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Meaning and Mind from the Perspective of Dualist versus Relational Worldviews: Implications for the Development of Pointing Gestures Article in Human Development · January 2013 DOI: 10.1159/000357235
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Original Paper Human Development 2013;56:381–400 DOI: 10.1159/000357235
Meaning and Mind from the Perspective of Dualist versus Relational Worldviews: Implications for the Development of Pointing Gestures Jeremy I.M. Carpendale Sherrie Atwood Viktoria Kettner Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Key Words Gestures · Infancy · Meaning · Pointing · Social development · Worldviews
Abstract Worldviews consist of preconceptions about the nature of mind, knowledge, and meaning, and these assumptions influence theorizing about human development and the interpretation of research. We outline two contrasting worldviews – dualist versus relational – and explicate the implications of such preconceptions for studying the development of pointing gestures. Pointing is a pivotal social skill that is an aspect of social understanding, as well as a foundational form of interaction for language. In studying the development of pointing it is possible to observe how infants develop the social skills required to convey meaning in human ways. Thus, this is an area in which to examine the nature and development of meaning, and an adequate conception of meaning is necessary for theories of language and cognition. We argue that dualist approaches have problems that can be avoided by adopting a relational worldview and the relational developmental systems framework that follows from it, which we suggest is a fruitful approach to theorizing about human development. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel
© 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel 0018–716X/14/0566–0381$39.50/0 E-Mail
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Jeremy I.M. Carpendale Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University 8888 University Drive Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 (Canada) E-Mail jcarpend @ sfu.ca
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Where we start from matters. The preconceptions on which theories of human development are based have far-reaching, and often overlooked, consequences. These assumptions set up problems, constrain possible solutions, and structure theories, as well as influence methodology. Rather than explicit assumptions, they are interrelated sets of presuppositions that constitute worldviews – ways of thinking that are not generally considered open to questioning. Worldviews are frameworks of precon-
ceptions that guide inquiry in human development and have implications for conceptions of knowledge, understanding, mind, meaning, and language [e.g., Jopling, 1993; Overton, 2010, 2013]. We trace the implications of adopting two contrasting worldviews for theorizing about human development by using research on the development of pointing gestures as an example. Pointing is an important test case because it involves the development of triadic interaction in which infants learn to coordinate the attention of self and others with aspects of the world. It is an early example of social understanding as well as communicative development, emerging around infants’ first birthday. Although pointing has been described as ‘‘the simplest social action’’ [Colle, Becchio, & Bara, 2008, p. 337], once mastered, it is a foundational form of interaction on which language is based because it involves conveying meaning in a human way. That is, it involves being aware of the meaning ones’ action has for others (i.e., anticipating how others will react to ones’ action), which does not seem to be required in many other animal communication systems [e.g., Mead, 1934]. Therefore, in studying the development of pointing it should be possible to observe the emergence of the form of meaning on which human languages are based. It is important to have an adequate account of meaning to understand language and human thinking because such thinking is about the world, and thus is based on a system of meaning. Pointing with the index finger is widespread, although not universal in adults across cultures [Wilkins, 2003]. However, some way to direct attention seems to be required in human forms of life and it is possible that pointing may develop in infancy and then be suppressed in cultures and situations where it is considered rude. Even though typically developing children regularly learn to point, this process is still controversial. This, we suggest, may be partially due to the role of worldviews in conceptualizing social and communicative development, as well as in studying such development. Theories of pointing and the interpretation of research in this area reveal the framework of assumptions concerning meaning and mind on which they are based. These worldviews are not based on empirical research. Instead, preconceptions structure the questions and interpretation of research, and they cannot be simply discounted through research because results are interpreted through such a framework [Lakatos, 1970; Overton, 2013]. However, these worldviews can still be evaluated in terms of their coherence and the validity of the assumptions on which they are based. We begin by introducing the dualist worldview, and then, in the second section, we trace the implications these preconceptions have for thinking about early infant communication and pointing gestures in particular. We describe positions but do not attempt to definitively characterize individual researchers because some researchers appear to adopt elements of different worldviews. We suggest that this results in contradictions rather than a coherent position, because we believe that these positions are, in fact, incompatible. In the third section, we discuss criticism of dualist approaches to the development of pointing gestures. As an alternative to dualism, in the fourth section, we outline a relational worldview and the relational developmental systems framework [Lerner & Benson, 2013; Overton, 2013] following from it, which avoids the problems present in dualism, and, we believe, should be more fully integrated into theorizing about human development. These approaches have a long history [e.g., Baldwin, 1906; Mead, 1934; Piaget, 1936/1963], and there is increasing recent interest in this sort of approach [e.g., Barrett, 2011; Carpendale & Lewis, in press; De Jagher,
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Di Palolo, & Gallagher, 2010; Hutto & Myin, 2013]. Then, in the fifth section, we outline a way of applying this way of thinking to account for the development of gestures such as pointing. Finally, in the sixth section, we consider the implications of these two worldviews for methodological approaches to early communicative development. The Dualist Worldview
