Introducing Trevarthen

A Guide for Practitioners and Students in Early Years Education

Sandra Smidt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138221055
• eBook ISBN: 9781315411279
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Colwyn Trevarthen's seminal work has earned him a place alongside the most prestigious thinkers, writers and researchers into human development. He is universally acknowledged as the pre-eminent expert on foetal, neonatal and early childhood development. Sandra Smidt examines the impact of his scientific training, linked to his interest in how filmed episodes of mother or father/baby interactions might inform his understanding about early sociocultural development, encouraging us to view the human infant with fresh eyes and realise how purposive human behaviour is from the start. His interest in and collaborations with others introduce the reader to the idea of communicative musicality which, together with physical movement, lead the child to acquiring language. This book focuses on the earliest years of life and makes complex ideas accessible and applicable to a range of settings.

As well as providing a glossary of key terms and an introduction to the life and work of Trevarthen, the book is split into three parts: From foetus to neonate, The remainder of the first year of life and From one to three. Each part offers case studies, practical examples, draws on recent research evidence and includes helpful pointers for students, labelled 'Think about this'. This essential guide to his work will be of interest to professionals working with children in early childhood settings and to undergraduate students training to become early childhood professionals.

Section 1
From foetus to neonate

When I started writing this book I could not decide exactly where to begin. Trevarthen is very easy to understand face to face and in the presentations he makes to conferences. But since he writes primarily for an academic audience his writing is sometimes difficult to decode. He often writes in collaboration with colleagues and sometimes this adds to the complexity of the language. And because of the breadth of his experience and interests he sometimes uses a very specialist vocabulary.

After grappling with a range of choices I chose to structure the book so that we are looking at Trevarthen’s key ideas about development from gestation through to the age of three. So my focus in this first section will be initially on the foetus but then on the infant in the first weeks after birth. As you will see when you read the first small chapter in this section, Trevarthen is not mentioned. He, like the foetus, must wait.

Chapter 1.1
From conception to birth

In this first chapter of the section on foetus and neonate we look at what is known about the development in utero in the first, second and third trimesters. This chapter offers a very simplified version of what happens between conception and birth.

The first trimester

You will know that it takes nine months for a baby to develop inside the mother’s womb. We all start out as a microscopic ball of cells that keep on dividing and dividing until the ball of cells has organised itself into three layers known as germ layers. There is an inner layer called the endoderm; a middle layer called the mesoderm; and an outer layer called the ectoderm. It is from these three germ layers that all the organs and tissues of the body will come. The ectoderm will form the outer components of the body, such as skin, hair, and mammary glands, as well as part of the nervous system. Following gastrulation, a section of the ectoderm folds inward, creating a groove that closes and forms an isolated tube down the dorsal midsection of the embryo. This process of neurulation forms the neural tube, which gives rise to the central nervous system. During neurulation, ectoderm also forms a type of tissue called the neural crest, which helps to form structures of the face and brain. The endoderm produced during gastrulation will form the lining of the digestive tract, as well as that of the lungs and thyroid. For animals with three germ layers, after the endoderm and ectoderm have formed, interactions between the two germ layers induce the development of mesoderm. The mesoderm forms skeletal muscle, bone, connective tissue, the heart, and the urogenital system. Drawn from the work of Kate MacCord (2013).

This all happens through cell differentiation. The cells receive signals from your genes in your DNA inside each cell. These genes operate something like an instruction manual: they tell the cell where to go and what to do. Some will become heart cells, others brain cells and yet others nerve cells. Once a cell has been differentiated it cannot change into a different kind of cell. What happens next is called organogenesis and this is where the differentiated cells organise themselves into tissues and organs. In 1972 Maturana coined the term ‘auto-poesis’ made up of the words ‘auto’ meaning self and ‘poeisis’ meaning creation or productivity to define living systems as self-creating (Maturana & Verala 1972/1980). By being self-creating, or autopoeitic, each living system can be said to have and be a way of ‘knowing’. Cognition, in the broadest sense of the word, is synonymous with living.

