What is reciprocity?
when each person responds to the other and elicits a response from them e.g caregiver responding to baby’s smile by saying something
What are alert phases?
when babies signal that they are ready for interaction
What did Feldman and Eildelman do?
- identified that mothers generally respond to baby’s alertness about 2/3s of the time but it is dependent on external factors such a stress. By 3 months the interactions become more frequent.
What is active involvement?
both babies and caregivers have an active role as they can both initiate interactions between each other
What is interactional synchrony?
caregiver and baby reflect both actions and emotions of each other (mirror each other)
What did Meltzoff and Moore do?
identified how infants mirrored the facial expressions and emotions of their caregivers in infants as young as two weeks old
What is interactional synchrony important for?
important for the development of caregiver-infant attachments
What did isabella do?
identified how high levels of synchrony were associated with better quality mother and infant attachment (emotional intensity of relationship)
What did Meltzoff and Moore do? + what was their findings?
controlled observations of newborn babies that were exposed to 4 different stimuli: 3 facial gestures e.g sticking tongue out and 1 manual gesture e.g waving finger
independent observers had to note all instances of tongue protrusion and head movements, these were scored twice to allow inter-rater reliability + inter-observer reliability
findings: babies could imitate facial/manual gestures, this is important for social and cognitive development
What are the evaluations of Meltzoff and Moore’s study?
strengths: controlled observation, filmed at different angles so fine details were easily noticed
- high internal validity because babies did not know they were being filmed
weaknesses: observations do not state the purpose of synchrony and reciprocity, may not be useful research
- it is difficult to tell if babies are imitating adults due to conscious or just a coincidence
What are Schaffers stages’ of attachment?
Stage 1: Asocial stage, Stage 2: Indiscriminate, Stage 3: Specific, Stage 4: Multiple
What happens in the Asocial stage?
- first few weeks
- baby recognises and forms bond with carers
- behaviour towards humans and non-human objects is similar
- babies show some preferences to familiar adults
What happens in the Indiscriminate stage?
- 2-9 months
- show observable behaviour
- preference for people rather than objects
- accepts comfort/recognises adults
- don’t show separation/stranger anxiety
What happens in the Specific stage?
- from 7 months
- anxiety towards strangers
- separation anxiety when separated from specific attachment (specific attachment = primary)
What happens in the multiple attachment stage?
- by the age of 1 most infants have multiple attachments
- attachment to more than one adult
- form quickly after primary attachment
What did Schaffer and Emerson do? + what were their findings?
60 babies from Glasgow and working class families, researchers visited them every month for the first year and again at 18 months. Questions were asked to measure attachment such as the babies response to an adult leaving the room as well as assessing stranger anxiety.
Findings: allowed Schaffer and Emerson to identify the 4 stages of attachment e.g between 25 and 32 weeks, 50% showed signs of separation anxiety.
What are the evaluations of Schaffer and Emerson’s study?
strengths: good external validity as highly likely participants behaved naturally
- cheap to carry out
weaknesses: lack of generalisability, all babies from same background and place as well as small sample size
- time consuming as longitudinal study
- self report method used therefore info may not be accurate, mothers may have said info that made them appear more favourable (social desirability bias)
- poor evidence for the asocial stage as difficult to tell if babies experienced anxiety at such a young age (may be displayed subtly). Thus babies may actually be social but just appeared asocial.