The dualist worldview starts from the assumption of the individual mind as given and knowledge as representational. The family of approaches sharing these preconceptions is variously referred to as intellectualism, individualism, cognitivism, mentalism, or Cartesian-split-mechanistic approaches. The term split captures the idea of two pre-existing entities, such as nature and nurture or mind and body, which interact [Overton, 2006, 2010, 2013]. This is a common worldview for theorizing about human development and it starts from the individual mind taken as given and thus not explained [Jopling, 1993]. Minds are assumed to be private and inaccessible to others, and mental states are separate from, and underlie and cause behavior. It might be thought that such Cartesian views have been left behind in the dust of modern brain research. It might appear that neuroscience has resolved this dualism by putting everything in the brain, but these dualist assumptions are so deeply rooted that they still affect theorizing. The old view of mental states as causing behavior is still there: ‘‘mind/body dualism has been replaced by brain/body dualism, immaterial substance by grey glutinous matter, and the large part of the general structure of the Cartesian picture survives intact’’ [Hacker, 1997, pp. 16–17]. The dualist assumption of splitting mind from body is based on deep-seated, long-held intuitions. This view can be traced back to the preconceptions on which theories are based [Jopling, 1993; Overton, 2006, 2010]. The assumed split between mind and body has a long history [Ryle, 1949]. Hacker [1997] suggests that, The thought that a human being is a composite creature consisting of body and soul (or mind, or spirit) is an ancient one. It is bound up with our fear of death, with the craving for an afterlife in a happier world, with our grief at the death of our loved ones and our longing to be reunited with them. … This conception, in different forms, was articulated in the religious and philosophical thought of antiquity and the Middle Ages. It was given its most powerful philosophical expression in our era by Descartes. According to Descartes, a human being is composed of two distinct substances, the mind and the body. … In volition, the will brings about motions of the limbs. What passes in one’s own mind is immediately accessible to oneself by consciousness – one is invariably conscious of, and knows indubitably, what one is thinking, feeling or wanting. The minds of others are only indirectly knowable, by inferences from what they do and say. (pp. 14–15)
To illustrate this view of the mind, Mead [1934] used the metaphor of prisoners trapped in their individual cells attempting to figure out a way to communicate with each other. That is, when the individual mind is assumed to be present from the beginning, the problem individuals face is how to communicate with others. The long history of this view of the mind as the starting point can be seen in Saint Augustine’s Confessions in his description of himself as an infant attempting to communicate with others. He wrote that: Gradually I became aware of my surroundings, and wished to express my demands to those who could comply with them; but I could not, since the demands were inside me, and out-
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side were their fulfillers, who had no faculty for entering my mind. So I worked my limbs and voice energetically, trying to signal out something like my demands to the best of my little (and little availing) ability. [Wills, 2001, p. 39]
Augustine would not have been able to remember his infancy. Thus his description is based on observing infants and it is a reflection of his conception of the mind as always there, as the infant’s beginning point. This view of the mind is not an empirical finding; it is a preconception that precedes empirical work. However, once that beginning assumption is built into a theory its implications are far reaching. Based on these preconceptions – the mind is private and inaccessible to others, and mental states are separate from and cause behavior – the problem children are assumed to face in learning about the social world is figuring out other minds when all that they can see are bodies. This is known as ‘‘the problem of other minds.’’ That is, faced only with other bodies, infants must determine whether these bodies also have minds, and they must learn how to communicate with other people [Overgaard, 2006]. It follows from this that it is possible to understand others either at the behavioral level or the mental level. Implications for Conceptualizing Pointing from a Dualist Perspective
Implications for theorizing about human development based on the dualist worldview can be seen in the case of research on early communicative skills such as pointing. The view of the mind that follows from this worldview is cognitivism or mentalism. According to this mentalistic position, various skills involving coordinating attention with others, such as the use of pointing gestures, are made possible by infants’ understanding of others as intentional agents. Beginning with the individual mind means that communication must depend on skills in ‘‘reading’’ others’ intentions as well as the motivation to do so. Communication is conceptualized as requiring understanding others’ intentions, attention, and mental states [Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005]. That is, infants understand others as persons on a mental level, with attention that can be directed, and this insight makes gestures such as pointing possible [Tomasello, 1995, 1999, 2008]. For example, Tomasello, Carpenter, and Liszkowski [2007] defend ‘‘a rich interpretation of prelinguistic communication, that is, one that posits that when young infants point for an adult they are in some sense trying to influence her intentional/mental states’’ (p. 706). Tomasello et al. [2007] go on to claim that, ‘‘infants thus comprehend and produce their pointing gestures – basically from their first points at around 12 months of age – in surprisingly adult-like ways …’’1 (p. 715). The preconceptions about mind on which this dualist worldview is based mean that infants face the ‘‘problem of other minds.’’ The possible solutions to understanding other private minds are to assume that infants: (a) make inferences about other minds [e.g., Gopnik & Wellman, 2012]; (b) have innate knowledge in the form of a ‘‘computational system’’ [e.g., Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005] or innate theory [Gopnik & Wellman, 2012], or (c) introspect on their own mind and reason by analogy about others.
1 Although they do qualify this strong claim by acknowledging that such understanding is still “rudimentary,” it is not clear how to understand these contrasting claims.