It is in the second month or weeks five to eight that changes become apparent. By week five the embryo changes shape and size. A tiny bump that will become the head appears, together with limb buds that will become arms and legs. The sense organs like the eyes and ears begin to develop. The beginnings of the circulation, nervous, digestive and respiratory systems appear and, at around six weeks, the heart starts pumping blood around the body. In week eight sexual differentiation begins with gonads developing into testes or ovaries. How big do you think the embryo is by the end of this trimester? My sources say about the size of a raspberry.

The second trimester

The second trimester covers months four, five and six (or weeks 13–26). At the beginning of this trimester the tiny foetus has her own fingerprints and her teeth are beginning to develop. There is evidence that she is already moving the muscles in her face to show facial expressions. Her brain has four cerebral lobes and by the end of the fourth month her endocrine system has starting producing most of the hormones we produce as adults. The foetus is becoming more and more active, moving her limbs and head and the mother can feel all of this. By the beginning of the fifth month (weeks 18–22) most of the basic development has taken place. What is needed is refinement. Much of this relates to that most amazing of organs – the eye. During this month the retina develops the distinct layers needed for seeing. And there are refinements in the brain as well as it grows in complexity. Neurons carry on differentiating to take on different jobs within the brain. Whilst this is taking place the body of the foetus is adapting to the mother’s daily cycles and this means that its body movements, heart rate and breathing patterns follow daily circadian rhythms. Hair begins to grow on the scalp of the foetus. This trimester is a period of rapid growth and the foetus will be about the size of a peach halfway through it.

The third trimester

Much of the development has been completed but certain refinements are still needed to prepare the foetus for leaving the womb. During the seventh month the wrinkly foetus begins to add layers of fat, and the eyes, which now have eyelashes, begin to open. As the next month starts the photoreceptors in the eyes begin to be able to distinguish light from dark. Only after birth will vision improve so that the infant can see colours and learn to focus. Developments are taking place in the ears too so that the foetus can differentiate high from low sounds. Also during this month the brain and nervous system protect themselves by forming layers of an insulation-type of material called myelin. This is laid down around the axons of the neurons and its function is to increase the speed with which neurons can communicate with one another. The lungs begin to develop air pockets called alveoli. It is these that will help the baby breathe after birth. Inside the womb the baby is moving – touching the wall of the uterus, kicking, bending and stretching her legs, sometimes turning somersaults. She is almost ready to be born and it has been suggested that she has become the size of a decent pineapple.

Summing up

You will appreciate that this is a very simplified guide to the development of the foetus. It is an overture to the rest of the book. If you are very fortunate you might find a copy of the book The Facts of Life: A Three-Dimensional Study by Jonathan Miller and David Pelham published in 1984 by Jonathan Cape Limited.

Chapter 1.2
From moving to meaning

Wordless narratives

In this chapter we look at how the newborn baby sets out to engage with others in her world – usually the mother – using all the things she has been practising in utero: looking, listening, touching and moving.

Thinking about movement

Trevarthen and Delafield-Butt adopt a stance that is very different from that of most traditional educationalists (Delafield-Butt & Trevarthen 2013; Trevarthen & Delafield-Butt 2015). But then they are both primarily scientists rather than educationalists. They insist that we are more like animals than has been recognised and that to understand how we have developed as a species requires us to acknowledge this. If we accept that we are animals, it is clear that we are the most mobile, imaginative and cooperative; the most talkative and emotionally expressive. The importance of this for us is that we can learn about ourselves by knowing more about animals. This is an understanding rooted in biology and physiology. If you are particularly interested in this do read the fascinating article written by Trevarthen and Delafield-Butt entitled Biology of Shared Experience and Language Development (2013).

We know that both animals and humans move for a purpose. They need or desire or fear something and are able to coordinate their muscle actions to achieve their goals and to protect themselves from harm. When you think about it even the simplest act – perhaps to reach out and touch something – must be governed by thinking ahead and then carrying out a sequence of actions to achieve something or avoid trouble. So movement is both intentional and goal-directed. Some actions are automatic responses, for example to pull back from pain. Even whilst still in the womb, the foetus moves from general movements to more focused ones.

Think about this

By ten weeks’ gestational age the foetus is able to move her limbs separately from her torso and her hand movements may become directed at parts of her own body. In the second trimester we noted that the foetus could make purposeful movements. The use of four-dimensional ultrasound reveals that in the third trimester the foetus makes facial expressions showing evidence of feelings and forms positions of the mouth as if in preparation for speech sounds. So there is evidence that whilst the human infant is still in the womb she makes expressive movements and gestures suggesting both self-awareness and intelligent planning.

