Abstract
Imitation and mirroring processes are necessary but not sufficient conditions for children to develop human sociality. Human sociality entails more than the equivalence and connectedness of perceptual experiences. It corresponds to the sense of a shared world made of shared values. It originates from complex ‘open’ systems of reciprocation and negotiation, not just imitation and mirroring processes that are by definition ‘closed’ systems. From this premise, we argue that if imitation and mirror processes are important foundations for sociality, human inter-subjectivity develops primarily in reciprocation, not just imitation. Imitation provides a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment of existing with others that are ‘like me.’ However, it does not allow for the co-construction of meanings with others. For human sociality to develop, imitation and mirroring processes need to be supplemented by an open system of reciprocation. Developmental research shows that from the second month, mirroring, imitative, and other contagious emotional responses are by-passed. Imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), joint attention to objects (secondary intersubjectivity), the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others (tertiary intersubjectivity), and eventually the development of an ethical stance accompanying theories of mind by 4 years of age. We review this development and propose that if mirroring processes enable individuals to bridge their subjective experiences, human inter-subjectivity proper develops from reciprocal social exchanges that lead to value negotiation and mutual recognition, both cardinal trademarks of human sociality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This is the first definition of ‘sociability’ offered by the Unabridged Random House Dictionary (2nd Edition). ‘Sociality’ is defined as the state or quality of being sociable (third definition). This is the generic sense of these terms used here.
References
Agnetta, B., & Rochat, P. (2004). Imitative games by 9-, 14-, and 18-month-old infants. Infancy, 6(1), 1–36.
Amsterdam, B. (1972). Mirror self-image reactions before age two. Developmental Psychobiology, 5, 297–305.
Bates, E. (1990). Language about me and you: Pronominal reference and the emerging concept of self. In D. Cicchetti & M. Beeghly (Eds.), The self in transition: infancy to childhood (pp. 165–182). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boggs, S. T. (1985). Speaking, r elating, and learning: A study of Hawaiian children at home and at school. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Co.
Bruner, J. S. (1983). Child’s talk. New York: Norton.
Callaghan, T., Rochat, P., Lillard, A., Claux, M. L., Odden, H., Itakura, S., Tapanya, S., & Singh, S. (2005). Synchrony in the onset of mental-state reasoning: Evidence from five cultures. Psychological Science, 6(5), 378–384.
Campos, J., & Sternberg, C. (1981). Perception, appraisal, and emotions: The onset of social referencing. In M. Lamb & L. Shjerrod (Eds.). Infant social cognition: Empirical and theoretical considerations (pp. 273–314). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.
Damon, W. (1994). Fair distribution and sharing: The development of positive justice. In B. Puka (Ed.), Fundamental research in moral development (pp. 189–254). N.Y.: Garland Publishing.
DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mother's voices. Science, 208, 1174–1176.
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind: three stages in the evolution of culture and cogntion. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Finnbogason, G. (1912). The mind and the world around us, (pp. 250 and 262, cited by Hauksson, J. 2000). Acta Sociologica, 43, 307–315 .
Fogassi, L., Ferrari, P. F., Gesierich, B., Rozzi, S., Chersi, F., & Rizzolatti, G. (2005). Parietal lobe: from action organization to intention understanding. Science, 308(5722), 662–667.
Gallagher, S., & Hutto, D. (2007). Understanding others through primary interaction and narrative practice. In: J. Zlatev, T. P. Racine, C. Sinha & E. Itkonen (Eds.), The shared Mind: Perspectives on intersubjectivity (pp. 17–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, 593–609.
Gallese, S., Fogassi, L., Fadiga, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (2002). Action representation in the inferior parietal lobule. In W. Prinz & B. Hommel (Eds.), Attention and performance (Vol. 19, pp. 247–266). New York: Oxford University Press.
Gallese, V. (2003). The Roots of empathy: The shared manifold hypothesis and the neural basis of intersubjectivity. Psychopathology, 36, 171–180.
Gallese, V. (2007) Before and below “theory of mind”: embodied simulation and Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B, 362, 659–669.
Gergely, G., and Watson, J. S. (1999). Early social-emotional development: Contingency perception and the social-biofeedback model. In P. Rochat (Ed.), Early social cognition (pp. 101–136). Hillsdale: Erlbaum Publishers.
Goldman, A., & Sripada, C. S. (2005). Simulationist models of face-based emotion recognition. Cognition, 94, 193–213.
Greenspan, S., & Wieder, S. (2006). Engaging autism. Cambridge: Da Capo Press.
Harris, P. L. (1992). From simulation to folk psychology: The case for development. Mind and language, 7, 120–144.
Honneth, A. (1995). The struggle for recognition – The moral grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge (Mass): M.I.T. Press.
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. The nervous child, 2, 217–250.
Lancy, D. (1996). Playing on the mother-ground: Cultural routines for children’s development. New York: Guilford Press.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, M. (1992). Shame: the exposed self. New York: Free Press.
Malinowski, B. (1932). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge & Sons.
Mauss, M. (1967). The Gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. New York: Norton.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 75–78.
Meltzoff, A.N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by eighteen-month-old children. Developmental Psychology 31(5), 838–850.
Meltzoff, A. N. (2007). The “like me” framework for recognizing and becoming an intentional agent, Acta Psychologica, 124(1), 26–43.
Morton, J., & Johnson, M. H. (1991). CONSPEC and CONLERN: A two-process theory of infant face recognition. Psychological Review, 98(2), 164–181.
