Attachment

Front 1

Define Attachment

Back 1

“An emotional bond between two people. It is a two way process that endures over time. It leads to certain behaviours such as clinging and proximity seeking, and serves the function of protecting an infant.”

Front 2

Define Caregiver

Back 2

“Any person who is providing care for a child, such as a parent.”

Front 3

Define Interactional Synchrony

Back 3

When two people interact they tend to mirror what the other is doing in terms of their facial and body movements and even emotions. This is described as a synchrony - when two or more things move in the same pattern.

Front 4

Define Reciprocity

Back 4

Responding to the action of another with a similar action, where the actions of one partner elicits a response from the other partner.

Front 5

Reciprocity - Brazelton (1979)

Back 5

Brazelton suggested it is important for later communication and allows the caregiver to anticipate the infants behaviour and respond appropriately.

Front 6

Interactional Synchrony - Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

Back 6

Meltzoff and Moore found that infants as young as two or three weeks old imitated specific facial and hand gestures. They proposed that this imitation is intentional (I.e. the infant is deliberately copying what the other person is doing).

Front 7

Evaluation - Problems with testing infant behaviour

Back 7

Infants’ mouths are in fairly constant motion and the expressions that are tested occur frequently. This makes it difficult to distinguish between general activity and specific imitated behaviours.

Front 8

Evaluation - Failure to replicate

Back 8

Other studies have failed to replicate. For example, a study by Koepke et al. failed to replicate Meltzoff and Moore’s finding to which Meltzoff and Moore counter-argued that the research by Koepke et al. failed because it was less carefully controlled.

Front 9

Evaluation - Is the behaviour intentional?

Back 9

Abravanel and DeYong (1991) observed infant behaviour when ‘interacting’ with two objects, stimulating different movements. Infants of 5 to 12 weeks had little response. They concluded infants do not just imitate anything they see - it is a specific social response to humans.

Front 10

Evaluation - Individual differences

Back 10

Isabella et al. found that a more strongly attached infant - caregiver pairs showed greater interactional synchrony. Heimann showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth have been found to have a better quality of relationship at three months.