Caregivers interpret infants' early gestures based on shared knowledge about referents

Early triadic interactions in the first year of life: a systematic review on object-mediated shared encounters

Infants' early interactions with adults and everyday objects are key to socio-communicative development, but their emergence and development are still under debate. Aiming at describing the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches on triadicity during the first year of life, we conducted a systematic and qualitative review of recent literature. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we explored the scientific production of recent decades on triadic interactions up to 12 months of age. We initially screened 1943 items from which we obtained a final sample of 51 publications. Studies are usually conducted in laboratory settings, while ecological research is becoming increasingly common, especially in home settings. According to a thematic analysis of the data, we discussed the different perspectives on the origin and conceptualization of triadic interactions, and how they contribute to structuring and facilitating other developmental phenomena, such as the children's communicative gestures and uses of objects. Prior to the origin of intentional communication, adults facilitate early forms of triadicity based on fostering opportunities for infants' communication and engagement with both adults and materiality. However, there is a need for further research that explore the potential of early triadic interactions for parenting and early childhood education practises.

Intentional Understanding Through Action Coordination in Early Triadic Interactions

The ability to understand the behaviour of other people in intentional terms has been traditionally explained by resorting to inferential mechanisms that would allow individuals to access the internal mental states of others. In recent years, the second-person perspective has established itself as a theoretical alternative to traditional models. It argues that intentional understanding is an embodied, natural, and immediate process that occurs in situations such as face-to-face early dyadic interactions between adults and infants. In this article, we argue that the way in which the second-person perspective regards body and object is problematic. Based on psychological evidence that demonstrates the constitutive role of the body and objects for cognitive development, we propose the foundations of an ecological-enactive, semiotic and pragmatic model of intentional understanding. We argue that intentional understanding should be conceived as the skilful coordination of behaviours that subjects come to enact in interactive settings, following the dynamics of bodily and material practices that have acquired normative force over time.

Showing and giving: from incipient to conventional forms

Understanding humans' motivation and capacity for social interaction requires understanding communicative gestures. Gestures are one of the earliest means that infants employ to communicate with others, and showing and giving are among the earliest-emerging gestures. However, there are limited data on the processes that lead up to the emergence of conventional showing and giving gestures. This study aimed to provide such data. Twenty-five infants were assessed longitudinally at monthly intervals from 6 to 10 months of age using a variety of methods (elicitation procedures, free play observations and maternal interviews), as well as via questionnaires conducted at 11-12 months. A particular focus was on pre-conventional, incipient gestures, behaviours that involved some components of conventional gestures, but lacked other important components. We present observational evidence that at least some of these behaviours (observed as early as 7 months of age) were communicative and make the case for how conventional showing and giving may emerge gradually in the context of social interactions. We also discuss the influence of maternal interpretations of these early behaviours on their development. Overall, the study seeks to draw attention to the importance of understanding the cognitive, motor and interactional processes that lead to the emergence of infants' earliest communicative gestures. This article is part of the theme issue 'Revisiting the human 'interaction engine': comparative approaches to social action coordination'.

Alternative Object Use in Adults and Children: Embodied Cognitive Bases of Creativity

Why does one need creativity? On a personal level, improvisation with available resources is needed for online coping with unforeseen environmental stimuli when existing knowledge and apparent action strategies do not work. On a cultural level, the exploitation of existing cultural means and norms for the deliberate production of novel and valuable artifacts is a basis for cultural and technological development and extension of human action possibilities across various domains. It is less clear, however, how creativity develops and how exactly one arrives at generating new action possibilities and producing multiple alternative action strategies using familiar objects. In this theoretical paper, we first consider existing accounts of the creative process in the Alternative Uses Task and then present an alternative interpretation, drawing on sociocultural views and an embodied cognition approach. We explore similarities between the psychological processes underlying the generation of new uses in the Alternative Uses Task and children’s pretend play. We discuss possible cognitive mechanisms and speculate how the generation of new action possibilities for common objects in pretend play can be related to adults’ ability to generate new action strategies associated with object use. Implications for creativity development in humans and embodied artificial agents are discussed.

