Poster workshop discussion
Chairs: Emmanuel Devouche and Maya Gratier
Discussant: Colwyn Trevarthen
All human experience is conditioned from within the subject by a rhythmic sense of time passing. All actions achieve prospective control by systematic anticipation within a space and time generated by and centred within the body and mind. Control of movements resides in a coherent programme of sensory-motor co-ordination that unites all modalities from the start, driving naive impulses of action, experience and communication. Musicality, a polyrhythmia of subjective activity with coherence as emotional narrative, serves as the basis for sympathetic awareness and communication of mental states and processes. All this is evident from the ways infants behave from birth -- the precise temporal co-ordination of the movements of their body parts, the spontaneous pulse of their actions, and their reactions to expressions of other persons. Most striking is the sensitivity of even the youngest infants for both the form of a human partner's expressions (as in neonatal imitations), and both the timing and emotional quality of human sounds, contacts and gestures. The motive state and physiological self-regulations of an infant are profoundly responsive to the pulse, modulated sequencing and affective contours of other persons movements appreciated by touch and mechanical stimulation of the body, by hearing the human voice, or by sight of the human face and hands. Auditory awareness of human expressive states is functional before birth, and reactions to the pulse and melody of a mother's speech and singing are strong throughout infancy and early childhood.In this Poster Workshop a new approach to the musical talents of infants and their mothers is strongly represented. Precise acoustic methods are added to micro-analysis of videos to observe the natural collaboration between infant and adult in joint 'performances'. These show that the enjoyment together of musical experiences is not just a matter of 'co-regulation' or 'mutual attunement'. There is a joining of an essential vitality of the core motive processes of two brains that are actively creating and anticipating an ordered flow of experience that is shared. Infants are very active and anticipating participants, evoking the sensitive intuitive musical 'narratives' from their mothers in appropriate tempos and moods, and being greatly affected by what their mothers present. The musical companionship is highly emotional and thrives on pleasurable or joyful states. It is profoundly interfered with by separation of the two minds, and by emotional states in either one that tend to create negative withdrawal.The concept of Communicative Musicality defined on the basis of acoustic analysis of mother-infant vocal interactions has given a firm basis for these new studies, of the emotions, habits and cultural significance of the human talent for appreciating music.
Details of individual items:
poster WS disc