New Perspectives in Early Communicative Development

Jacqueline Nadel, Luigia Camaioni

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138085442
• eBook ISBN: 9781351618700
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Since the 1970s researchers in the communicative development of infants and small children had rejected traditional models and began to explore the complex, dynamic properties of communicative exchanges. This title, originally published in 1993, proposed a new and advanced frame of reference to account for the growing body of empirical work on the emergence of communication processes at the time.

Communication development in the early years of life undergoes universal processes of change and variations linked to the characteristics and qualities of different social contexts. The first section of the book presents key issues in communication research which were either revisited (intentional communication, imitation, symbolic play) or newly introduced (co-regulation, the role of emotions, shared meaning) in recent years. The second section provides an account of communication as a context-bound process partly inspired by theoretical accounts such as those of Vygotsky and Wallon. Included here are new studies showing differences in communication between infants compared with those between infants and adults, which also have important methodological implications.

With perspectives from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics and educational psychology, the international contributors give a multi-disciplinary account of the expansion, variety and richness of current research on early communication. This title will be of particular interest to those involved in child development and communication research, as well as for social, educational and clinical psychologists.

Part I

General processes

Chapter 1

Two principles of communication

Co-regulation and framing

Alan Fogel

The purpose of this chapter is to establish a continuous process model of communication; a model that takes account of both sequential and concurrent events and that recognizes the creative and co-constructive features of ordinary social communication. Two principles will be elaborated: co-regulation and framing. In addition, a comparison will be made between these principles and related constructs found in the developmental and social psychology literature. The concepts are further elaborated in Fogel (1993).

MODELS OF COMMUNICATION: DISCRETE STATE OR CONTINUOUS PROCESS?

Discrete state model

From a traditional information-processing perspective, communication is said to occur if a receiver changes behaviour following the transmission of a signal (Smith 1977). Information in a communication is understood to be the content of the signal, the message that flows from one location to another along some channel. This model of communication as messages flowing from place to place is based on early theories of information processing in which the computer served as the basic metaphor (von Neumann 1958). The faithfulness by which the channel transmits information, the signal-to-noise ratio, can be measured as the probability that the message will cause a change in the receiver over repeated instances of transmission of the same message (Shannon 1963).

This model of communication, developed in the early 1960s in the field of electronic and computer communication, has been with us in developmental and social psychology ever since that time. The basic unit of measurement used to characterize sequences of interaction, for example, between adult and child or between peers, is the transitional probability: the likelihood that any particular action will be preceded, followed or accompanied by another action of the partner (Bakeman and Gottman 1986; Sackett 1979). It is typical in this research literature to speak of ‘adult’ or ‘infant’ actions as discrete signals, presumed to cause a change in the communicating partner.

This way of speaking about and studying communication is a fundamental part of our Western philosophical and research tradition, based on the Platonic notion of the objective reality of events and things in the world, a reality that we as perceivers must work to understand, to get the messages as faithfully as possible. If we can take a step back from the pervasiveness of our world view, it is easier to see that the idea of communication as a set of discrete signals transmitted along channels between senders and receivers is nothing more than one model of the communication process.

In this chapter, I suggest that this discrete state model of communication is not a very good description of human social interaction, however well the model may apply to electronic communication. If this is the case, then it can be argued that a complete reliance on measures of frequency and probability of occurrence in communication research is perhaps a distortion of the communication process and may not ultimately lead to a clear understanding of how development change occurs via social communication.

Continuous process model

To understand why a discrete state model of communication is inadequate, consider a very simple communication episode: the infant hands an object to the mother. In the discrete state view, the infant signals a readiness to give the object by holding out the object in his hand. The mother responds to this message by holding out her hand upturned and ready to receive the object, which in turn communicates to the infant the discrete message that it is now possible to release the object into the mother’s hand.

On a careful examination of such a sequence, I found that this discrete state description is an over-simplification of what occurs (see Fogel 1990, for a series of photos that illustrate the following verbal narrative). By observing such sequences in slow motion video, we find that both mother and infant are continuously moving toward each other, toward the point of mutual contact with the object. This point in space is not a pre-set location, but is dynamically constituted by the continuous co-regulated actions of the partners. As the mother extends her hand, so does the infant. The actual transfer of the object is a smooth, mutually co-ordinated social action. During the entire object exchange sequence, it is impossible to determine who is the ‘sender’ and who is the ‘receiver’ of signals since both the mother’s and infant’s hands are moving at the same time and the movement is continuous.

A more appropriate model of this communication episode must take account of communication as a continuous process system, rather than as a discrete state system (Fogel 1993). The main distinguishing feature of a continuous process system is that both participants are continuously active, and that each has the opportunity to modify their own actions immediately and without waiting for the partner to complete a turn or produce a discrete signal. In other words, when one examines communication in some detail, it is nearly impossible to say who initiates a communication, nor who responds to whom.

Consider, as another example, the meaning of a smile. From the perspective of a discrete state model, smiling may communicate discretely different messages – depending upon the context – of joy, of achievement, of friendliness, of politeness and of embarrassment. The message is presumed to be ‘in’ the smiler, who employs subtle differences in facial expression, gaze direction and body movement to enhance the probability of sending a particular message clearly.

From the perspective of a continuous process model, smiles and all expressive movements occur in a social situation in which the partner is a co-active participant. That co-participation may alter the smile at the very moment when the smile is spreading across the person’s face. For example, if the smiler feels enjoyment, and the partner at that moment appears distant or disapproving, the enjoyment may fade to shame (Tomkins 1962).