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These theories (i.e., theory theory, innate modules, and simulation theory) are framework theories in the sense that they are situated between worldviews and particular theories. All three of these theoretical approaches are based on the same worldview, dualism, because they are all solutions to the problem of other minds. Although particular instances of such theories may be disproven, the core assumptions of the theory theory and the others cannot be disproven based on evidence, and the approaches can be, and have been, modified while retaining the core assumptions [Lakatos, 1970]. It is the potential solution of simulation that has influenced recent research on pointing. From this perspective, a possible solution to understanding other people is for infants to draw on their own inner experience in order to understand others. Tomasello et al. [2005] propose such a solution by stating that, ‘‘infants begin to understand particular kinds of intentional and mental states in others only after they have experienced them first in their own activity and then used their own experience to simulate that of others’’ (p. 688). Extending their own experience to others by analogy requires viewing others as like themselves. To solve this problem Tomasello [1995, 1999] initially relied on Meltzoff’s argument that neonatal imitation demonstrates infants’ innate view of others as like themselves [for a review and critique of this debate, see Carpendale & Lewis, 2006]. More recently, however, Tomasello and his colleagues have reconsidered this position because neonatal imitation has been observed in neonatal chimpanzees. Tomasello et al. [2005] speculate at this point that more deeply psychological levels of identification with others – of a kind sufficient to enable individuals to simulate the intentional and mental states of others on analogy with their own – depend crucially on the skills and motivations for interpersonal and emotional dyadic sharing characteristic of human infants and their caregivers. (p. 689)
The view of the mind assumed, with a split between mental states that underlie and cause behavior, means that other people can be understood either at the level of the ‘‘surface’’ behavior or at the ‘‘deeper’’ level of the underlying mental states. Tomasello et al. [2007] claim that 12-month-old infants understand others at the ‘‘deeper’’ ‘‘mental’’ level, not merely in terms of others’ surface behavior. They assert that ‘‘when pointing first emerges in human infants at around the first birthday, before the emergence of language, it already possesses these foundational components of mature pointing’’ and that infants’ pointing is at ‘‘a mental level involving an understanding of the intentions, attention, and knowledge of their partner’’ [Tomasello et al., 2007, p. 720]. There are criticisms of this approach from a tradition of developmental theorizing [e.g., Mead, 1934; Piaget, 1936/1963; Scheler, 1913/1954] as well as more recent work [e.g., Carpendale & Lewis, 2004, 2006, 2010, in press; De Jaegher et al., 2010; Zahavi, 2008].
Criticism of the Dualist Approach to Pointing A simulation position may appear to make sense intuitively because as adults it is possible to understand others in this way through reflecting on one’s own experience and reasoning through analogy about others. However, even though adults may be able to simulate, this still does not mean that this indirect and cumbersome process is the primary way of encountering others in everyday interaction [e.g., Aboulafia, 2011; Zahavi, 2008]. In fact, adults only occasionally resort to this way of thinking
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when easy, everyday interaction breaks down. Adults, having mastered a language, can have the experience of being able to introspect in the sense of imagining possibilities and considering how they would feel in such situations. That is, adults can conceptualize their experience in psychological terms. It is a step that goes unnoticed to impose this view of the mind on infants. If the adult ability to simulate is an outcome of development it cannot be the cause of social development. This would be putting the cart before the horse. The idea of simulation has been extensively debated and criticized for some time [e.g., Aboulafia, 2011; Carpendale & Lewis, 2004, 2006, 2010, in press; Müller & Carpendale, 2004; Scheler, 1913/1954; Zahavi, 2008]. The argument from analogy – that we see others as similar to us and thus we can understand others in terms of our own experience – has been criticized by Scheler [1913/1954] because it already presupposes what it is meant to explain. That is, in order to see reactions from others as expressive of emotions and thus as similar to her own experience, the child must already take these actions as expressive of emotions rather than as mere physical movements. In order for the argument from analogy to work, children would already have to assume that others have minds like themselves [Zahavi, 2008]. The simulation approach of Tomasello et al. [2005], according to which infants use ‘‘their own experience to simulate that of others’’ (p. 688), depends on a form of experience that is too sophisticated for infants of 9–12 months of age. The position is problematic because two meanings of experience are conflated. Infants are, clearly, embedded in immediate experience, but this is not available for understanding others. Instead it is experience in the adult reflective sense that could potentially be applied to understanding others [Baldwin, 1906, p. 138]. Tomasello’s argument requires that infants have experience in this second and more complex sense in order to apply this analogically to others. This meaning of experience is conflated with experience from an observer’s perspective in which an observer can say that an organism experiences something, but young infants cannot be assumed to have reflective awareness. Without reflective awareness such experience cannot be used in reasoning analogically about others. For example, infants begin acting intentionally around 9 months when they perform an action to achieve a separate outcome [e.g., Piaget, 1936/1963]. That is, they begin to have goals that are separate from the means to accomplish them. This does not mean, however, that young infants have an understanding of their own intentional action and attention that can be applied to others in order to understand others’ actions. Yet this is what is required for the argument of Tomasello et al. Adults can reflect on their own experience and posit that others might have similar experiences, but this only occurs once they have learned a language and can reflect on their own experience. The simulation position endorsed by Tomasello et al. [2005] is based on attributing an adult level of understanding, which depends on language, to infants before they can talk. It seems to require that infants can reflect on their own experience through some process that must be like introspection. If so, this position requires assumptions that are undermined by Wittgenstein’s [1953/2009] private language argument [see also Mead, 1934; Ryle, 1949]. What Wittgenstein meant by a private language is one that could not be taught to others because the meanings of the words are based on private connections between the words and inner mental entities that are inaccessible to others. This argument applies against the causal-psychological view of the mind according to which infants could experience mental states in a way that could be applied to others.
