Caregiver- infant interactions

Caregiver-infant interactions; including reciprocity and interactional synchrony

infancy = period in a child's life before speech begins.

Non-verbal interactions between caregiver and infant form the basis of attachment between the two.

The more sensitive the signals, the deeper the relationship.

Interactional Synchrony

e.g smiling

the matching of actions between two people; when a smile occurs in one person, it triggers a smile in the other.

Meltzoff and Moore (1997) 

• 18 babies
• the first month of life
• babies aged 12-21 days could imitate both facial and manual gestures
• by around 4 weeks, babies communicate by smiling
• they argued that the ability to imitate serves as an important building block for later social and cognitive development.

Reciprocity

finely tuned coordination of behaviors between mother and infant during speaking and listening.

parents and babies develop a shared sense of timing which develops into a mutual flow of behaviors. 

Stem (1971)

• microanalytical observation of films.
• three-month-old babies interacting with their mothers.
• behaviors logged every second.
• found that the infant would turn their head away for a split second as the mother approached, then turn back towards the mother, resembling the steps of a waltz or a flirtation.

Meltzoff and Moore (continued)

• controlled observation
• four different stimuli (three different faces and a hand gesture)
• observed the behavior of the infant in response
• to record observations, observer watched videotapes of the infant's behavior in real time, slow motion, and frame by frame.
• observers had no knowledge of what the infant had just seen.

each observer asked to note all instances of infant tongue protrusions and head movements using these behavioral categories: 

• Mouth opening = abrupt jaw drop opening the mouth across the entire extent of lips.
• termination of mouth opening =…