It is not only the case that the expressions are active social constructions, but the emotions that are associated with those expressions may also be constructed in part with respect to the active co-participation in a continuous social process (Fogel, Nwokah, Dedo, Messinger, Dickson, Matusov and Holt 1992). It could be argued that smiles and other expressions are discrete because they are universally recognizable as meaningful configurations of facial action. On closer analysis, however, the smile reflects the action of at least four different facial muscles in the lower and middle part of the face and the corresponding actions of the eyes, head and body (Ekman and Friesen 1978). Although the contractions of these muscles are relatively rapid and mutually co-ordinated, the smile must nevertheless be assembled from its parts as a continuous process of movement.

A continuous process of mutual social co-ordination requires that there be a continuous unfolding of individual action that is susceptible to being continuously modified by the continuously changing actions of the partner. I call this continuous mutual adaptation process co-regulation (Fogel 1992, 1993). In the following, I give examples of co-regulation and the implications of the concept for the study of the development of communication.

CO-REGULATION

Examples of co-regulated communication processes

Among adults, groups of standing individuals orient themselves toward each other for the purpose of engaging in a conversation by forming a circle pattern, with individuals facing toward the centre. This arrangement, called the F-formation, is dynamic since individuals continuously move as they shift their heads and postures or change places. The F-formation may rotate or reassemble in different locations (Kendon 1990). This circling pattern is not maintained with an explicit plan, nor is it likely to be the result of imitation processes. Rather, individuals mutually adjust their positions so as to ensure equal conversational access to all group members and the F-formation emerges spontaneously as a regular pattern.

Other research on adults suggests that partners can be rather flexible in the ways in which they use their communicative actions. Discourse research shows that individuals will use a variety of continuous devices for maintaining each other’s attention during conversation (Heath 1984). For example, individuals can shift their posture, move their hands, change in duration and intonation contours of words, change the durations of pauses between words and sentences, and the like.

If words were simply signals containing discrete units of information, this creative contouring of timing and intonation patterns would not be necessary. From the perspective of a continuous process model of communication, words are composed from continuous movements of the mouth, throat and tongue. Speaking individuals are not forming words as cultural reflexes, rather they can alter the intensity-by-time contour of the sound as a way of co-regulating with the social partner. Thus, speakers routinely use continuously varying features of action to participate in communicative processes such as ensuring joint attention, adding emphasis or emotion, or changing the communicative function of the word or phrase.

Similar patterns have been observed during child-peer and parent-child interaction, as partners use the continously variable features of their action to enter into mutually co-ordinated discourse. Adults and children coregulate by continuous monitoring of attention and quality of action using continuous variations in timing such as pausing and hesitation, glances, postural adjustments and missed opportunities for taking a turn.

Defining co-regulation

Co-regulation is a social process by which individuals dynamically alter their actions with respect to the ongoing and anticipated actions of their partners. During co-regulated communication, actions are emergent from the constraints of the body (its shape, size and possibilities for movement), by expectations, by actions of the partner, and by the cultural setting.

As a consequence of co-regulated interaction, a consensual social frame is created and elaborated over time. Co-regulated frames are coherent and repeatable patterns in a communication system. Peek-a-boo is a frame composed of a repeating theme of hiding and revelation. Such regularities suggest that there is a set of discrete rules that individuals are following in the execution of their actions. In my view, rules do not guide behaviour. Rules are inferred by observers, they are convenient metaphors that help us describe or label the regularities (Fogel, Nwokah and Karns 1993). Rather, action is continuously created through co-regulation and patterns emerge as individuals constrain each other’s degrees of freedom for action.

Co-regulation involves creativity within consensual frames. Frames are creative because they are being continuously elaborated by the participants. In peek-a-boo, partners can change roles either by being the one who hides or the audience, they can cover their own face with an object or they can cover the partner’s face, the timing of the hiding and revealing can change between turns. In co-regulated communication, creativity is characterized by a stance of openness to the partner, a willingness to allow events to unfold and to be shaped by a continuous process. The regularized features of the frame contribute to partners’ ability to attend to and contribute to the creation of the game.

Relationship of co-regulation to other concepts of communication

The concept of co-regulation refers to the dynamics of the communication process, as co-action that is continuously variable and mutually adjustable. In the literature of social and developmental psychology there are a large number of other terms that are similar to co-regulation, but they do not entirely capture these fundamental features.

One example is the term interactional synchrony that has various definitions and usages. According to some, interactional synchrony refers to an exact and precise temporal simultaneity of the beginnings and endings of actions between partners (Capella 1981; Condon and Sander 1974; Kendon 1970; McDowall 1978). Condon and Sander (1974), for example, suggested that infants make subtle changes in the speed and direction of their body movements in synchrony with the phonemic changes of adult speech; this was later refuted, however, because of methodological problems, and the claim of precise temporal synchrony has never been systematically established for any form of human interaction (McDowall 1978).

Other definitions of interactional synchrony do not require precise temporal simultaneity. Collis (1979) uses the term to describe when one partner anticipates the actions of the other. During mother-infant interaction, for example, mothers can often predict – based on behavioural cues and participation in prior communication frames with this infant – the direction to which the infant will next look. Based on this anticipation, she can synchronize her behaviour with his or hers by naming the object to which the infant looks, talking about it or gesturing toward it. Frame-by-frame analysis of video and film records of mother-infant interaction reveals that there is an average lag between onsets of infant’s and mother’s behaviou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Jacqueline Nadel and Luigia Camaioni
• Part I General processes
• Part II Communication in different social contexts
• Name index
• Subject index