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The core of Wittgenstein’s [1953/2009] private language argument is based on his argument that meaning cannot be attached to any representation such as an image, word, or utterance because multiple interpretations are always possible [Goldberg, 1991]. Wittgenstein shows this by considering a simple language in which a builder and a helper use the utterance, ‘‘five slabs.’’ Even in this simple case the utterance could have various meanings such as a command or report or multiple other possibilities depending on the routines those people have established. This shows that meaning cannot be based on interpretation. Instead, meaning is based on shared experience in routine activities [Canfield, 2007]. This general argument about meaning is extended to the case of sensation words and equally applies to psychological terms [Chapman, 1987]. That is, children learn words like scared, want, look, and see, through learning about the relevant social situations. They can then use this language to reflect on their own experience, but introspection could not be the source of learning this language. Infants clearly attend to objects and events of interest, desire certain aspects of their world, and act to try to achieve their desires. That is, we do not deny mental states. But such mental states are not separate from the activity and do not cause the activity. Infants cannot be aware of inner states in an introspective sense. These activities, however, are the basis on which language about human activity can be built [Racine & Carpendale, 2007]. The dualist view of the mind as private and only accessible to the individual is built into our language, and we are led to it by the grammar of our language. When it is said that someone has a coin it implies possession of an object. When someone is said to have a pain or an idea it also implies possession and since this cannot be possession of an object it must be immaterial, inner, and mental. Whereas possession of an object is in the physical world, having an idea is conceived of as a separate mental, intangible world. Furthermore, unlike an object such as a coin, a pain or idea must be possessed by someone. And the nature of this possession must be private. That is, others could not have access to an individual’s pain or ideas [Hacker, 1997]. It follows from this dualist way of thinking about the mind that others could either be understood at the level of surface behavior, or at the ‘‘deeper’’ level of the mental states that are presumed to cause the behavior. As noted above, Tomasello et al. [2007] claim that infants’ pointing at about 12 months of age is at ‘‘a mental level involving an understanding of the intentions, attention, and knowledge of their partner’’ (p. 720). Others’ intentions, attention, and knowledge are all manifest in their activity. It is this activity that is understood. Once the activity is understood it is not clear what the mentalistic level of explanation adds. The split between the surface behavior and deeper mental levels is based on a preconception regarding the mind, and research is interpreted in this way, but this is a preconception that is not based on empirical evidence and it is not clear that there would be any empirical evidence that would decide this issue. A further issue that follows from taking a dualist approach is the nature of understanding. The view of understanding that follows from dualism is cognitivism, that is, the view that understanding is a sort of cognitive mechanism that pre-exists and is applied in particular cases [Baker & Hacker, 1984; Heil, 1981]. This view of understanding can be seen in the notion of ‘‘shared intentionality,’’ which is now a much-discussed concept [e.g., Tomasello et al., 2005]. This notion is drawn from philosophers of action where it is also referred to as ‘‘collective intentionality.’’ There is
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considerable debate in this area, making it difficult to derive a single position [see Racine, 2011]. Bratman [1992], for example, appears to focus on describing this important form of human cooperative activity, whereas Searle [2010] appears to take the goal as explaining this form of activity. Tomasello and colleagues have occasionally used the concept in a descriptive sense: ‘‘Shared intentionality, sometimes called ‘we’ intentionality, refers to collaborative interactions in which participants share psychological states with one another’’ [Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007, p. 121]. But they also take a shift that is natural from a cognitivist perspective from description to explanation in terms of the underlying cognitive mechanisms that make the activity possible, viewing shared intentionality as ‘‘an adaptation for participating in collaborative activities involving shared intentionality’’ [Tomasello et al., 2005, p. 690], ‘‘the underlying psychological processes that make these unique forms of cooperation possible’’ [Tomasello, 2009, p. xiii], or ‘‘a suite of social-cognitive and social-motivational skills that may be collectively termed shared intentionality’’ [Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007, p. 121]. Tomasello et al. [2005] make a critical, and questionable, move from a description of activity to taking shared intentionality as a cognitive skill that makes it possible for individuals to engage in such activity – a shift from description to explanation that follows from the assumptions of a cognitivist perspective. This approach results in a paradox. Although it is assumed that the understanding makes the behavior, such as pointing, possible, there is no way to independently assess the understanding separate from the behavior. From the perspective of Tomasello and his colleagues, infants have an understanding that makes pointing possible. But this understanding is only revealed by whether the infant does indeed point, and it cannot be assessed independently. Therefore, this is a redescription of the infant’s action in terms of a psychological mechanism, and this seems to result in a circular position [Bibok, 2011; Heil, 1981]. That is, when a child can point it is assumed that she has the understanding that makes this possible. This is not an empirical finding; it is an interpretation of behavior based on a set of preconceptions that are prior to research. The paradox from the cognitivist perspective is that it appears that infants must have social cognitive abilities already mastered in order to engage in communication. This is a version of the paradox articulated by Rousseau in 1755 [Wells, 1987]. That is, how could language originate if language is already needed in order to establish the use of words? Condillac had already suggested a way to resolve this apparent paradox in 1746 [Wells, 1987]. He argued that the first forms of human communication must have been self-explanatory in the way that the meaning of a threatening posture is clear [Wells, 1987]. That is, it is based on a natural reaction. This is the way the “arms up” gesture presumably develops [Lock, 1978; Service, Lock, & Chandler, 1989; see also Plooij, 1978]. These are patterns of activity that naturally emerge in typical human ways of living together such as an infant reaching toward a caregiver and learning that this results in getting picked up. This alternative explanation is consistent with the relational worldview that we turn to next. The Relational Worldview
