on
● Attachment: an emotional bond between two people, usually a primary caregiver and a child
○ It is a two-way process that endures over time, leading to certain behaviours such as
clinging and proximity-seeking and serves the function of protecting an infant
● Why attachment is important:
○ Human babies are altricial, which means that they are born at a relatively early stage
of development
○ Humans are different to precocial animals - animals born at an advanced stage of
development, e.g. foals are able to walk and run soon after birth
● Reciprocity - refers to interaction flowing both ways between adult and infant (turn-taking),
e.g. a mother smiling back at a baby
○ This develops at a very early age - Feldman (2007) observed from 3 months of age
reciprocity increases in frequency due to increasing attention and response
sensitivities
○ Brazelton et al. (1975): mother-child interactions are like a ‘dance’ and form the
foundation for later attachment between caregivers and infant
● Interactional synchrony - when two people interact by mirroring facial and body movements
- including emotions
○ Can be seen as ‘imitation’ or ‘copying’ of the adult's behaviour
○ The child’s imitation of the caregiver’s actions is synchronised to sustain
communication between the two individuals
○ Meltzoff & Moore (1977) found infants as young as 2 to 3 weeks old imitated specific
facial and hand gestures (later studies showed it occurring in infants only 3 days old)
■ Aim: to examine interactional synchrony in infants
■ Method: using a controlled observation, an adult model displayed one of
three facial expressions or a hand gesture
● To start with, the child had a dummy placed in his/her mouth to
prevent a facial response
● Following the display from the adult model, the dummy was
removed and the child’s expressions were filmed
■ Results: there was a clear association between the infants’ behaviour and
that of the adult model
● Later research by Meltzoff & Moore (1983) found the same findings
in three-day-old infants
■ Conclusion: these findings suggest that interactional synchrony is innate and
reduces the strength of any claim that imitative behaviour is learned
, ○ Oostenbrook et al. (2016) tested 64 infants at 4 time periods → unlike other studies,
they made sure infants were undertaking the equivalent behaviour rather than one
of the range of behaviours that the researcher was exhibiting
■ The team found no evidence that babies can reliably imitate faces, actions,
or sounds → they suggest that the notion of innate imitation is not valid -
instead, imitation probably emerges around 6 months
● + Many observations involving caregiver interactions have shown the same patterns of
interaction
○ - However, we don’t know if the infants imitations are conscious or deliberate
● + Controlled observations capture fine details due to the amount of cameras → this means
the research has high validity
● + Infants do not know they are being observed, so can’t adjust their behaviour
○ - However, caregivers can adjust their behaviour
● - Feldman (2012) explains that synchrony and reciprocity simply describe behaviours that
happen at the same time - it doesn’t tell us their purpose
● + Some evidence says that reciprocal interaction and synchrony are helpful for mother-infant
attachments, stressful situations, developing empathy, language and morality
● + Supports the nature side of the nature vs nurture debate as imitating is an innate
behaviour
● Music and other therapists who work with parents & infants/children who have experienced
disruption in their attachment formation highlight the importance of reciprocity and
interactional synchrony in their therapeutic work
, Role of the Father:
● Then: breadwinners, no paternity leave, and industrialisation increased the rate of men
working away from home
● Now: the role of women has changed, same-sex families, paternity leave, antenatal
appointments, parental responsibilities
● Who do infants attach to → traditionally, mother-infant attachments
○ Schaffer and Emerson (1964) found that the majority of infants became attached at 7
months to their mother, with a second attachment forming a month later
■ In 3% of cases, the father was the primary attachment
■ In 27% of cases, the father was the joint attachment
■ By 18 months, 75% of infants had an attachment with their father
● Results deduced from infants protesting when their father walked
away - a sign of attachment
● Paquette (2004): fathers are more likely to engage in risk-taking physical play and enjoyable
games
● Lamb (1997): most infants prefer their fathers when they want to play but prefer their
mothers when they need comfort
● Ross et al. (1975): positive correlation between nappies changed and strength of attachment
● Caldera (2004) investigated 60 fathers and their 14-month infants and found that when the
father was involved in caregiving activities, they were likely to develop a strong attachment
● Field (1978) filmed 4-month infants in face-to-face interactions with primary and secondary
caregiver fathers → PC fathers spent more time smiling, imitating, and holding hands than SC
∴ fathers can be nurturing
● Grossman (2002) found that fathers as secondary attachments had a distinct role in their
child development involving play and stimulation
● MacCallum and Golombok (2004) found that infants in same-sex and single families don’t
develop any differently which suggests a father's role isn’t important
● Economic implications:
○ An increasing amount of fathers will remain at home and therefore contribute less to
the economy, but, more mothers may return to work and contribute to the economy,
balancing it out
○ Changing laws on paternity leave → government-funded so affects the economy;
impact upon employers
● Evaluation:
○ Researchers are interested in different research questions which produce different
results
■ - Some look at it as a secondary attachment & find fathers behave differently
■ + Those that look at primary attachments find that fathers can take on a
maternal role
○ - Traditional gender roles could make fathers feel like they shouldn’t act in a
nurturing way
○ - Oestrogen creates higher level of nurturing in females, thus women are
predisposed to be primary attachment figures
○ Social biases prevent objective observations → record expectations instead of reality
○ Mothers feel pressured to stay at home; research says it is vital for development