The Role of Common Ground on Object Use in Shaping the Function of Infants' Social Gaze

Although infants' social gaze has specific communicative functions, it remains unclear what they are. In this conceptual analysis paper, we provide a theoretical framework for the study of the functional aspects of eye gaze in early childhood. We argue that studying the communicative functions of infants' eye gaze involves three premises: the centrality of the object, the importance of common ground on object use, and the role of parental interpretations. The ability to communicate intentionally begins when infants start referring to external objects. Beyond dyadic - infant-parent - emotional sharing, infant social gaze within the infant-parent-object triad becomes an increasingly complex communicative modality. As the predominant type of communicative referents in infancy, objects are thus central to early communication. Although they have affordances, objects are used in conventional ways shared between users (i.e., common ground). Parents transmit to infants the socio-cultural use of objects, which infants progressively learn and master. Accordingly, we argue that within early triadic interactions, the communicative function of infants' eye gaze is shaped by the knowledge that the infant and the parent share on the socio-cultural use of the referent (i.e., the object). Importantly, before young children develop their ability to convey clear communicative functions, including with eye gaze, the interpretations and responses that parents provide to infants' early communicative acts play a major role. Relying on these premises, we argue that when referring to objects for which the infant and the parent share common ground, the function of the infant's social gaze becomes communicatively meaningful for the parent. The knowledge on the communicative referent (i.e., the object) shared between the infant and the parent thus shapes the course of communicative behavior, constitutes and reflects the interactive function of gaze, and cues parents into tailoring their communicative response according to the infant's developmental needs. Through this theoretical framework for the study of the communicative function of infant eye gaze, an emphasis is put on the key role that socio-materiality plays in early communicative development.

Self-Directed Ostensions and Mediations of the Adult at the Age of 8-, 12- and 16 months

One of Vygotsky's main insights was to highlight the role of linguistic signs in psychological development. In this paper, following the works carried out through the Object Pragmatics paradigm, which is grounded in Vygotsky's cultural-historical and semiotic framework, we will explore non verbal signs addressed toward herself by the infant in the process of communication toward oneself, in relation to the appropriation of the objects' canonical uses by infants at 8-, 12- and 16 months in triadic infant-object-adult interaction. More specifically, our focus will concern the development of self-directed ostensions. We will examine how this movement, under the impulse related to other's people signs and public meanings of the object, endorse the status of sign during development and specifies itself in ostension. Ostension as a sign refers to a presentation of an object to someone and has been initially defined within the framework of communication toward other people in semiotic literature. In our works, this sign is studied in communication toward oneself and in its development. It should be noted that very few studies have been done on this topic. Following Vygotsky, we consider that turned toward oneself, ostension plays a crucial role in the formation of thought and consciousness (in the sense of awareness). This paper will focus on the social and semiotic conditions of production of this sign and, more precisely, on the role of the adult's non verbal and verbal mediations, which aim to elicit and sustain its realisation by the infant.

Object Pragmatics and Language Development

The purpose of this contribution is to investigate the advent of language in the light of the appropriation of the cultural uses of the material objects related to material culture and the constitution of their public and shared meanings linked to their uses. First, we suggest that the Object Pragmatics paradigm offers a framework which allows us to take into account the uses of objects in daily life as a site of social conventions, communication and public and shared meanings. Second, we would like to underline the key role of the adult's mediations in the child's ability to evolve towards linguistic development. This contribution will discuss the notion of scenario involving primarily the object, as a possible semiotic tool to support the child's transition to language. We will finally illustrate that it is possible to take into consideration the mastery of conventional uses of the object in the child's ability to engage in a scenario and then to move towards communication and speech development. These issues will be addressed in the context of a research project which focuses on the observation of children interacting with an adult at 16, 20 and 24 months. These longitudinal data were collected by video in a semi-experimental triadic interaction design. The triadic interaction is considered as a relevant unit for the observation and analysis of the role of material culture in speech development, suggesting the existence of new mechanisms to be taken into account in addition to the interactive conditions largely mentioned in literature.

To Encounter, to Build the World and to Become a Human Being. Advocating for a Material-Cultural Turn in Developmental Psychology

Why have material world of daily life and material objects in their conventional features or to say it in other words, why have the mundane world and mundane objects, in which the human beings live and children come to, encounter, experience and develop through, received so little attention from psychologists thus remaining a blind spot in mainstream developmental psychology? Certainly the object has not been totally forgotten (e.g. Piaget's constructivist paradigm) but it has been considered as theoretically determined by the categories of understanding (cf. Kant), and considered as a key to understanding the world in its physical properties by the infant. But the material world and the material objects that are used for everyday purposes (i.e. pragmatically) belonging to material culture, have been totally neglected by developmental psychologists. Reacting to the Kantian agenda of developmental psychology but also to heterodox non developmentalist thinkers such as Gibson who is a growing source of inspiration for developmental psychologists today, we challenge the taken-for-granted mundane world, arguing for the importance of material objects related to material culture in psychological development during the prelinguistic period. On the basis of recent research in early development grounded in the Vygotskian paradigm, we discuss this issue through Marxist Anthropology, Material Culture Studies and Phenomenology. As a consequence we advocate for a material-cultural turn in psychological development in order to place the issue of material world and material objects in their pragmatic and semiotic features on the agenda of developmental psychology.