Moving and Interacting in Infancy and Early Childhood: An Embodied, Intersubjective, and Multimodal Approach to the Interpersonal World

This book explores infant and early childhood development through the lens of embodied cognition, multimodal approach, and social cognition. It combines these perspectives to understand how infants interact with adults and develop their communication skills. The studies presented emphasize bodily experience, temporal affects, and their intertwining with symbolic capacities, providing valuable insights for developmental psychologists and researchers in related fields.

Format: Hardback
Length: 330 pages
Publication date: 09 September 2022
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG

This groundbreaking book delves into the intricate realm of infant and early childhood development, engaging in a perpetual dialogue with psychology, philosophy, and human movement studies. It is built upon a novel framework that amalgamates embodied cognition, multimodal approaches to child development, and a second-person perspective in social cognition. This comprehensive framework empowers authors to reexamine critical topics in developmental psychology, including adult-infant interactions, early intersubjective experiences, the evolution of perceptual, verbal, and gestural communication skills, and the intricate tapestry of play during infancy and early childhood.

In the field of infancy and early childhood studies, the integration of these three viewpoints has had a profound and innovative impact. Embodied psychology underscores the pivotal role of the body in shaping the infant's psyche through its interactions. The second-person perspective highlights the direct, transparent, and reciprocal contact that forms the foundation of early reciprocity between adults and infants. Moreover, the multimodal theory of perceptual development unveils the infant's immersion in a multisensory environment, where information is conveyed to all perceptual systems as a unified and coherent experience.

The studies presented within this volume seamlessly combine these three viewpoints, drawing upon analytical tools and concepts from the temporal arts, including music and dance. This approach to empirical research on central topics in early infancy fosters an aesthetic conception of development that emphasizes bodily experiences, temporal affects, and their intricate interplay with symbolic capacities. By exploring the multifaceted dimensions of infancy and early childhood development through an embodied, intersubjective, and multimodal lens, this book offers valuable insights into the complex interplay between the mind, body, and social interactions, paving the way for new understandings and interventions in this critical period of human development.

Weight: 676g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783031089220
Edition number: 1st ed. 2022