14 Beginnings of cultural learning






THE FORMATIVE PROCESS OF SOCIETY:
The Transition from Natural to Cultural History,
at The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies ZiF
(Scientific organizer: Günter Dux),
University of Bielefeld 17-19 Nov. 1994.






by Stein Bråten and Cowyn Trevarthen






Introduction: Instances of early interplay as
indicative of infant intersubjectivity


Drawing upon infancy research findings during the
last 25 years this paper concerns the nurture and
nature of (proto)conversational competence and
perspective-taking for the child's entry into
culture. Our emphasis is on social-emotional
co-ordination and on the intersubjective and
dialogic nature of the developing mind. We
postulate the essential foundation structure for
human intersubjectivity as innate and already
complex in the earliest phase of postnatal life,
manifested, for example, in these episodic
occurrences (presented on video or overheads in
the talk)::




*1 Premature infant (at 32 weeks' gestational
age) in duet with father (recorded by van Rees &
de Leeuw);


*2 11-days-old on the nursing table in interplay
with mother (recorded by Bråten);


*3 6-week-old in protoconversation with her
mother (recorded by Trevarthen).




They engage emotionally to constitute a
subject-subject dyad in a mutual pleasure and
excitement for communion, exhibiting perfectly
timed co-ordinated patterns of turn-taking and
mutual attunement of gestures. From
micro-analyses of vocal and other features of
such infant-adult engagements, Trevarthen (1977,
1979) has found evidence of an innately grounded
intersubjectivity.




Inherent dyadic structure: The virtual other
mechanism


In order to account for these very complex
behaviours and the delicate emotionally regulated
engagement between infant and companion
(instanced in *1 - *3) we must assume human
infants to be endowed with a cerebral system --
probably organized within sub-cortical, brainstem
nerve cell networks -- that is prepared to
connect with and respond adaptively to that
peculiar variety of vocalizations, gestures and
bodily movements which human companions can offer.



















An explanation of this connective capacity has
been offered by Bråten (1986/88a, 1988b) in
terms of a 'virtual other' mechanism: the
newborn is endowed with a dual cerebral system
with circuits that give rise to the immediate
co-participation of a virtual other, a
non-specific companion perspective that
complements the bodily self perspective with the
operational efficiency of an actual companion
perspective. In virtue of its inherent companion
space with a virtual other that invites inclusion
of actual others, the developing mind recreates
and transforms itself in the same coherent
circular format in these two alternating
self-other organizing modes:




(i) engagements in (proto)dialogue with actual
others;


(ii) self-engagement (in externalized or internal
dialogue with the virtual other).




The episodic occurrences *1 - *3 are instances of
(i). Early instances of (ii) are self-imitation
and engagement with 'transitional objects'
(Winnicott 1953), and -- later in ontogeny --
so-called "ego-centric speech" and
self-conversational thought, sometimes manifested
in our muttering to ourselves.






Levels of intersubjective attunement:
perspectives as felt, taken and simulated


The dyads exemplified by *1 - *3 turn triangular
in the secondary mode of intersubjectivity when
objects in the world (around 8 or 9 months) are
brought into focus of joint attention and
emotional referencing. The primary mode of
affectively tuning to and relating to others in
felt immediacy -- in the lived momentary sense of
Einfühlung and Erlebnis -- is later in ontogeny
supplemented (not replaced) by a higher-order
mode of relating to the world and others in it in
representational mediacy by virtue of generalized
means of symbolic representations and mental
simulations (in the symbolic and self-reflective
sense of Erfahrung).




Experimental perturbation of (proto)conversation
and affect attunement


Among experimental results that serve to
illustrate different modes of relating to self
and the other with respect to intersubjective
reciprocity and its emotional co-ordination, are
these examples:


*4 Mothers and two-month-olds: Double-video
experiments reveal reciprocity and different
reactions in the two-month-old and the mother
when unwittingly faced with a replay of the
companion from the previous live
protoconversation (Murray & Trevarthen 1985,
1986). In the unperturbed sequence they
demonstrate primary intersubjective attunement in
the format of (i). In the perturbed sequence,
reacting to the replay replacement the infants
resort to self-comforting with signs of distress
in the format of (ii). When the mothers are faced
with a replay replacement, they continue to talk,
now in an imperative manner, to the replay child
which they now construct and simulate,
illustrating an advanced capacity beyond the
level of primary and secondary intersubjectivity.


*5 Mothers and nine-month-olds: When objects are
brought into play at the level of secondary
intersubjectivity, inviting a sharing of
perspectives and joint emotional referencing, the
adult will vocally accompany the child's playing
in affect attunement, with shared activation
contours felt by the child. When mothers then
upon Daniel Stern's request force themselves to
get out of tune (which some of them find very
hard) the infants invariably stop playing and
turn to look at the mother. Here the felt sharing
of 'vitality affects' in affect attunement is
revealed upon its break-down (Stern 1985).