In contrast to dualism, the relational worldview and the relational developmental systems framework that follows from it begins from social processes and offers an explanation for the origin of the mind [e.g., Mead, 1934]. The relational developmen-
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tal systems framework [Lerner & Benson, 2013; Lerner & Overton, 2008; Overton, 2010, 2013] has much in common with Bickhard’s [e.g., 2008] interactivism, as well as other approaches such as enactivism [McGann, De Jaegher, & Di Paolo, 2013; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991] and radical enactivism [Hutto & Myin, 2013].2 Relational developmental systems approaches focus attention on relations and interactive emergence rather than on pre-existing levels (e.g., genes and environment, mind and world, self and other) that then interact [e.g., Hendriks-Jansen, 1996]. At the biological level, the relational approach overlaps with developmental system theory, which deals with biological development and the relations between the organism and the environment [Griffiths & Tabery, 2013; Oyama, Griffiths, & Gray, 2001]. This ‘‘attempt to do biology without … dichotomies’’ [Oyama et al., 2001, p. 1] means that complexity does not pre-exist in either level or entity in the dichotomies they reject, and that instead it is essential to think of interactive emergence of complexity [e.g., Gottlieb, 2007; Hendriks-Jansen, 1996]. Interactive emergence is central to constructivism in the context of the development of knowledge. That is, a constructivist view of knowledge follows from the relational developmental systems framework. For Piaget, cognitive development extends biological evolution, and constructivism can apply to understanding cognitive and social cognitive development. That is, knowledge does not pre-exist in either the child or the world but instead develops as children learn through their actions on the world. Children learn what they can do with the world, its interactive potential, and this applies to human forms of life, the social, emotional, and cultural world in which children develop. Children learn to anticipate how others react to their actions and in this way they learn the meaning their actions have for others [Mead, 1934]. From the perspective of the constructivist and developmental systems approach we take, it is not possible to clearly separate the multiple biological and social levels because they mutually interact bidirectionally. The relational developmental systems framework provides an alternative approach to theorizing about human development that avoids the problems associated with dualism because it does not start with the assumption of a split between mind and body. For Mead, Piaget, and Wittgenstein there is no split to start with. To be clear, we are not denying mental states, but rather a conception of them as underlying and causing behavior, as assumed in the cognitivist approach [e.g., Wittgenstein, 1953/2009]. The starting point is activity, and mental states and observable behavior are both aspects of activity [Mead, 1934]. In contrast to the dualist assumption that the mind makes communication possible, from the constructivist perspective it is communication that makes the mind possible, and mind is explained as emerging within human social relations. That is, Mead did not begin with the mind as assumed but instead
2 Chapman [1991] argued that theories of self-organization are a way to approach development that draws on aspects of Pepper’s [1942] organismic, contextualist, and mechanist worldviews, because these theories attempt to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the principles of biological growth and evolution. Chapman further argued that Piaget’s theory could be considered an incipient theory of self-organization. In considering “root metaphors” for such approaches Chapman [1991] noted that a system seems the obvious choice, but systems can be static because they lack a temporal dimension; therefore, it is necessary to refer to developmental systems or dynamic systems. Instead, he suggested that the metaphor of process based on Whitehead includes a temporal dimension as an intrinsic characteristic. The notion of process is also present in Bickhard [2008] and Overton’s [2010] contrast between substance versus process approaches.
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explained the development of the mind beginning from the social process. Children develop forms of communication of increasing complexity within this social process. Communication and then language emerge from social activity, and mind and the ability to think reflectively then become possible through applying this to the self. From this perspective, knowledge is constructive, not representational. Children learn what they can do with the world; they learn the interactive potential of their action on the physical and the social world [e.g., Bickhard & Terveen, 1995; Piaget, 1936/1963, 1937/1954]. There is no clear separation between the social and physical worlds; objects are already treated in the context of cultural views [Rodríguez, 2009]. From such an action-based approach, infants first develop a practical or sensorimotor knowledge of others through social experience [Bibok, Carpendale, & Lewis, 2008]. Infants learn that people respond in different ways compared to objects and they learn what to expect from the social world [Baldwin, 1906]. Infants learn about the interactive potential of their social world, their caregivers, in terms of patterns of interaction [Chapman, 1999], or in Piagetian [1936/1963] terms, schemes. Thus, a detailed historical description of the gradual emergence of progressively more complex forms of interaction provides an appropriate form of explanation [Bibok et al., 2008; de Barbaro, Johnson, & Deák, 2013; Hendriks-Jansen, 1996]. The paradox of communication encountered in the cognitivist worldview is not a problem for the constructivist view. Communication in early infancy begins in a functional but not yet in an intentional sense. When a newborn infant cries, naturally expressing her emotional state, this functions to communicate the infant’s