Children’s Sociability in Institutional Contexts: Theoretical Reflections on Cognitive Development Within Peer Interactions

Abstract

Human beings are constituted through the presence and actions of others whom they encounter during the course of their lives. We are constituted by all the interactions we enact in different social contexts and through all the meanings we create together about the experiences we share. Therefore, in order to understand the ontogenesis of cognition, one must understand how meanings are constructed with the others we encounter. A substantial amount of research has addressed how infants and toddlers-when in interaction with adults-are able to understand others' actions and engage in social dynamics by coordinating and regulating adults' actions. This knowledge has advanced the field of developmental psychology significantly. However, not many efforts have been made to understand the origins of social cognition via peer interactions or explore how peer interactions constitute cognitive development. In this theoretical article, we use the microanalysis of three peer interaction episodes to discuss how the constitutive role of peer experiences can be analysed beyond isolated individual processes. The encounter, the situation and the social and relational process are used as a unit of analysis. This analytical approach considers the contributions and insights provided by the enactive theory, which offers a perspective to understand the processes of cognitive development in interactive experiences.

What If We Look at the Body? An Embodied Perspective of Collaborative Learning

“…Nevertheless, collaboration as form of "acknowledging other's interests and objectives in some relation to the extrapersonal context, and acting to complement the other's response" (Hubley & Trevarthen, 1979, p. 58) is an essential feature of human social interaction (i.e., the ability to engage in meaningful interactions), and appears immediately in the first contact with others in different moments of daily routines (Tomasello et al, 2005). In the development of sociability, children gradually build an extensive cultural repertoire and interactive skills as they interact with their peers, and it is possible to identify how the bodily experiences in coordinative, collaborative, and communicative acts shape cognition (Ferreira et al, 2020). The process of meaning-making thus takes place at a level of interpersonal perception, in line with their own embodied experiences in each environment in which they take part.…”