*6 Students in perturbed task communication:
Paired students in experiments with Blakar's
(1973) 'map design' are handed maps they
believe to be identical, except for the route
marked on one of the maps. The task is to
communicate that route to the other, sitting
face-to-face, prevented from viewing the source
map with the route. As the maps actually are
different, they run into trouble and react in
different ways. One of the reactions is to resort
to simulation of the other's mental processes
from a reversed perspective (Bråten 1974). Here
again, like the mothers in the perturbed sequence
of the double-video experiment (*4), appears to
be revealed an ability to mentally simulate
others, achieved at an advanced level of
intersubjectivity that perhaps may be termed
"tertiary".




Levels of intersubjective attunement and
understanding in early ontogeny


Primary (from the first months): direct
sensitivity to the actual others' expressions of
feeling in intimate subject-subject contact.
"Dialogic closure" (Bråten 1988b) in
protoconversation is sustained by communion of
emotions. In months 6 - 9 the first ritualized
"protosigns" are learned in play. (Trevarthen
1974, 1990a).




Secondary (from about 9 to 18 months): objects of
joint attention and emotional referencing to
objects brought into play; elevation of the
shared topic of meaningfulness in joint
awareness; emergence of protolanguage and
cooperative use of objects (Trevarthen & Hubley
1978). Deferred imitation as imitative learning
(Meltzoff 1988; Tomasello et al. 1993).
Perspectives are felt in joint attention and
re-enactment upon objects.




Tertiary2 (achieved between 2 and 6 years):
perspective-taking in virtue of symbolic
representations and -- later -- the slow
achievement of abilities for recursive mental
symbolic simulations and self-other dialoguing as
distinguishing characteristics of the human mind
(Bråten 1973a, 1982b; 1988b). Asymmetric
(instructed) learning and symmetric
(collaborative) learning become operative
(Tomasello et al. 1993). Perspectives are
simulated by virtue of imagination or models of
others' minds, and the child is able to attribute
to others a belief which the child knows to be
false.




Comparative and distinguishing characteristics:
the human mind in culture


Comparing cultural learning in human children
with learning in enculturated chimpanzees,
Tomasello et al. (1993) finds that enculturated
chimpanzees seem to exhibit the simpler form of
imitative learning and demonstrate simple
perspective-taking skills. Byrne (1994) has found
evidence of imitative learning of complex skills
of leaf-gathering among mountain gorillas,
attained by the three-and-half year old, and
Gómez (1994) examines attention contact in
nonhuman primates as an indication of
intersubjectivity. But no evidence of recursive
symbolic and dialogical simulations at a more
advanced level has been found. .




The social-emotional roots and the uniqueness of
self-dialogical consciousness


We stress the importance of the social-emotional
roots and nurture of the development of
dialogical competence and consciousness. The
emotions supported in affectionate engagements
between adult and infants, and later, between
peers, are, we conclude, essential to the
regulation of normal brain development and to the
development of the mind's dialogical and creative
consciousness. Emotions are not merely
responsible for the natural control of
instinctive appetites and aversions that serve
immediate survival of the body or give regularity
to the baby's feeding and sleep-wake cycles.
Emotions that generate the expression in the
separate brains of mother and baby can come
together in a confluence of affect that develops
an organization of its own -- an organization
moreover that is also reflected in the self-other
organization of the developing mind.


The shifting between dialogical competence and
consciousness manifests itself in intersubjective
attunement at various levels -- from confluence
of affect at the primary level to advanced
self-other simulation and constructions at a more
advanced level involving internal self-creative
and dialogical circles of complementary
self-other perspectives.




Primordial and advanced societal forms:
Communitas, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft


The instances *1-*3 reflect one of the defining
characteristics of the primordial societal form
of Gemeinschaft (Tönnies 1912) or Communitas
(Turner 1975), entailing I-You or
We-companionship. This paves the road for
advanced level construction of the cultural
lifeworld that consists of contemporaries
(Mitwelt), predecessors (Vorwelt) and successors
(Folgewelt) conceived as types (Schütz 1932),
that is, for the meaningfully constructed world
that transcends the immediacy of the present.


1 Preliminary summary, prepared with Colwyn
Trevarthen, of a talk at the symposium


2 Note added 1999 by S.B. in the present Sigma
volume: Colwyn Trevarthen and I have been in
disagreement about the 'theory-of-mind'
implications indicated in the definition (my
wording) of this level, and, consequently,
whether or not it makes sense to designate this
as 'tertiary' intersubjectivity. See,
however, his chapter and my introduction and
concluding chapter in the Cambridge University
Press volume (Bråten (ed.). 1998: 1-46; 372-82),
offering a synthesizing solution.