discomfort to caregivers because the crying is meaningful to them even though the infant is not yet aware that she is communicating. Meaning is present in the social relations before infants become aware of it. As caregivers respond to the infant’s crying over time the infant can learn the meaning this action has for others, that is, she can learn how others typically respond and she may start to expect certain responses from her caregivers. Infants do not “read” intentions in the sense of inference as in the cognitivist worldview, but rather they understand others in the practical or sensorimotor sense in which they learn to anticipate patterns of activity and understand goals as the endpoint of acts. Understanding is based on learning skills and learning to anticipate the outcome of actions. Researchers working on infants’ early social development have grouped various social skills together with the concept of joint attention because they all seem to involve coordinating attention. But this results in combining skills such as gaze following and pointing that are very different, potentially overlooking important distinctions crucial to explaining development. Pointing, once mastered, involves conveying meaning. Gaze following may do so in some cases, but this is not necessary and is often unlikely, such as when this activity is observed in domestic goats [Kaminski, Riedel, Call, & Tomasello, 2004]. Unlike joint attention, the concept of joint action [Brownell, 2011; Rodríguez, 2009] makes it possible to understand how meaning is conveyed. Infants learn about routine social activities such as feeding, washing, and being picked up, as well as other regular activities around the home. Infants learn to anticipate what is coming up next, the outcome of the action. They understand the activity to the extent that they can anticipate the outcome [Stone, 2013]. If they desire that outcome, they may try to initiate the action pattern. This tendency to attempt to re-engage reluctant social partners in enjoyable cooperative games has been observed in young children as well
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as in bonobos [Pika & Zuberbühler, 2008]. For example, a 13-month-old toddler wishing to initiate the routine of going outside was observed to bring his shoes to his father and raise his foot in anticipation of the activity of putting on shoes [Stone, 2013]. As another example, a 14-month-old toddler walking to the park beside his uncle approached a curb and held out his hand to his uncle walking beside him for help in stepping down over the curb. Within the context of this routine activity the meaning of the toddler’s action was clear. It was a request to hold a hand for support. Later, at dinnertime, the child was being fed by his mother, but he then took the spoon and fed himself. After a few minutes he handed his spoon to his uncle, clearly expecting to be fed. These are well-known social routines. This toddler knew what is to be expected in these enjoyable social situations and therefore communication was possible. This fits with the view of meaning as based on a history of interaction in shared routines [Canfield, 2007; McDonough, 1989, 2004; Mead, 1934; Wittgenstein, 1953/2009]. Infants learn the meaning their actions have for others through becoming able to anticipate how others will typically respond to them. Infants come to understand the interactive potential of their world and they become aware of communication that has been occurring. They develop skill in conveying meaning based on shared practices [e.g., Mead, 1934; Vygotsky, 1978; Wittgenstein, 1953/2009]. Some of these social activities will vary somewhat across families and cultures, but social acts are part of being human and some action patterns are likely to be common across cultures due to the nature of human physical embodiment [Canfield, 1995, 2007; Carpendale & Racine, 2011; Carpendale & Wereha, 2013; Saari, 2004; Wittgenstein, 1953/2009]. For example, requesting seems to be a social act that would be expected to emerge across cultures given the nature of human infants’ physical embodiment. That is, human infants are born relatively helpless [Portmann, 1944/1990], and this results in a social environment with caregivers in which infants develop. This is a set of conditions in which it is likely that requests would emerge [Carpendale & Lewis, 2012]. Due to infants’ embodiment they will reach toward what they want, such as their caregivers. The problem space infants encounter is similar to that faced by chimpanzees kept in captivity and cared for by humans. In this situation chimpanzees tend to develop gestures to make requests [Leavens, 2011]. The beginning of the social act can become a gesture to initiate that act [Mead, 1934]. For example, there is general agreement that the “arms up” gesture, which develops early at about 9–10 months, is learned through parents’ responses to infants’ natural reaction of reaching toward them [Lock, 1978; Service et al., 1989; see also Plooij, 1978]. That is, this gesture develops from a natural action and reaction pattern that functions to communicate, and infants gradually become aware of how their caregivers respond to their action. This is a form of request, although it is dyadic rather than triadic, as in requests for an object. In attempting to request an object, a 9.5-month-old infant was observed to try to move his mother’s arm toward the desired object. Gestures for requests may develop through caregivers responding to an infant’s action of reaching toward a desired object. For example, a 13-month-old infant sitting in a high chair raised her arm and opened and closed her hand. Her mother responded to the gesture as a request for more of the bread and jam she was eating [Carpendale & Carpendale, 2010]. Imitation would play some role in learning conventional gestures such as waving, but this cannot be a complete explanation because infants still have to learn how to use the action of waving in the appropriate situation in order to accomplish a social act.