Is there anything about this finding that surprises you? What surprised me was that expressive movements and gestures occur so early in development.

In more recent work, Delafield-Butt and Trevarthen (2015) say that the movements of animals and humans are organised into graceful, discreet and rhythmic sequences, each with its own purpose or goal. If you have ever had the joy of seeing animals in the wild you will understand what they mean by this. I was lucky enough to have been born in South Africa where trips to see game were regular and wonderful annual events and I can remember crying at the beautiful sight of an owl swooping out of a night sky. The significance of all this for us is that movement is goal-directed, purposeful, expressive and built up of a sequence of carefully coordinated actions. Why this matters to us is that this is the foundation for what Trevarthen goes on to tell us about the relationship of movement to narrative. Our gestures enable us, from very early in life, to create a cultural world, unique to human beings where motives are shared in narrations of movement expressing our thoughts and feelings. Trevarthen is quoted as saying that ‘gestural expressions, with their innate timing and combination in narrations, are the foundation for learning all the forms and values of the elaborate cultural rituals and the conventions of art and language’ (Gentilucci & Corballis 2006: 949–960).

Tiny narratives and cultural tools

The human infant recognises her mother as someone essential to her life before birth. She has, after all, heard this voice over the nine months growing inside the womb. The powerful evidence that has been gathered through the analysis of newborn babies communicating with the mother or other caregiver tells us that the baby is born with the expectancy of human company.

Trevarthen and others have gathered wonderful examples, illustrating this expectancy of human company.

For example, in 1986, Gunilla Preisler filmed five-month old Maria, born blind, conducting her mother singing. The films of Maria show her lying on her back whilst her mother is bottle feeding her and singing her two Swedish songs which the baby has come to know well. From time to time the baby joins in by waving her left hand in graceful waves. Using sophisticated recording and measuring devices it was seen that the baby’s ‘conducting’ preceded a change in the emotional quality of the mother’s singing by 300 milliseconds. It was as though the baby was actually conducting the mother in her song.

This is the first example in this book of a film clip analysed by Trevarthen and you will encounter other examples throughout the book and may well encounter this one again because the analyses are so complex and varied they are cited again and again.

Trevarthen uses the word narrative for the mini-dialogues that the newborn infant engages in with her mother or other caregiver. The word is used with a particular meaning to illustrate that the baby is using all the means she has in order to join with her mother through an act of communication. The act itself may take only seconds but it is the start of the baby becoming a member of her own community and culture. We find in Trevarthen’s work the influence of Bruner, who wrote in depth about the role of narrative in our lives and insisted that narrative is the way in which we organise our experiences and our memories, account for our reasons for doing things or not doing them, make our excuses or explanations and hold our beliefs and values. He said that narrative or ‘story-telling’ is one of the most powerful forms of human communication and added that narrative structure is built into social interactions even before the development of spoken language. In analysing the seemingly simple protoconversations newborn babies have with their mothers, Trevarthen notes that the mother vocalises and the baby responds, but the baby clearly does not yet have any spoken language. So we have compositions of wordless communication, which Trevarthen calls narratives. Bruner called a proto­conversation (analysed and named by Mary Catherine Bateson) a little narrative.

In our narratives we both develop and use what Vygotsky called cultural tools, which may be real tools but also the things made from and with these tools. So cultural tools can be things like pens and pencils, books and computers, violins and paintbrushes. The cultural tools may be universal but more commonly are particular to the culture in which they are developed. The narratives we make are made within our cultures and transmitted culturally through the use of cultural tools and the people we encounter. Narratives can be seen as versions of a reality that we make up.

Think about this

Gratier and Trevarthen (2008) tell us that:

Narrative is most often considered a language-based way of telling a story, and studies of verbal narrative, including both written and oral forms of “telling”, are typically concerned with elements of structure, coherence-producing linguistic devices ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• A new vocabulary: a glossary of new or unfamiliar/specialist words
• Introduction: the life and ideas of Colwyn Trevarthen
• SECTION 1 From foetus to neonate
• SECTION 2 The remainder of the first year of life
• SECTION 3 From one to three
• Bibliography
• Index