24 May Asking For Things Without Words: Embodiment of Action Onset as a Toddler’s “Communication Tool”
Irene Checa-Garcia (University of Wyoming)
Friday, May 24 / 1:30 PM
Educ 1205
Much earlier than they are able to talk, very young children communicate with visible body behavior as they build social interaction with peers and caregivers. Frequently, these interactions focus on asking for some course of action. How do these infants achieve their goal without words? Toddlers embody the beginning of a course of action to incite it. Even very young children are sensitive to, and seemingly aware of, the sequential ordering of certain events, and use such ordering to prompt the desired course of action by embodying the very onset of the action. They are not merely performing an action, but also using it to signify a course of action and to ask for that action.
Sponsored by the IHC’s LISO RFG.