Cintia Rodriguez

Executive functions (EFs) embrace a range of cognitive control processes that allow us to control and direct our own behavior, thoughts, and emotions and to develop complex responses to difficulties. Standardized tasks commonly used to investigate EFs are reviewed. Here, a study is reported of the first challenges that children set for themselves in everyday life situations from the end of the first year in the 0–1 classroom of various early years schools. The influence of educational situations, based on the possibilities of action that the teachers offered the children, and the materiality made available were analyzed. It was found that the children faced challenges from the end of the first year of life. These challenges involved the everyday uses of objects and instruments, uses which were difficult and significative for them: (i) rhythmic-sonorous canonical uses, (ii) canonical uses, and (iii) symbolic uses. These challenges were identified in structured and semi-structured educational situations in which the children could choose the objects, what to do with them and how.

Conceptual metaphor theory showed, from embodiment, the importance of metaphor as a cognitive process. This influential theory assumes the existence of primitive but powerful mental structures called image schemas. In this paper, we conduct a critical inquiry about these structures from the developmental perspective of the pragmatics of the object and show they have serious problems. Taking the CONTAINER image schema as a case, we discuss the plausibility of image schemas in early childhood. We suggest that children do not interact with objects as if a basic and generic CONTAINER cognitive structure preexisted. Instead, in everyday life, they use “container” objects to fulfill very different functions. As object function is construed by children's participation in triadic child-adult-object experiences through semiotic mediation, we propose image schemas are not natural or direct, do not exist in early childhood, and are a developmental, pragmatic, and cultural product. As empirical illustration, we analyze a child-mother-objects interaction at home.

For decades, the literature on the emergence of triadic interactions considers the end of the first year of life as the time when children become able to communicate with others intentionally about a referent. Prior to that, children only relate in dyads, either with someone else or with an object. However, several researchers claim that referents are not naturally given in human communication and that they need to be established in interaction with others. In this study, we focus on earlier triadic interactions initiated by adults, when young babies still require an adult to bring the material world within their reach. In these early triadic interactions , ostensive gestures (with the object in the hand) are one of the first means of enabling the establishment of shared reference. Such gestures are easier to understand since sign (gesture) and referent (object) coincide. We conducted a longitudinal study with 6 babies filmed at 2, 3 and 4 months old in interaction with their mothers and a sounding object (a maraca). We analyzed different communicative initiatives by the adult and the child's responses. The results show that children come to understand the adult's communicative intention gradually through interaction. Adults include children in organized communicative " niches " based on ostensive actions, both through ostensive gestures and demonstrations of the use of the object. Consequently, the first shared understandings between adult and child take place around the object and its uses. Rhythm is a powerful tool used to structure the interaction. Eventually, adults provide space to children to actively interact with the sounding object themselves. These results highlight the importance of considering ostensive actions as a communicative tool that favors joint attention and action. They also bring some light to the interdependence between a child who actively perceives and acts, and the structured situation that the adult organizes for them.

In developmental psychology pointing gestures are widely accepted as the gesture that par excellence allows shared reference ( Cyrulnik, 2002; Liszkowski, Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello, 2006), and as the basic form of gestural reference ( Leavens, Hopkins & Bard, 2008; Pika, 2008). However, in semiotics, it is ostensive gestures that are considered to be the first instance of active signification, that is, gestures where an object occupies a prominent place as an instrument of communication ( Eco, 1976). In this paper, coming from the pragmatics of the object perspective ( Rodríguez & Moro, 1998), we argue that it is not pointing but ostensive gestures that come first. Specifically, we argue that: (1) ostensive gestures are gestures; (2) a developmental understanding of gestures suggests that children understand and produce ostensive gestures before pointing gestures, and adults produce ostensive gestures with objects in a shared space with the child at a very early age long before pointing gestures; (3) a theoretical and pragmatic conceptualization of objects beyond their “physical” level is required. Objects are cultural products with public functions; as a consequence, objects are also powerful instruments of communication between people, especially during the first years of life, and not simply the setting that surrounds the communicative event. Finally, we discuss the implications of these notions for developmental psychology, going beyond the declarative and imperative functions. We discuss three new functions of ostensive gestures: (1) for oneself with an exploratory and/or contemplative function, (2) private with a self-regulatory function in order to solve a problem, and (3) to another with an interrogative function.

Adults mediate the relationship between material reality and children, according to functional units of cultural relevance. This paper explores early development of semiotic systems in infants, analyzing rhythmic, sonorous and melodic components, which enable adult-child interaction with and about objects. The triads (with sonorous and non-sonorous objects) was studied longitudinally at age 2, 4 and 6 months. We propose that rhythmic, sonorous and melodic components conformed one of the basic semiotic systems upon the adult's action relies (through gestures and uses of objects) in order to segment and organize objects in the world. Likewise, children actively respond to these presentations and seek sounds for themselves when they are able to interact with the object more autonomously.

Se presenta un estudio ideográfico de seguimiento de un bebé con riesgo de alteración en el desarrollo. Entre los 9 y los 16 meses de edad se ha registrado en vídeo la conducta espontánea del sujeto en el entorno del hogar en situaciones de interacción diádica (sujeto-sujeto) y triádica (sujeto-objeto-sujeto). Para el análisis de datos se establecieron 14 categorías observacionales, basadas en la literatura sobre desarrollo típico y desarrollo alterado en los Trastornos del Espectro Autista. Los resultados obtenidos muestran signos de alarma en el desarrollo en todas las edades en las que ha sido estudiado en: seguimiento de mirada, uso de gestos y conductas de atención (y acción) conjunta. Sería muy aconsejable, introducir la categoría de Usos de Objetos: usos no convencionales, convencionales, y atípicos- en los instrumentos para la identificación de los Trastornos del Espectro Autista. Las conclusiones principales señalan la necesidad de seguir ahondando en el conocimiento de conductas discriminativas desde el primer año de vida, capaces de alertar sobre un desarrollo alterado.