Working on [through] something else

Classes have been keeping me very busy. It’s almost the end of the semester and I’m trying to manage my time to keep classes and research a priority, but it’s difficult. To be honest though, classes don’t make sense in their current form. Anyways, I’ll probably stop working on the LTASS stuff and switch trying to read papers instead.

Notes

This week I re-read Communication and cooperation in early infancy: A description of primary intersubjectivity (Trevarthen, C. 1979). I really like this paper as a large portion of the article is focused on the mother’s expression generation and infant mimicking process. In the paper Colwyn Trevarthen provides a very strong argument for studying the effort and commitment that a child and parent must undertake to develop consistent and reliable communication. In doing so, Trevarthen showcases the theory of intersubjectivity and the “real-life” interactions between the parent (in most cases the mother) and child. The primary theories and descriptions noted by Trevarthen are non-verbal communication mechanism infants express during various social interactions. The real-life interactions are 165 “staged” encounters, of which he uses to support such mechanism. With this evidence and past notable research observations (i.e. Piaget and the Papoušeks), it clarifies the magnitude of cooperation between infant and mother required to successful language development.

Best,
EO