The most common belief is that babies cannot communicate with the world until the first year of life, according to this idea, the communication of babies with adults would be non-existent for the first 12 months, however, new studies show that communication is possible.
The results of the studies suggest that babies are born with an innate ability to communicate, this ability is called intersubjectivity.
- The communication of babies with adults.
- Of course.
- Is not a dialogue.
- But protoconversations.
- Reactions from infants and parents can be considered conversations when reactions aren’t just instinctive reflexes.
- In other words.
- When the baby’s involvement is active.
- The baby recognizes and responds to experiences.
In this context, babies would have a certain degree of awareness that they share their experiences.
Part of the scientific community that studies baby communication does not consider intersubjectivity until the baby is between nine months and one year old, on the other hand, there are also those who defend babies’ innate ability for subjective interactions. .
The difficulty lies in the fact that interactions between babies and their caregivers are used to communicate and connect subjective experiences.
For those who deny the intersubjectivity of babies, communication cannot exist until babies understand that other people can have experiences too. This only happens at nine months, and a little later, at 14 months, babies begin to use protodeclarations: the baby points to an object and, by directing his gaze, shows that the adult is sharing. your attention with him. the stated objective.
These protodrages allow us to understand that babies of this age are already able to infer intentionality in other people, but how is the same tested before these protocols appear?
As we have seen above, other authors consider that there is intersubjectivity, an innate ability that allows babies to communicate their subjective experiences from the first weeks of life.
To come to this statement, they emphasize that babies don’t need cognitive or symbolic developments to communicate, babies would use emotions and interaction to communicate something, so the baby could exchange experiences with their caregivers.
While intersubjectivity may seem logical enough in theory, science requires experimental testing, with the aim of demonstrating that the exchange of expressions, emotions, gestures, vocalizations and babbling of babies can be considered a form of communication.
To demonstrate this, this Spanish-language study analyzed in depth the variations in the expressions of children between two and six months, as well as their caregivers.
The results suggest that facial expressions coincide and that there is a harmony between the emotional intensity of babies and parents, in addition, it has also been found that babies not only respond to the actions of the mother, but also elicit her responses.
Apparently, babies have the ability to engage in an observation conversation, as if it were a conversation in itself, on the other hand, other experiments have shown that when an adult interacts with a baby and stops suddenly, the baby waits for the adult’s reaction. Even if this reaction doesn’t show up, babies start to get angry and complain about an answer.
The results mentioned above are consistent with the possibility that protoconversations could be considered a form of communication, these would be the first dialogues involving babies.
According to the results, babies receive care when an adult looks at them, in addition to the emotional motivation in the actions of adults, that is, they feel the caregiver’s intention to communicate and respond, consequently, to that intention. , the communication of babies may be considered innate.