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Through experience, infants develop a web of potential patterns of interaction or routines. These routines form the foundation on which language can be based. For example, infants may learn to use words such as want along with gestures for requests, and words may gradually replace such gestures [Canfield, 2007]. Language then allows for the development of a reflective and verbal form of knowledge that enables children to talk about and think about concepts such as the mind and mental states [e.g., Canfield, 2007]. This potential for reflective thought arises through the social process. Self-awareness and reflective thinking become possible through individuals becoming aware of themselves by taking the perspectives of others [Mead, 1934]. The process we have described, however, does not mean that infants only understand others on a behavioral or ‘‘surface’’ level. Infants learn to understand others’ actions, which are intentional and do not consist of ‘‘surface’’ behavior caused by separate mental states. Rather than being forced to choose between mentalism and behaviorism, which are both based on the dualist worldview, we, instead, take a third option based on a relational worldview, beginning from the infant’s experience with the action of others. Intentions, interests, desires, and so on are aspects of this action. These are not separate mental states that underlie and cause the action. Following Mead [1934] and others, the goal or intention is the end point of the action. When we say that infants develop a practical understanding of others, we are not deciding between whether they either understand others’ behavior or the mental states causing the physical movements. We reject the causal-psychological view of the mind with mental states causing behavior. Instead, infants are coming to understand others’ actions, which involve both. To question mental states as separate from and as causing behavior is generally viewed as behaviorism. But behaviorism shares the assumption of a split between behavior and mental states and rejects mental states. Beginning with activity does not entail behaviorism [e.g., Hendriks-Jansen, 1996]. The position we are suggesting does not fit into the Procrustean bed of either mentalism or behaviorism – both are based on a dualist perspective of splitting mental states and behavior. We now apply this general approach to the development of pointing gestures. Pointing from a Relational Developmental Systems Perspective
From the perspective we take, gestures develop within shared routines. This can also be referred to as common ground, which Tomasello et al. [2007] acknowledge has an important role in understanding how pointing gestures can convey meaning, but this acknowledgement contrasts with the way they begin their article by stating that understanding a pointing gesture requires some ‘‘serious mindreading’’ (p. 705). No amount of ‘‘mindreading,’’ however, is sufficient for understanding the meaning of a gesture. Recognizing the importance of common ground requires a shift in thinking about meaning. Even an adult level of social cognitive ability would not be sufficient to understand the meaning others attempt to convey without a shared history of interaction. Adults with decades of experience with pointing may still not understand particular pointing gestures if they lack the relevant shared experience. Explaining the development of communicative pointing from the relational perspective does not involve the problem of how infants learn that others have mental states and attention that can be directed. From the perspective we endorse, pointing may emerge in various ways, but one common pathway is from a non-communica-
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tive orienting action [Carpendale & Carpendale, 2010]. Rather than developing as a conventional gesture such as waving, we argue that it is likely that pointing is based on a natural reaction, such as exploring objects by touching, which may be linked to differences between humans and chimpanzees in the morphology of the index finger. Due to the nature of the human hand, the index finger is associated with the pincer grasp and seems to be well suited for exploring close-by objects [Povinelli & Davis, 1994]. The extended arm and hand configuration may become associated with children’s directedness of attention, and so may become a manifestation of their own attention toward more distant objects or events of interest. This has been referred to as ‘‘pointing for the self’’ [e.g., Liszkowski & Tomasello, 2011], but this description in early development is likely to assume too much. It is more neutrally described as a non-communicative orienting response. Early in development, children are not intending to communicate, because they do not persist in attracting attention, although the action may function to communicate in the sense that others may respond to it. Children learn how others respond to their action, they learn the meaning their action has for others, and in so doing learn to use the action as a communicative gesture. In other words, pointing is initially a manifestation of infants’ attention towards objects or events of interest in the environment. Parents tend to interpret these acts in a social way and respond to them accordingly. That is, infants’ skills in interacting with others develop in particular situations as they learn how others respond to their actions [e.g., Bates, 1976, 1979; Kaye, 1982; Lempert & Kinsbourne, 1985; Leung & Rheingold, 1981; Lock, 1978, 1992, 2001; Mead, 1934; Müller & Carpendale, 2004; Newson, 1974; Shinn, 1900; Vygotsky, 1978; Werner & Kaplan, 1963]. Thus, the noncommunicative use of the pointing hand configuration would be expected before infants master pointing as a social act. Infants as young as 3 months of age and continuing during their first year have been observed holding their hands in the canonical pointing hand configuration, but this does not function as a social act [Blake, O’Rourke, & Borzellino, 1994; Fogel & Hannan, 1985; Masataka, 2003]. The key point here is that communication and social understanding emerge in this early social process. They are not assumed to start with [Carpendale & Carpendale, 2010; Carpendale & Racine, 2011; Mead, 1934]. We believe that pointing and requests of various forms would develop given typical human ways of living, which includes others responding to infants [Carpendale & Wereha, 2013]. If these conditions were not present then such gestures would not develop. The different functions of pointing may develop somewhat separately in different routines as caregivers respond to children in different ways depending on the social setting. If an infant is pointing to a light, for example, which does not seem to be a request situation, the caregiver may simply talk about the object. Alternatively, if the infant is pointing to a close-by attractive object or food, the caregiver may interpret it as a request. Understanding the gesture will depend on the particular situation. Once a child has mastered an effective action pattern or social scheme, such as a pointing gesture, she may try it out in other social situations [Piaget, 1936/1963]. Given the two ways of thinking about how early gestures such as pointing develop discussed in this article, the next question is: how should this early communicative development be studied? It is often assumed that methodology is independent of theory, but this is not correct [Danziger, 1985]. In the next section, we turn to the implications of the two worldviews for methodology.
