welcome to the attachment unit in this series of videos we're going to look at Children's earliest interactions and how those interactions both positive and negative can go on to have long lasting influences over the rest of their lives we'll start of course at the very beginning how a newborn baby infant and their mother begin communication and I mean exactly how do you communicate with a creature that knows no language or anything really of the world around it but that communication is vital to the development of attachment and even the survival of infants we'll then look at the first few years of the child's life seeing how slowly infants go beyond their mother to build up attachments with all the other people in their lives you can now follow along by making your notes in my psych boost workbook 150 full color worksheets covering all the compulsory units it's on Amazon or you can get signed additions from our website and teachers can order packs for the whole class caregiver infant interactions to start this attachment unit I should Define attachment attachment is when two people develop Long and Lasting emotional Bonds in this case the two people are the infant and their caregiver the definition should include that both the infant and the mother seek closeness to each other and they feel secure when they're close to their attachment figure we can see the closeness of this Bond through caregiver infant interactions and two that we can be asked to Define are reciprocity and interactional synchrony so to explain reciprocity it's a mutual turn-taking form of interaction it's a bit like a conversation with each person playing close attention and responding to the other's signals and cues so the mother may smile at the baby who then laughs in response the mother then talks excitedly to the infant interactional synchrony sounds similar but the important aspect of this interaction is it's simultaneous meaning they act at the same time they appear to be coordinated matching behavior and emotional states so the infant May wave its hands around in time with the adult speech other interactions include direct imitation so the infant and mother make the same facial movements like smiling sensitive responsiveness is the caregiver carefully paying attention to the infant's communication and responding appropriately if the baby's upset the mother Comforts it feeds it or changes it depending on what the infant is trying to communicate as we go through the attachment unit sensitive responsiveness will be an essential concept you'll see all caregivers of infants talk with child directed speech not just the parents it's a sing song voice with variable tone very different to the monotone voice we use of adults its for child directed speech is used to keep the infant's attention I'll just note here child directed speech is the current technical term but it has many other names and one of the most common Alternatives is mes I found modern researchers see the term mes as an example of gender stereotyping as of course it's not just mothers who use this voice and I'm not going to lie I tend to touch my cat like this bodily contact is also seen as vital for developing an attachment this includes breastfeeding it used to be that babies would be taken off their mother after birth to allow the mother time to recover now midwives ensure both parents experience skin-to-skin contact immediately after delivery to encourage bonding evaluations there is evidence that infants will show reciprocity by imitating adults and can do this in the first few weeks of Life melts offer more recorded infants and adults with the adults making a series of facial gestures to the infant the recordings were assessed by rers who were blind to the aim of the experiment the results showed that the infants demonstrated reciprocity responding with Expressions that match the adult's Expressions so when the adult stuck his tongue out the infant appeared to stick its tongue out when the adult smiled the infant smiled back researchers Condon and sander found evidence for interactional synchrony they recorded neonates and adults interacting and then analyzed the videos frame by frame finding the infants move their bodies rhythmically in time with the sound of the adult's voice this suggests the infants are born with an instinctive ability for social interaction the research and attachment including caregiver infant interaction tends to be very well controlled most studies will use multiple observers or record interactions so they can be analyzed carefully this focus on control suggest these Studies have high internal validity however there is a big problem with infant research infants can't communicate their thoughts so researchers need to use inferences inferences or guesses about internal mental States based on behavior these inferences are ultimately gases so we're not considered truly scientific for example it might be that the infant doesn't actually intend to imitate to communicate imitation might just be an automatic reflex response finally infants on Research is highly socially sensitive psychological findings are reported in newspapers and books and parents will adapt how they interact with their infants and see themselves as good or bad caregivers based on psychological theories and studies for example findings that suggest it's essential for mothers to show a high level of sensitive responsiveness or develop interactional synchrony can be problematic for mothers who need to return to work quickly and struggle to find the time to connect to their infants take Tye to consider these evaluations carefully as they can be adapted and used again in multiple parts of the attachment unit stages of attachment identified by schaer the research of schaer identified four stages of infinite attachment stage one is called the asocial stage which lasts from birth to 6 weeks in this time babies do display behaviors like crying and smiling to caregivers but they'll also show the same behaviors to inanimate objects and can be comforted by any caregiver showing no preference to any one individual stage two is indiscriminate attachment