An action unit’s contribution to consciousness and cognition : prospective control and making joy

Paper describing an action unit’s contribution to consciousness and cognition

Containment and reciprocity in biological systems : a putative psychophysical organising principle

The stuff of life, the living substance that is common to all biological organisms, is the aqueous society of biochemical activity ongoing in every cell in every living body. The basic biochemical ‘reactions’ of life are largely similar with variations of a theme played out in different cells living in different environment, e.g. the core biochemical metabolic processes of all life likely stem from an ancient, early-earth ancestor (Smith & Morowitz, 2004). However, even more common to life than shared biochemistry are the basic structural properties of all cells and all living organisms into complexes of compartmentalised units. In this paper, I will argue there are common feelings driving the generation of these ubiquitous structures in nature and that these feelings may constitute one of several primary forms of feeling in living systems

Stereotypical movements

A ‘stereotypical movement’ denotes a movement reproduced in a standardised form. The term is used in two fields, in movement science and in medical assessments of pathology. The former recognises the occurrence of regular patterns of movement across individuals expressed at regular points in development, such as the pre-reach in early infancy. The latter specifies a pathological form of repetitive movement by one individual symptomatic of, for example, autism. This entry explores the inter-individual use of the term in movement science and touches on ongoing work to better classify and quantify stereotypical movements for better psychophysiological understanding of action development, and possible sensitive measures of them

Theories of the development of human communication

This article considers evidence for innate motives for sharing rituals and symbols from animal semiotics, developmental neurobiology, physiology of prospective motor control, affective neuroscience and infant communication. Mastery of speech and language depends on polyrhythmic movements in narrative activities of many forms. Infants display intentional activity with feeling and sensitivity for the contingent reactions of other persons. Talk shares many of its generative powers with music and the other ‘imitative arts’. Its special adaptations concern the capacity to produce and learn an endless range of sounds to label discrete learned understandings, topics and projects of intended movement

The emotional & embodied nature of human understanding : making meaning in shared projects of discovery

This talk examines the emotional, embodied nature of human understanding before it achieves linguistic expression, as a route to understanding basic principles of social awareness, affective contact, and learning, and how to work with them

The emotional and embodied nature of human understanding : sharing narratives of meaning

This chapter explores the emotional and embodied nature of children’s learning to discover biological principles of social awareness, affective contact, and shared sense-making useful for school learning. The origins of learning are evident in purposeful movements of the body before birth. Simple self-generated actions learn to anticipate their sensory effects. In their action they generate a small ‘story’ that progresses through time, giving meaningful satisfaction on their successful completion. During child development, simple actions become organised into complex projects requiring greater appreciation of their consequences, expanding in capacity and reach. They are mediated first by brainstem conscious control made with vital feelings, which builds the foundations for a more abstract, cortically mediated cognitive intelligence in later life. By tracing development of meaning-making from simple projects of the infant to complex shared projects in early childhood, we can better appreciate the embodied narrative form of human understanding in healthy affective contact, how it may be disrupted in children with clinical disorders or educational difficulties, and how it responds in joyful projects to teachers’ support for learning

Development of consciousness

Recent research that uses refined methods of tracing infant’s movements to determine how they are coordinated and integrated proves they are directed in selective ways to take in and adjust to information from the senses about the present environment. It shows that the circumstances and objects of the infant’s actions are evaluated by the infant as ‘good’ (attractive and rewarding or pleasurable), or ‘bad’ (frightening and avoided, or resisted). The manifestations of purposeful, expectant and evaluated consciousness are identified as proof of Self-awareness, or ‘subjectivity’. Studies of the imitative and provocative actions of newborn infants in response to the behaviours of other persons who give close attention to them prove also that there is an innate Other-awareness, or ‘inter-subjectivity’, that attends to and sympathises with expressive movements of a person (Trevarthen, 2001; Kugiumutzakis and Trevarthen, 2015)

Intersubjectivity in the imagination and feelings of the infant : implications for education in the early years

This chapter presents the child as a creature born with the spirit of an inquisitive and creative human being, seeking understanding of what to do with body and mind in a world of invented possibilities. He or she is intuitively sociable, seeking affectionate relations with companions who are willing to share the pleasure and adventure of doing and knowing with 'human sense'. Recent research traces signs of the child's impulses and feelings from before birth, and follows their efforts to master experience through stages of self-creating in enjoyable and hopeful companionship. Sensitive timing of rhythms in action and playful invention show age-related advances of creative vitality as the body and brain grow. Much of shared meaning is understood and played with before a child can benefit from school instruction in a prescribed curriculum of the proper ways to use elaborate symbolic conventions. We begin with the theory of James Mark Baldwin, who observed that infants and young children are instinctive experimenters, repeating experience by imitating their own as well as other's actions, accommodating to the resources of the shared world and assimilating new experiences as learned ideas for action. We argue that the child's contribution to cultural learning is a good guide for practice in early education and care of children in their families and communities and in artificially planned and technically structured modern worlds of bewildering diversity

The infant's creative vitality, in projects of self-discovery and shared meaning : how they anticipate school, and make it fruitful

This paper presents the child as a creature born with the spirit of an inquisitive and creative human being, seeking understanding of what to do with body and mind in a world of invented possibilities. He or she is intuitively sociable, seeking affectionate relations with companions who are willing to share the pleasure and adventure of doing and knowing with 'human sense'. Recent research traces signs of the child's impulses and feelings from before birth, and follows their efforts to master experience through stages of self-creating in enjoyable and hopeful companionship. Sensitive timing of rhythms in action and playful invention show age-related advances of creative vitality as the body and brain grow. Much of shared meaning is understood and played with before a child can benefit from school instruction in a prescribed curriculum of the proper ways to use elaborate symbolic conventions. We begin with the theory of James Mark Baldwin, who observed that infants and young children are instinctive experimenters, repeating experience by imitating their own as well as other's actions, accommodating to the resources of the shared world and assimilating new experiences as learned ideas for action. We develop a theory of the child's contribution to cultural learning that may be used to guide practice in early education and care of children in their families and communities and in artificially planned and technically structured modern worlds of bewildering diversity