Caregiver-Infant interactions.

Question	Answer
Reciprocity	A form of interaction where either person is able to elicit an identical response from the other.
Interactional synchrony	Mother and baby react to the actions and the emotions of the other and do this in a co-ordinated (synchronised way).
Strength of interactional synchrony	Heimann showed that infants who demonstrate a lot of imitation from birth onwards have been found to have a better quality of relationship at 3 months. However, it isn’t clear whether the imitation is a cause or an effect of this early synchrony.
Strength of research into interactional synchrony	babies don’t know or care that they are being observed so their behavior does not change in response to controlled observation. This suggests that the observations have high validity.

Resource summary

	Created by James Ross about 6 years ago