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Insights from Developmental Psychology 31

Halliday (1975) explores the acquisition of meaningful communication acts from the
viewpoint of how children use language to serve themselves in the course of daily life. He
refers to the child’s first language (appearing around six months of age) as a proto-language,
which consists of the set of acquired meanings shared by infant and adult. During this phase,
the infant is able to use her voice to influence the behavior of others (although in a manner
that bears little resemblance to the adult language). Furthermore, she soon learns how to
apply these meaningful vocal acts in appropriate and significant contexts. To paraphrase
Halliday (1975, p. 11), the infant uses her voice to order people about, to get them to do
things for her; she uses it to demand certain objects or services; she uses it to make contact
with people, to feel close to them; and so on. All these things are meaningful actions. Hence,
the baby’s vocalizations hold meaning to both baby and adult long before she ever utters
her first words (typically about a year later). All the while, caregivers participate in the
development of the infant’s proto-language by talking to the infant in a manner that she
can interpret within her limitations, and at the same time gently pushing her understanding
without going too far.
Siegel (1999) argues that, in a similar way, caregivers bootstrap their infant into perform-
ing intentional acts (i.e., acts about something) significantly before the infant is capable of
true intentional thought. Around the age of four months, the infant is finally able to break
her caregiver’s gaze to look at other things in the world. The caregiver interprets this break
of gaze as an intentional act where the infant is now attending to some other object. In
fact, Collis (1979) points out that the infant’s gaze does not seem to be directed at anything
in particular, nor does she seem to be trying to tell her caregiver that she is interested in
some object. Instead, it is the caregiver who then turns a particular object into the object
of attention. For instance, if an infant makes a reach and grasping motion in the direction
of a given object, he will assume that the infant is interested in that object and is trying to
hold it. In response, he intervenes by giving the object to the infant, thereby “completing”
the infant’s action. By providing this supporting action, he has converted an arbitrary act
on the part of the infant into an action about something, thereby giving the infant’s action
intentional significance. In time, the infant begins to learn the consequences of her actions,
and she begins to perform them with intent. Before this, however, the caregiver provides
her with valuable experience by assisting her in behaving in an intentional manner.

3.3 Scaffolding for Social Learning

It is commonplace to say that caregiver-infant interaction is mutually engaging, where each
partner adapts to the other over time. However, each has a distinctive role in the dyad—they
are not equal partners. Tronick et al. (1979) liken the interaction between caregiver and
infant to a duet played by a maestro and inept pupil (where the pupil is only seemingly