Contingent interaction vs. Egocentric Communication

The topic of social cognition is very interesting to me and has made me become more aware and thankful of all the intricate yet simple knowledge that we develop. I have a better understanding of beliefs, thinking, knowing and pretending that makes me realize how lucky we are to have the cognitive/social abilities to reason about each topic. One particular concept that stood out to me was “contingent interaction” which starts at about 2 months of age. Contingent interaction is when a child starts to display reciprocal actions and reactions with other people. This means that children start to understand beyond their own wants and needs and also takes others into consideration. It just amazes me how infants can do this at a very young age. This idea challenges Piagetian Model, which claims that children in the Preoperational Period (2-7 Years) are still in the stage of egocentric communication. Egocentric communication is when a child communicates with another individual but doesn’t take the others perspective into consideration (its like having a one sided conversation). Piaget’s views claim that children aren’t able to take another individuals perspectives into account when conversing until they reach the Concrete operational stage (7-12 years). Some studies shown in class this Wednesday support the idea that children as young as 18 months old are able to recognize others desires. An example would be the test whether children handed broccoli or goldfish to an experimenter that expressed interest in the same item as they did (goldfish) or something that was different (broccoli). Younger children (14 months) would give the experimenter the goldfish because they assumed that because they themselves like the goldfish that the experimenter would too, and the older children (18 months) gave the experimenter what they wanted. This particular experiment also contradicts Piaget’s view of egocentric communication because it shows that children show contingent interaction way before Piaget’s Concrete Operational Period (7-12 years).
These findings show that children know the importance of paying attention to their social environment for better communication with others. Even before children can actually compose full sentences, evidence in class shows that they have an understanding of how to listen and better communicate with others. One example would be a child pretending to talk on the phone and having short breaks between babbling because they are imitating what a conversation sounds like. I was never blessed with younger siblings and find myself having a hard time interacting with infants and toddlers because I never know what they understand and don’t understand when it comes to conversing with them. I find myself in awkward situations when it comes to talking with toddlers and end up with them giving me funny looks because I tend to talk to them as if they were five years younger than they actually are. This class and the studies presented in them have taught me a lot about children’s social cognition and gives me a better understanding of what children of different ages comprehend.