and most infants are in this stage between 6 weeks and 7 months old at this stage it seems infants can tell the difference between familiar and unfamiliar adults as they seem to smile more at caregivers they recognize however they don't show stranger anxiety distress in the presence of a stranger or separation anxiety which is distress in the absence of a primary caregiver stage three is a specific attachment stage and most infants are in this stage between the ages of seven and 99 months in this stage infants form a strong connection to their primary caregiver most frequently their mother when the mother leaves the room the infant shows separation anxiety they also start to develop stranger anxiety the fourth stage is the multiple attachment stage starting from around 9 or 10 months at this point the infant would develop additional attachments to other caregivers like their fathers brothers sisters and grandparents showing distress when separated the infants level of strength anxiety starts to decrease at this stage evaluations she based the four stages of attachment on the results of a longitudinal study he conducted with his colleague Emerson 60 workingclass mother and infant peirs from Glasgow were studied initially the babies were observed and the mothers were interviewed monthly for a year with schaer returning at 18 months for a final session schaer assess the infants for stranger anxiety and separation anxiety finding separation anxiety occurs in most between 25 and 32 weeks and stranger distress first happens around 1 month later schaer also found that the strongest attachments seemed to form between infants and mothers where the moners consistently interacted with their infants the results suggest that infant attachment happens in definable stages and as infants share these stages it's likely a biological process the quick development of multiple attachments at 10 months indicates that the role of one maternal primary attachment figure is less important than first thought by researchers such as Balby schaer's results also suggest that the quality of the parent sensitive responsiveness influences attachment strength however we can criticize the shape of sample the culture of workingclass mothers in Glasgow and the 60s does not represent the rest of the UK or the world so the findings lack generalization also the results lack temporal validity as child rearing patters have changed significantly in the last 60 years Shea has committ commitment to visiting the infants and mothers in their own homes likely resulted in naturalistic behaviors the mother leaving the room and strangers visiting are typical situations in family homes which means the tasks in shaer study have a high level of Munday realism so the behavior recorded by schaer was valid the role of the father schaer's study found that for 65% of the infants their primary attachment figure was their mother alone 30% were both parents and only 3% had the Father Figure alone as the primary attachment figure this finding suggests initially the father's role is not as important as the mother's however at the 18month observation the researchers found that 75% of the infants had developed some attachment to the father indicating fathers must play some role in the lives of the infants one suggestion is the father's role is to provide active play activities rather than the caring and comforting sense of responsiveness shown by the mothers this stimulating play is fought to encourage risk-taking behavior in infants in the modern world with many women returning to the workforce more men are taking on the role of the primary caregiver this evidence to suggest that when in this position the father's interactional style will shift to sensitive responsiveness research by field provides evidence for both of these roles of the father she observed three types of caregivers interacting with their form of old infants primary caregiver mothers primary caregiver fathers and secondary care of fathers both groups of fathers emphasize game playing while the mother group focused on holding however the primary caregiver fathers and mothers showed more sensitive responsive Behavior such as smiling and CDs than the secondary caregiver fathers suggesting the primary caregiver fathers had adapted their behavior to a more sensitive responsive role the research of Riso observed the early interactions between infants and their mothers and fathers and then later obser observe the children's social interactions when they started Nursery they found that the best predictor of making friends in school was a strong attachment to their father not their mother this suggests that the father's role is to help with the infant socialization like other infant research researching the father's role is socially sensitive if findings suggest the role of the mother is unique and can't be replaced by the father father- Le single parents and male gay couples may feel they can't fully support their children's development on the other hand if research suggests that fathers can show sense of responsiveness men may take a more active role in caring for their infants we can also consider the economic implications if the father's role is important for infant development this could lead to legislation to equalize maternity and paternity leave this could reduce the number of men in the workforce and cause challenges to businesses that must adapt however it could also help reduce a gender pay Gap as currently many women feel they need to take a career break to look after their family's children not the fathers I want to thank everyone over on patreon for supporting the channel because of you I've been able to teach part-time meaning I can make psych boost on YouTube for everyone and a special thank you to cat posnik and ammed Romani for supporting at the developer level I do have extra resources that are exclusive to my patrons so if you decide to sign up you can grab those over my website and these include over a 100 exam question tutorial videos of course including questions on the attachment unit I hope this was helpful and I'll see you in the next psych Boost video