Murray, L., & Trevarthen, C. (1985). Emotional regulation of interactions between two-months-old and their mothers. In T. M. Field & N. A. Fox (Eds.), Social perception in infants (pp. 177–197). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Nadel, J. Carchon, I. Kervella, C., Marcelli, D., Réserbat-Plantey, D. (1999). Expectancies for social contingency in 2-month-olds. Developmental Science, 2(2), 164–173(10).
Odden, H., & Rochat, P. (2004). Observational learning and enculturation. Educational and Child Development, 21(2), 39–50.
Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. N.Y.: Norton.
Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Gallese, V., Fogassi, L. (1996). Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research, 3(2), 131–141.
Rochat, P. (2008/in press). Others in Mind–Social Origins of Self-Consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rochat, P., Neisser, U., & Marian, V. (1998). Are young infants sensitive to interpersonal contingency? Infant behavior and development, 21(2), 355–366.
Rochat, P., & Striano, T. (1999). Social cognitive development in the first year. In P. Rochat (Ed.), Early social cognition (pp. 3–34). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Rochat, P., & Striano, T. (2002). Who is in the mirror: Self-other discrimination in specular images by 4- and 9-month-old in fants. Child Development, 73, 35–46.
Rochat, P., Striano, T., & Blatt, L. (2001). Differential effects of happy, neutral, and sad still-faces on 2-, 4-, and 6-month-old infants. Infant and Child Development, 11(4), 289–303.
Rochat, P. (2001) The infant’s world. The Developing Child Series. Harvard University Press.
Rochat, P. (2003). Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(4), 717–731.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience 27, 169–192.
Rochat, P. (2006a). Humans evolved to become Homo Negotiatus ... the rest followed. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 714–715.
Rochat, P. (2006b). What does it mean to be human? Anthropological Psychology, 17, 100–108.
Rochat, P. (2008/in press). Mutual recognition as foundation of sociality and social comfort. In Striano, T., & Reid, V. (Eds.), Social cognition: Development, neuroscience and autism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Rochat, P. (2008/in press) Others in mind – Fear of rejection and the social origins of self-consciousness.
Rochat, P., Dias, M. D. G., Guo, L., Broesch, T., Passos-Ferreira, C., & Winning, A. (2008/in press). Fairness in distributive justice by 3- and 5-year-olds across 7 cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Rochat, P., & Passos-Ferreira, C. (2008). Homo Negotiatus. Ontogeny of the unique ways humans own, share and deal with each other. In Itakura, S., & Fujita, F. Origins of the social mind: Evolutionary and developmental views. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Rogoff, B. (1995). Observing sociocultural activity on three planes: participatory appropriation, guided participation, and apprenticeship. In J. Wertsch, P. del Rio, & A. Alvarez (Eds.), Sociocultural studies of mind, (pp. 139–164). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sagi, A., & Hoffman, M. L. (1976). Empathic distress in the newborn. Developmental Psychology, 12, 175–176.
Shore, B. (1982). Salailua: A samoan mystery. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sigman, M., & Capps, L. (1997). Children with autism – A developmental perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Simner, M. L. (1971). Newborn's response to the cry of another infant. Developmental Psychology, 5, 136–150.
Sperber, D. (1996). La Contagion des Idées. Theorie naturaliste de la culture. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Sroufe, L. A. (1996). Emotional development: The organization of emotional life in the early years. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Striano, T., & Rochat, P. (1999). Developmental link between dyadic and triadic social competence in infancy. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17, 551–562.
Striano, T., & Rochat, P. (2000). Emergence of selective social referencing in infancy. Infancy, 2, 253–264.
Tarde, G. (1890/1993). Les lois de l’imitation. Paris: Editions Kimé.
Tomasello, M., Kruger, A. C., & Ratner, H. H., (1993). Cultural learning. Behavioral and brain sciences, 16(3), 495–552.
Tomasello, M. (1995). Joint attention as social cognition. In C. Moore & P. Dunham (Eds.), Join attention: Its origins and role in development (pp. 103–130). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Tomasello, M. (1998). One child early talk about possession. In J. Newman, (Ed.). The linguistic of giving. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tomasello, M. (1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Trevarthen, C., & Hubley, P. (1978). Secondary intersubjectivity: confidence, confiding and acts of meaning in the first year. In A. Lock (Ed.), Action, gesture and symbol: The emergence of language (pp. 183–229). London: Academic Press.
Trevarthen, C. (1979). Communication and cooperation in early infancy: A description of primary intersubjectivity. In M. M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before speech: The beginning of interpersonal communication (pp. 321–347). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tronick, E. Z., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (1978). The infant's response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face-to-face interaction. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 17, 1–13.
Wellman, H. M. (2002). Understanding the psychological world: Developing a theory of mind. In Goswami, U. (Ed.), Blackwell handbook of child cognitive development (pp. 167–187). Blackwell Publishing.
Wolff, P. (1987). The development of behavioral states and the expression of emotions in early infancy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Zahn-Waxler, C., Radke-Yarrow, M., Wagner, E., & Chapman, M. (1992). Development of concern for others. Developmental Psychology, 28, 126–136.
Acknowledgments
While writing this chapter, the first author was supported by a 2007 John Simon Guggenheim fellowship. Much appreciation is expressed to Britt Berg for editorial help and comments on an earlier draft.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rochat, P., Passos-Ferreira, C. (2008). From Imitation to Reciprocation and Mutual Recognition. In: Pineda, J.A. (eds) Mirror Neuron Systems. Contemporary Neuroscience. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-479-7_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-479-7_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-934115-34-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-59745-479-7
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)