Part IV




FROM COMMUNION AND ALTERCENTRIC MIRRORING IN
INFANCY




Examining infancy research findings of
protoconversation, imitation and prosociality in
laboratory, hospital, nursing and home
conditions, the essays in this part address these
questions: What may such findings tell us about
domains or levels of intersubjective communion
and understanding in the child's communicative
development, and how do they relate to steps in
cultural learning and evolution? (essays nos 14
and 18). How may we account for infant-adult
protodialogue in the first months of life and for
infant reactions to perturbation of such
reciprocal engagements? (nos 13, 14 and 15). What
kind of processes and mechanisms may be involved
in infant imitation, including neonatal imitation
and early imitational learning in face-to-face
situations (no 15), and how may we account for
occurrences of infants and toddlers affording and
reciprocating caregiving -- and most critically,
todlers' abusing others? (nos 16 and 17).


With some unavoidable overlaps and repetitions,
the essays in this part reflect some talks and
public lectures given in the period 1987-99.
following my postulate of an inborn virtual-alter
mechanism (the prologue, this volume). By way of
inferences, collaterals, observations, and
examination of experimental results, it led inter
alia to the identification of learning by
altercentric mirroring as if the infant learner
were hand-guided by the model even in
face-to-face situations (essays nos 15 - 18). The
independent discovery of 'mirror neuron' by
Rizzolatti and his group (referred to in essay no
4 and again in nos 17 and 18) indicates partial
neurophysiological support.


Paper no 14 is an abstract, written jointly with
Colwyn Trevarthen, of a talk on early cultural
learning at a ZiF-symposium in Bielefeld 1994,
which we never got around to write out more
fully. However, in a lecture (reflected in essay
nor.18) on the occasion of another ZiF-symposium
(again organized by Günter Dux) I follow up on
cultural learning also in evolutionary contexts,
venturing speculations about the selective
advantage of child capacity to learn to cope by
altercentric mirroring of adult models in early
homo erectus conditions.


Appendices report from my chimpanzee
observations, and from some crude efforts to
explore by "neural net" simulations competing
viewpoints in perception.