"Individual development and family rituals begin in the family's communication crucible, where infants first encounter the external world through face-to-face interaction. These immediate personal exchanges, involving eye contact and the first sounds of conversational speech, begin to form the core neurobiological and social foundations of attachment, early social cognition, and emotional development (Farroni et al., 2002; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001; Feldman, 2007)."
"Trevarthen's work on primary intersubjectivity (defined as the newborn's innate capacity for face‑to‑face, emotionally attuned communication) shows that infants are equipped from the first days of life to see, and they also try to understand the world (Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001; Trevarthen, 2011; Galanaki, 2023). This shapes the brain's emerging neurological potential, laying the earliest framework for prospective cognitive and emotional development."
Face-to-face, reciprocal family interactions establish the neurobiological and social foundations of attachment, early social cognition, and emotional development. Newborns possess primary intersubjectivity, an innate capacity for emotionally attuned, face-to-face communication that motivates perception and understanding from the first days of life. Multisensory, repeated exchanges engage and strengthen neural circuits across visual, auditory, motor, and affective systems. Specific regions—visual cortex, superior temporal gyrus/Wernicke-related areas, and Broca's area—process faces, prosody, and motor patterns that support speech. Mutual imitation recruits mirror-neuron-related networks that foster social connection. Families can choose rituals and ongoing reciprocal engagement to support empathic learning, recognition, and strengthened connectivity.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]