Re: [xmca] Polls are closed: Manfred Holodynsk's article is choice

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy, martin

This excerpt on mirroring ethnotheories, and social practices is
interesting for focusing on the type of subjectivity which develops
depending on the way caregivers mirror the baby's affect. A central
understanding of gergley's research is that mirroring is NOT identical or
merely representing or reflecting back what the baby presents.
Mirroring is actually MARKED mirroring where the caregiver interprets and
guides the infants response.
In fact mirror mirroring is profoundly disturbing to the infant if the
caregiver merely reflects back what the infant presents.

Andy, this excerpt does clearly model how emotions are not immediately
experienced but are expression signs which are intended to be addressed to
another who will respond. The function is to communicate with another
person and these particular ways of responding become conventionalized.
However, this model does seem to make a general assumption of the
centrality of 2nd person inter-subjective processes when discussing
ethnotheories (ethnomodels) and social practices.
Mirror neurons may or may not support gergeley's model of affect mirroring
but Greeley is developing a learning theory when he emphasizes the
caregiver interpreting and MARKING the infants responses as expression
signs.

Is this model of marked mirroring of affect consistent with cultural
historical models??

Larry



On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> You want with anchovies, or plain?
>
> On Mar 18, 2013, at 10:46 PM, JAG <joe.glick@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you deliver
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > On Mar 18, 2013, at 10:34 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm not aware that they included any neurological techniques in their
> research, Andy.
> >>
> >> Martin
> >>
> >> On Mar 18, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Thanks Martin.
> >>> I am not confused.
> >>>
> >>> I am reminded of when my friend Sasha was arrested for punching a
> copper at a demonstration in London in 1968. His girlfriend appeared as a
> witness, and when the judged asked her: "Did you see the defendant punch
> the officer?" she replied: "No!" so judge dismissed her saying that if she
> didn't see the offence then she was not a witness. Sasha was innocent of
> course, but he got 6 months in Brixton.
> >>>
> >>> The question xmca readers can reflect on is this: are Manfred and the
> other contributors to this Special Issue on emotion ignorant of the widely
> publicised phenomenon of mirror neurons despite many years of research into
> the development of emotional expression in infants, or does their failure
> to witness the action of "mirror neurons" suggest that there are no such
> entities?
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> >>> Martin Packer wrote:
> >>>> Andy,
> >>>>
> >>>> I think you're mixing three different kinds of 'mirroring':
> >>>>
> >>>> 1. recognition of one's mirror image, something that develops during
> the 2nd year of life.
> >>>>
> >>>> 2. mirroring the facial expression of an interactional or
> conversational partner, something that adults and infants start to do early
> in the first year of life.
> >>>>
> >>>> 3. neurons that fire either when a person is producing a certain
> action or when they are perceiving the same action.
> >>>>
> >>>> Though these have similar names they are quite distinct phenomena,
> although researchers propose various connections amongst them.
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mar 18, 2013, at 8:34 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> The article by Joscha Kärtner et al deals with the issue of
> mirroring of emotional expression by care-givers at somewhat greater length
> and concludes:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> In this article we have argued that socio-emotional development can
> only be understood in the context of social practice and underlying
> ethnotheories of caregivers that give significance to infants’ emotional
> expressions. In doing so, we have focused on a specific aspect of early
> socio-emotional development, namely the emergence of social smiling during
> infancy. Synthesizing empirical findings from autonomous and relational,
> especially rural Nso, cultural milieus, we showed how dominant
> ethnotheories and associated behavioral routines concerning emotional
> development vary systematically across cultural milieus and influence
> infants’ emotional expressivity and experience. Concerning the development
> of social smiling, future studies should focus on assessing ethnotheories
> concerning infant smiling and adequate reactions more explicitly (instead
> of inferring ethnotheories from behavioral routines or from what was not
> said if compared to other cultural milieus). Furthermore, future studies
> should also consider other relevant caregivers, especially sibling
> caretakers, and their function for emotional development (e.g., Lamm,
> 2008). Finally, future studies should take a closer look at the dynamics of
> mother-infant interaction around positive emotions and how these dynamics
> develop longitudinally across the first year of life.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> From a sociocultural perspective, ethnotheories and social practices
> around affect mirroring and infant smiling are an interesting phenomenon
> because they have important implications for the emergence and further
> development of infants’ self-awareness. Mirroring infant smiles leads to an
> increasing awareness of subjective emotional states in infants. Thus,
> infants become subjectively aware of their inner psychological states in
> the sense of feelings organized by increasingly distinctive and
> conventionalized expression signs that are experiences as distinctive
> emotion states (Gergely & Watson, 1999; Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006,
> 2012).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thus, culture-specific differences in affect mirroring and infant
> smiling lay the ground for differences in infants’ self-awareness, which
> has implications for the further development of the self-concept in
> different cultural milieus. For instance, Kärtner and colleagues (2012)
> have shown that, during the second year, cultural contexts differ greatly
> regarding the age at which toddlers develop mirror self-recognition. More
> specifically, the ability to identify one’s mirror image develops earlier
> in urban middle-class contexts that emphasize the development of autonomy
> as compared to relational cultural milieus. The authors of this study argue
> that mirror self-recognition reflects a specific representation, namely the
> representation of the self as an autonomous intentional agent that is based
> on subjective self-awareness. Thus, not only do toddlers need to possess
> the ability for secondary representation but they also need a specific
> object or state to represent, in this case their own mental states
> (intentional and emotional). In this sense, it is not necessarily toddlers’
> general representational capacity that differs across cultures but
> toddlers’ awareness of themselves, especially self-awareness of their
> internal states.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This specific type of self-awareness seems to be the result of
> social interaction, which enables toddlers to conceive of themselves as
> selves in the minds of others (Rochat & Zahavi, 2011). What seems to be
> critical in this regard is the degree to which caregivers direct their
> infants’ attention to their own internal states. During the first months of
> life, this is primarily realized through caregivers’ affect mirroring,
> which sensitizes toddlers to their intentional and emotional self-states,
> which they consequently become increasingly aware of.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thus, culture-specific ethnotheories and social practices regarding
> infant smiling have substantial developmental consequences that go beyond
> culture-specific developmental trajectories of infant smiling in that they
> may constitute and lay the ground for infants’ self-awareness and
> conception of the self.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> __________________________________________
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> >>> --
> >>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >>> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> >>> http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden
> >>>
> >>>
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