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.

From action to ethics: A process-relational approach to prosocial development

Explaining how children first become active prosocial and then later moral agents requires, we argue, beginning with action and interaction with others. We take a process-relational perspective and draw on developmental systems theory in arguing that infants cannot be born knowing about prosociality or morality or anything else. Instead, they are born with emerging abilities to act and react. Their biological embodiment links them to their environment and creates the social environment in which they develop. A clear distinction between biological and social levels cannot be made in the context of ongoing development because they are thoroughly interwoven in a bidirectional system in which they mutually create each other. We focus on infants' emerging ability to interact and develop within a human developmental system, and prosociality and morality emerge at the level of interaction. Caring is a constitutive aspect of the forms of experience in which infants are embedded in the process of becoming persons. Infants are immersed in a world of mutual responsiveness within caring relationships that are infused with concern, interest, and enjoyment. In such a developmental system, infants become persons when they are treated as persons.

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'.

Conceptualizations of Knowledge in Structuring Approaches to Moral Development: A Process-Relational Approach

Like other aspects of child development, views of the nature and development of morality depend on philosophical assumptions or worldviews presupposed by researchers. We analyze assumptions regarding knowledge linked to two contrasting worldviews: Cartesian-split-mechanistic and process-relational. We examine the implications of these worldviews for approaches to moral development, including relations between morality and social outcomes, and the concepts of information, meaning, interaction and computation. It is crucial to understand how researchers view these interrelated concepts in order to understand approaches to moral development. Within the Cartesian-split-mechanistic worldview, knowledge is viewed as representation and meaning is mechanistic and fixed. Both nativism and empiricism are based in this worldview, differing in whether the source of representations is assumed to be primarily internal or external. Morality is assumed to pre-exist, either in the genome or the culture. We discuss problems with these conceptions and endorse the process-relational paradigm, according to which knowledge is constructed through interaction, and morality begins in activity as a process of coordinating perspectives, rather than the application of fixed rules. The contrast is between beginning with the mind or beginning with social activity in explaining the mind.