Terrace Herbert S, Bigelow Ann E, Beebe Beatrice
Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States.
Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 26;13:693139. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.693139. eCollection 2022.
Intersubjectivity refers to two non-verbal intersubjective relations infants experience during their first year that are precursors to the emergence of words. Trevarthen, a pioneer in the study of intersubjectivity, referred to those relations as primary and secondary intersubjectivity. The former, a dyadic coordination between the infant and her caregiver, begins at birth. The latter, a triadic coordination that develops around 9 months, allows the infant and a caregiver to share attention to particular features of the environment. Secondary intersubjectivity is crucial for an infant's ability to begin to produce words, at around 12 months. Much research on the social and cognitive origins of language has focused on secondary intersubjectivity. That is unfortunate because it neglects the fact that secondary intersubjectivity and the emergence of words are built on a foundation of primary intersubjectivity. It also ignores the evolutionary origins of intersubjectivity and its uniquely human status. That unique status explains why only humans learn words. This article seeks to address these issues by relating the literature on primary intersubjectivity, particularly research on bi-directional and contingent communication between infants and mothers, to joint attention and ultimately to words. In that context, we also discuss Hrdy's hypothesis about the influence of alloparents on the evolution of intersubjectivity.
主体间性是指婴儿在出生后的第一年所经历的两种非言语的主体间关系，它们是语言出现的先兆。主体间性研究的先驱特雷瓦森将这些关系称为初级主体间性和次级主体间性。前者是婴儿与其照顾者之间的二元协调，从出生就开始了。后者是一种大约在9个月时发展起来的三元协调，它使婴儿和照顾者能够共同关注环境的特定特征。次级主体间性对于婴儿在大约12个月时开始说出单词的能力至关重要。许多关于语言的社会和认知起源的研究都集中在次级主体间性上。这很不幸，因为它忽视了次级主体间性和单词的出现是建立在初级主体间性的基础之上这一事实。它也忽略了主体间性的进化起源及其独特的人类地位。这种独特的地位解释了为什么只有人类会学习单词。本文旨在通过将关于初级主体间性的文献，特别是关于婴儿与母亲之间双向和偶发性交流的研究，与共同注意以及最终与单词联系起来，来解决这些问题。在这种背景下，我们还将讨论赫迪关于异亲对主体间性进化影响的假设。
