3.1.2 Reciprocity & Interactional Syncrony

How do infants learn to interact with other people?

• Like attachment in general, this will all start with the caregiver-infant and how they interact
• There are believed to be two processes involved in this:
  • Interactional synchrony
  • Reciprocity

Interactional synchrony

• This is when an infant mirrors the actions of their care-giver
• Examples of this would be facial expressions or hand gestures
• They are said to 'copy' their care-giver

Research into interactional synchrony

• Meltzoff and Moore (1977)
  • Used infants as young as two weeks old and observed them via a camera
  • The infants observed a parent do 2 or 3 of four actions
  • Opening mouth, poking tongue out, frowning and waving a finger
  • Independent observers were asked to view the footage and state what they saw the infant actually do
  • This was a 'Double Blind' as the observer did not know what the aim of the experiment was
  • This was to check if the infant really did poke their tongue out at a certain time as it was felt the Primary Care Giver (PCG ) and/or experimenter would be biased
  • A positive correlation was found between the infant's actions and those of the PCG: Copying/imitating was felt to be occurring
• Isabella et al (1989)
  • Assessed Interactional synchrony in 30 infants: PCG dyads using the Meltzoff and Moore method used
  • Found that the better synchrony was shown by those infants who had high levels of attachment to their PCG
  • This shows that interactional synchrony is important and is linked to strong, securely attached relationships
• Evaluation of interactional synchrony
  • This research has strong face validity as it looks to be true: It makes sense we learn at a young age how to interact with others for our own survival
  • The use of the 'double blind' observer who looked at the tapes for Meltzoff and Moore meant less biased results
  • The camera may have had an effect on the participants, especially the infant, as it may have been intrusive and noisy
  • Was it just a coincidence?
  • We can never be really certain if the infant poked out their tongue or frowned as they were copying or if it was for another reason, unrelated to the PCG's actions

Reciprocity

• This is another type of interaction between a caregiver and an infant
• It is when the caregiver and infant respond to each other's signals appropriately
• The simplest example is a smile; the caregiver smiles and the infant smiles back

The Pseudo-conversation

• This is when the caregiver 'speaks' to the infant and then 'allows' the infant to respond
• This teaches the child about turn-taking in conversations, even though neither party can understand what the other is saying
• The caregiver will usually speak in 'motherese' or 'caregivers'- the exaggerated sing-song voice often used by adults to 'talk' to babies and animals
• The caregiver will speak and then allow the infant to mumble/gurgle a reply, before responding
• This is the start of learning how to converse with others

Hint

• If you have a pet or know someone with a cat or dog, you may see this in the interactions with animals
• How many of us have responded to a cat's meow or a dog's bark with a response, often in that 'caregivers' voice?
• it is the same principle, just applied to babies