foreign to psychologists one of the most significant relationships you will ever have occurs in the first years of your life [Music] it's your attachment to your caregiver all of that cuddling and smiling feeding and comforting start to shape the way in infant views and understands the world and themselves in this series we're going to explore the psychology of attachment from what the different attachment types are to how your early attachment relationship can go on to shape your future romantic relationships and also consider what the long-term consequences might be of not being able to form an attachment foreign welcome back to about your mind the topic of attachment is part of an area of psychology known as developmental psychology this is the scientific study of how and why humans grow and change over time attachment can be defined as an emotional relationship between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the other but how would you know if two people are attached to one another psychologists suggest that we can recognize an attachment when we see the following behaviors firstly proximity we try to stay physically close to the one we're attached to we need to be near each other and to spend time together secondly separation distress we are distressed when an attachment figure leaves us even for a short period of time thirdly secure based Behavior infants display secure based Behavior when they regularly return to their attachment figure while playing and exploring now even if you don't have a child there's still something in your life that you probably have a very strong attachment too do you know what it is it's your mobile phone where is it right now probably in very close proximity to you and what happens when you think you can't find it separation distress one of my students was on the bus heading to sixth form one day when they realized they'd left their baby at home I mean their phone at home and so in a panic they got off the bus and ran all the way home to make sure they didn't have a day at sixth form without their phone and think about how many times a day you check in on your phone just take a look at your screen time data for the number of pickups you do so let's begin to explore what psychological research has discovered about attachment and specifically in this video caregiver infant interaction [Music] from an early age babies have meaningful social interactions with their caregivers in fact one now famous study by meltsoffer Moore in 1977 aimed to investigate the age at which imitation occurs in new bonds they videotaped 12 to 21 day old babies as they watched an adult experimenter an adult displayed one of three hand movements or one of three facial expressions which look like this lip protrusion mouth opening or tongue protrusion the child response was filmed and identified by observers they found an association between infant Behavior and the adult model in other words babies as young as two weeks would attempt to imitate facial and physical gestures they saw in an adult [Music] foreign imitation psychologists have researched two important Concepts in the study of attachment known as reciprocity and interactional synchrony they describe different aspects of the relationship between infants and their caregivers and are important for the child's development and the formation of an attachment firstly reciprocity you may recognize the word reciprocal here the word reciprocal means done in return so someone behaved toward you in one way and you responding kind it is mutual reciprocity refers to the mutual exchange of responses between an infant and their caregiver it involves a back and forth pattern of communication where the infant's Behavior elicits a response from the caregiver which in turn influenced the infant's behavior for example when an infant Smiles or Coos the caregiver responds with a smile or a vocalization which reinforces the infant's behavior and encourages further into action for another example if the infant starts to cry or appears unsettled this elicits the behaviors of perhaps soothing noises and holding them closer by the caregiver notice that the infant and the caregiver are responding to each of the signals to sustain the interaction foreign [Music] ly interactional synchrony this refers to the temporal coordination of behaviors between an infant and their caregiver the word temporal in that definition relates to time in other words interactional synchronous involves a high degree of similarity and timing between the infant's Behavior and the caregiver's response for example when an infant makes a facial expression or a movement the caregiver responds with a similar expression or movement in a synchronized and coordinated manner interactional synchronity is thought to be important in establishing a shared understanding and emotional connection between the infant and their caregiver and in promoting the development of Social and emotional skills while reciprocity and interactional synchrony are related and often occur together they are distinct Concepts that capture different aspects of the attachment relationship if reciprocity is like a conversation interactional synchrony describes the intricate dance that occurs during short intense playful interactions reciprocity emphasizes the mutual exchange of responses between the infant and caregiver while interactional synchrony emphasizes the coordination and timing of those responses to get a sense of how quickly children learn to expect a response from their caregiver and to get an insight into the importance of these interactions chronicatal in 1978 conducted research using what is known as the still face Paradigm this is where a mother is interacting with their infant as normal but he's then instructed to suddenly stop responding to their baby's behaviors and become still displaying a neutral face what would the babies do when this happened well at first the babies continue smiling and making noise used to try and engage the mother and elicit a response from them however when the infant sees that the mother is not responding at all they become distressed and turn away from the mother you can imagine how if there is this lack of interaction between the caregiver and infant it might have a negative impact on their attachment and relationship going forward and on the child's ability to understand the effects their behavior has on others further evidence for the significance of interactional synchrony can be seen in