Baby Mimesis with Touch Screens: Between Materiality and the Individuation Process

• Published in: Human arenas: an Interdisciplinary journal of psychology, culture, and meaning culture, and meaning, 2024-03, Vol.7 (1), p.84-97
• Main Author: Impedovo, Maria Antonietta
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anthropology; Arena of Development; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Psychology; Social Sciences
• ISSN: 2522-5790; 2522-5804
• DOI: 10.1007/s42087-021-00261-8

In this paper, we focus on the mimesis of babies with a screen in a social context. The paper explores how babies interact with the screen interface in a social context as a dynamic process between materiality and individuation. The theoretical framework deals with mimesis, the technological interface, and the individualisation process. The research question is do babies interacting with a smartphone screen activate a mimetic social or material dimension at the service of their individuation? A natural micro-observation was video collected in the home setting. It involved a grandmother over 65 years old and her 14-month-old granddaughter, interacting jointly on a regular smartphone. A non-anthropocentric methodology was used, linking sense-making to the contextualised experience of the body-environment system. Two main topical episodes will be presented as an illustration. Circular redundancy and effective touching are the two dimensions analysed. The analysis of the socio-material baby niche, enacting distributed cognition with the technological interface, opens some discussion toward a postmodern perspective.