Intuitive Parenting Performance: The Embodied Encounter with Art

Intersubjectivity experiences established between adults and infants are partially determined by the particular ways in which adults are active in front of babies. An important amount of research focuses on the “musicality” of infant-directed speech (well-defined melodic contours, tonal and rhythm variations, etc.) and its role in linguistic enculturation. However, more recently, researchers have suggested that adults bring also a multimedia performance to infants. According to this, some scholars seem to find in that multimedia stimulation indicators of the genesis of the performing arts (as music and dance). In spite of these speculations, the way in which the parental performance is related to performing-art forms remains still unexplored. We analyze the adult performance using analytical categories and methodologies of analysis broadly validated in the fields music interpretation and dance movement. Microanalyses of adult-infant (7 months old) interactions are presented. The functional value of adult performances is discussed in relation to: (i) infant ́s processes of aesthetic enculturation; (ii) adult ́s hermeneutic processes of non-verbal interpretation and its effect in the infant; and (iii) the implications on the development of general cognitive skills, such as making sense up of non-propositional unities