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Implications of Worldviews for Methodologies
Either of the two frameworks discussed can be employed to interpret research based on a variety of methodologies. However, there are some methodologies that are commonly used in the dualist framework that may not be so well suited for the constructivist and relational developmental systems framework. Much of the recent research on pointing has focused on characterizing the skills of 12-month-old infants who are already pointing [e.g., Liszkowski, Albrecht, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2008; Liszkowski, Carpenter, Henning, Striano, & Tomasello, 2004]. Although this approach can be important for clarifying ambiguities in interpretations of infants’ skills, given that these infants have at least some rudimentary skills at pointing before being selected for such studies, this research logically cannot tell us much about how pointing develops during infants’ first year. It is generally agreed that any methodology has advantages as well as disadvantages. Thus, alternative methods should also be considered. If communication emerges in natural patterns of interaction that develop within dyads, then in addition to other methods, careful description of the phenomena is needed. Earlier research consisted of classic diary studies [e.g., Darwin, 1877; Piaget, 1937/1954, 1945/1962, 1936/1963; Preyer, 1890/1973; Stern & Stern, 1909/1999], but there are fewer recent studies using this methodology [e.g., Acredolo & Goodwyn, 1985, 1988; Adolph, Robinson, Young, & Gill-Alvarez, 2008; Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975, 1976; Canfield, 2007; Zinober & Martlew, 1985]. In studying the development of pointing the problem is to record observations of sufficient density, that is, close enough in developmental time as infants are in the process of mastering the skill, as well as of sufficient breadth across various situations. Both of these requirements are difficult to achieve in lab studies because of limited resources and the problem of overtaxing the families involved in the study. For this reason, detailed descriptions from a naturalistic perspective would be useful in documenting the gradual emergence and differential of such activity patterns. An advantage of diary studies for early infant communication is that this approach can capture observations occurring in the home that would be difficult to elicit in labs. Video diaries would also be helpful, but since some behaviors of importance may be rare and fleeting, diaries could be used to extend and supplement video recordings. Methodologies should fit the topic of study and diary studies can be used to chart the actual development of gestures rather than their presence or absence. An additional reason for adding diary studies to our research methodologies concerns the links between methods and theories. The possibility that methods might conflict with and constrain theories is rarely raised [Danziger, 1985]. However, according to our view, forms of communication develop and become fine-tuned within particular parent-infant dyads. Therefore, the general process through which infants come to master gestures may be common across dyads, but some idiosyncratic gestures may develop within particular dyads. That is, somewhat different patterns might be expected to emerge in different dyads. The typical methodology in psychology, however, of averaging across a large sample could eliminate any differences in the pathway of development within particular dyads. In other words, the methodology would stack the deck against the theory. From the perspective of the relational developmental systems and constructivist family of approaches, multiple case studies would enable examining potential differences in development between dyads, as well as looking for similar pathways among dyads.
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One disadvantage of diary observations is that participating parents require the motivation and talent to record observations of sufficient detail to enable the researcher to understand the sequence of development. Parents may include their own interpretation, but they must describe the situation and their infant’s behavior in detail to justify this interpretation and the researcher will interpret the observation. That is, the observations must be sufficiently detailed in order to be able to stand alone. The observations these studies provide hold the potential to keep the field honest by revealing the actual diversity of phenomena before they are constrained by theoretically derived categories such as proto-imperatives and proto-declaratives, which, although useful, can result in overlooking the variety of social situations in which infants use pointing gestures. Experimental procedures involve setting up certain types of situations, which elicit certain types of gestures, but this does not tell us about the other ways in which infants may use pointing gestures at home, as well as in many other situations they encounter. In method sections authors sometimes note that only pointing gestures to the stimuli were coded, leaving the reader to wonder what other communicative gestures end up on the cutting room floor. In order to be aware of the diversity of what needs to be explained it is important to avoid just searching where the methodological lights are brightest. This is especially crucial in early phases of research when it is essential to form an adequate description of what it is that must be explained. Parents can be asked to record significant changes in the way their infant communicates, as well as to provide brief summaries, and some examples of common ways of communicating. Parents notice such differences: ‘‘As anyone who is in constant contact with the same young child can attest, the novel developmental event is easily noticed even in the midst of domestic chaos’’ [Braunwald & Brislin, 1979, p. 39]. Observations can be collected with ad libitum sampling [Martin & Bateson, 1993], that is, without predefined time sampling periods [Gómez, 2010]. This is appropriate for recording rare, but important, events [Martin & Bateson, 1993], and it also emphasizes the most advanced form of the infant’s communication [Braunwald & Brislin, 1979]. Time sampling at regularly spaced intervals would not be appropriate and could result in missing the rare events that are crucial for the study of the emergence of a behavior [Braunwald & Brislin, 1979]. We believe that diary studies could be important components of research on early infant behavior in order to collect information on the diversity and complexity of the behavior, as well as to avoid missing important changes and stepping stones that might be overlooked in experimental studies that involve observations at preset time intervals in constrained situations. Careful analysis of video recordings could also provide detail regarding transitional forms of infant-adult interaction [de Barbaro et al., 2013]. Conclusion
We have explicated two worldviews – dualist and relational – and traced their implications for theorizing about human development using the example of research on the development of pointing. Pointing gestures have attracted a great deal of research attention as well as controversy regarding how they develop. We have argued that the dualist position is problematic for a number of reasons, and that the relational developmental systems framework avoids these problems. We encourage a bet-
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ter integration of relational and constructivist thinking into theorizing in developmental psychology. Finally, we traced some methodological implications that follow from adopting particular worldviews. Even those researchers who take the most extreme dualist positions and propose genetically determined modules acknowledge the fact that these modules do have to develop. This is the thread that if pulled would unravel such positions and move them closer to a relational developmental systems framework. Dualist approaches do discuss interaction, but it is interaction between pre-existing entities; this view overlooks the possibility that interaction is primary in creating such entities, and that they cannot be so readily separated. That is, the action is in the relations [e.g., Carpendale, Hammond, & Atwood, 2013]. As Bates [1979] noted, we are mesmerized by the beauty of the final product of the symbol-using mind, but to understand this development it is necessary to see how it is put together with ‘‘tape and safety pins’’ [Bates, 1979, p. 1] – the messy and complex details of development. With pointing this should be possible. It is a social practice that once mastered involves conveying meaning in a human way. Because gestures lack the complexity of syntax to obscure the process, pointing represents an opportunity to observe the development of skill in conveying meaning. These are observations of ‘‘the natural history of human beings; …, which have escaped notice only because they are always before our eyes’’ [Wittgenstein, 1953/2009, p. 415]. Conceptions of language and human cognition are based on assumptions about meaning. Thus, understanding the development of this skill is crucial in grasping what it is that makes us human. Acknowledgement We thank Celia Brownell, Stuart Hammond, Jack Martin, and Wanda Power for comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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