The Construction of Executive Function in Early Development: The Pragmatics of Action and Gestures

Abstract

The position I take in this paper is that investigation of the construction and development of executive function (EF) and cognitive self-regulation must give children the opportunity to behave with initiative, as the agents they are. It must be based on children’s goal-directed behaviours and the challenges they face to achieve their own goals from the last third of the first year of life. It must consider children’s interests, the ecological validity of the situations, and the social context. Investigation into the origin and early development of cognitive self-regulation must be firmly anchored within a developmental framework. I will suggest that such developmental framework is provided by the functional turn developed in the School of Geneva in the 1970s and its influence in the Pragmatics of the Object perspective. According to this pragmatic approach actions and (private) gestures are central in the emergence and construction of EF.

An integrative model of parent‐infant communication development

“…Symbolic communication enables people to express intention or meaning through sound or gesture (Gomez, 2007; Mundy & Newell, 2007). Emerging at the end of infants' first year of life (Cohen & Billard, 2018; Orr & Geva, 2015), symbolic communication is thought to rely on cognitive development that allows infants to understand symbolism, action and consequences, and violation of expectancies (Rodriguez, 2022). The neural bases of these emerging abilities depend on the experience and maturation of cortical areas (Ahmad et al., 2023), especially the prefrontal cortex, which receives signals from multiple regions (Grossmann et al., 2010; Kolb et al., 2012).…”

“…Then, after 2–3 months, infants begin to express their needs and to interact with their surroundings using smiling (Lavelli & Fogel, 2005) and following in a more controlled manner, which changes the nature of the interaction (Gredeback & Daum, 2015). The next step, indicating a change in the interaction mode, happens between 6 and 9 months, when infants begin to use symbolic gestures (Rodriguez, 2022) and joint attention (Mundy, 2018), and can gain distance from their caregivers, taking a much more active behavioral role in the interaction (Hodges et al., 2020).…”

“…The mechanisms that enable mature simultaneous multilevel communication develop gradually during infancy and toddlerhood (Rodriguez, 2022), raising the question of how early primal communication is formed and how it is supported. To understand more thoroughly communication in general and caregiver‐infant social interactions in particular, we must consider the role of diverse automatic responses and behaviors and their interplay in laying the foundation for symbolic communication bids.…”

Conceptual Commitments of Constructivism in an Age when Truth Matters

“…Focusing on theoretical and methodological shortcomings of mentalistic approaches to social cognition, they argue that the meanings of acts are constituted in shared histories of interactions -not mindreadingand that over time interactions may become shared practices. The value of the process perspective is emphasized by Rodríguez (2022) (this issue) by outlining that it is important to incorporate children's goals from a developmentally sensitive perspective into the assessment of their skills related to EF. Killen et al (2022) (this issue) argue that children's early conceptions of social inequalities and rights impact their adult conceptions.…”

Interaction Dynamics with Babies During Shared Reading Practices

“…Additionally, key theoretical aspects within the Pragmatics of the Object perspective draw from Peirce's semiotics, who views signs as systems that evolve into the endless generation of semiosis. These insights are highlighted in works by Rodríguez (2022), Rodríguez & De los Reyes (2021), Rodríguez & Moro (1999), and Rengifo-Herrera & Rodrigues (2020).…”