researched by Isabella and belski in 1991. they studied 153 mothers with their firstborn child they first observed them when the child was three months old and did further observations up to nine months what impact would the level of interactional synchrony have on the type of attachment they found that their mother child relationships that went on to develop a secure attachment at nine months interacted in a well-timed and mutually rewarding manner in contrast those mother child relationships who displayed insecure attachments between nine and three months were less synchronous the mothers were minimally involved and unresponsive to the infants now I'm aware at this point in exploring the attachment topic you don't yet have much of an understanding of the difference between cure and insecure types of attachment so Isabella rambelski study may not make complete sense to you yet we cover this when we look at ainsworth's strain situation if you want to jump ahead and watch that video you can do so by clicking on the link up here or in the description below what you want to take from this three though is that it shows how the quality of the interactional synchrony predicted the quality of the attachment formed between the caregiver and their infant interactional synchrony matters [Music] investigating caregiver infant interactions is not the easiest thing to do it is very different from studying adult participants as is typical in most psychological studies and so it's important for us to critically consider how the interactions between caregiver and infant are studied firstly one of the strengths of the research into caregiver infant interaction is that they are often highly controlled observations for example the research by melter for more made use of technology to capture the micro sequences of behaviors that the infants displayed this involves filming often from different angles they're very fine details of expressions and movements that can be recorded and analyzed later which can only be done in a highly controlled situation another benefit of studying caregiver infant interaction is that there are no problems with demand characteristics when we know we're being observed we change our Behavior whether that's to try extra hard to show the behaviors we think The Observers want or to do the opposite and deliberately behave in ways that the researcher doesn't want but with an infant who is a few days or weeks old they don't have a clue they don't know they're being observed and so their behavior is more natural however there are a number of difficulties when it comes to studying caregiver infant interactions firstly there is the problem of intentionality this is because it's difficult to draw conclusions about the role of caregiver infant interactions in the development of attachment because it's difficult to determine the infant's intention this is because what is being observed is just hand movements or changes in facial expressions an infant is limited in its ability to communicate and only has a few things that it can actually do the researcher needs to make an inference about the children's behaviors and as a result it's extremely difficult to be certain what is taking place from the infant's point of view secondly there is a problem of bias some of you may have been rightly thinking that if this is observational research then there is the potential problem of bias in the observer's interpretation of the behavior they may observe an infant behavior and interpret it as a direct response to the adult's Behavior because that is what they're hoping to find this can then raise questions about the validity of the research and weakens our understanding of caregiver infant interactions as a side note there is a way to deal with this though and in fact Meltzer for more did just that they had an independent Observer who was not aware of the aims of the study to judge the infant's behavior on the film thirdly there are practical issues I don't know how much time you spent around newborns and infants but let's just say that they spend a lot of time either sleeping feeding pooping or crying this makes it difficult to observe their behavior because you cannot control their behavior and have to wait for a period of time when you can observe them you might have booked the mother and caregiver to come in at three o'clock for the study but the little baby had different plan and fancied a rather long snooze at that particular point in the afternoon as a result fewer observations of infants are done and for a shorter period of time due to their waking hours on the positive side they'll Research into caregiver infant interaction has been useful in its practical application this is because it has drawn attention to the important behaviors needed to help the development of an infant the research into caregiver infant interaction encourages mothers to engage in social interaction and to respond to the behaviors of their child in an appropriate and timely manner it has pointed to the importance of these interactions for the benefit of the child's development notably in areas such as empathy and language finally one further issue with research relates to how it can be socially sensitive this is because the research emphasizes the importance of interactional synchrony between a mother and an infant and suggests that a child may not develop as well if the child does not receive high levels of it just think about how Isabella rambelski's research suggested that low levels of interactional synchrony can lead to insecure attachment so now imagine you're a mother who returns to work shortly after her child is born and so would have less opportunities for interactional synchrony with her child how would she feel when she hears This research what you feel like about parent would this lead her to be ostracized and look down on by others Research into caregiver infant interactions could put pressure on Mothers not to return to work when they might need to or a mother might need to look after other children too and can't give as much attention as she would like to her newborn which might make some others feel guilty about the situation so now you've begun your journey exploring attachment and you understand something of the importance of those early caregiver infant interactions but how do things develop from there well to learn about the stages of attachment you can click the video on the screen now I hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one