Levels of Coordination in Early Semantic Development

Abstract

In this paper, we show that early interaction can be seen as comprising of strands of coordinated activity on multiple levels and timescales. In tracing the development of such multilayered organization from an embodied and situated perspective, we underscore the role of the reliable presence of the structured environment, an enacted niche, supporting the segregation and integration of participatory interaction strands. This perspective allows us to study the development of social coordination not only in terms of development of individual skills but, crucially, as a change of participatory emergent patterns, a transformation in engagement. We illustrate this approach with some results from the collaborative research project on Early Semantic Development (EASE). Using qualitative microanalysis combined with quantitative dynamical time series analyses, we were able to demonstrate several layers of such organization: from local forms of coordination, such as basic informational coupling within a modality, and the emergence of specific social affordances, to more global co-action structures such as affect imbued ‘action arcs’ – dynamic action contours with a beginning, build-up, climax and resolution, co-enacted by participants. Pointing to future work, we underscore the potential of these global structures to contribute to the emergence of more complex interactions, such as composite activities within ‘pragmatic frames’, narratives, or language.

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

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A Dynamic Systems Framework for Gender/Sex Development: From Sensory Input in Infancy to Subjective Certainty in Toddlerhood

“…I am presuming that these operate at a scale above the level of the connectome, but that they reflect connectome function. Designing new studies that look for the emergence of gender/sex recognition skills while measuring specific brain activity, using methods that combine qualitative microanalysis at multiple levels of dyad interaction with quantitative assessment of "action arcs" over developmental time, could inform us about what areas of the brain become involved with gender recognition (moving from midscale to microscale analysis) (Kuhl and Rivera-Gaxiola, 2008;Raczaszek-Leonardi et al, 2019).…”

Language and Movement Synchronization in Dyadic Psychotherapeutic Interaction – A Qualitative Review and a Proposal for a Classification

“…Within the theoretical framework of embodied cognition (Cuffari et al, 2015) coordination in interaction is a key issue. Drawing from developmental psychology (Nomikou et al, 2016;Ra ¸czaszek-Leonardi et al, 2019), artificial intelligence research and linguistics (e.g., Rohlfing et al, 2020), a theory on the intersubjective constitution of meaning is emerging which enables us to conceptualize processes of change in psychotherapy.…”