Developmental Psychology Copyright 1987 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

1987, Vol. 23, No. 6, 747-761 OOI2-l649/87/$OO75

Development of Early Expressive and Communicative Action:

Reinterpreting the Evidence From a Dynamic Systems Perspective
Alan Fogel Esther Thelen
Department of Child Development and Family Studies Indiana University
Purdue University

A systems approach is introduced and applied to the development of expressive and communicative
action of infants in thefirstyear of life. In this approach, expressive and communicative actions are
organized, as part of cooperative systems with other elements of the infants' physiology, cognition,
behavior, and social environment. A systems approach presumes that order arises dynamically as a
result of the interaction between the cooperating elements that are changing asynchronously, rather
than as the result of centrally coordinated developmental change that is synchronous across domains.
The systems approach further assumes that the control parameter responsible for eliciting develop-
mental change may be different depending on age, context, and task. It offers a means to understand
previously unexplained developmental phenomena: the appearance of mature forms of expression
before mature function has been achieved, the asynchronous rates of development of communica-
tive-action components, discontinuous developmental shifts arising from continuous processes, and
the process by which adults influence communicative development.

Theoretical Perspective
This article outlines an approach to the development of ex-
pressive and communicative behavior in infancy that is rooted
in developmental biology, movement science, and systems the-
ory. In this approach, expressive and communicative actions
are organized as a complex, cooperative system with other ele-
ments of the infant's physiology, behavior, and social environ-
ment. Development of behavior does not occur uniformly
across these domains as the singular result of an increasingly
elaborated set of structures or prescriptions, but by the emer-
gent order resulting from asynchronous changes between the
component actions. We assume developmental processes are
multicausal, nonlinear, and complex. Although this complexity
and nonlinearity confounds experimental analysis and makes
simple interactive models untenable, in real systems, it is the
source of both stability and change.
How does our perspective differ from traditional theories of
development? Reese and Overton (1970), Sameroff(1984), and
Wolff (1987) analyzed developmental theories by asking the
question: What accounts for the induction of novel behavioral
This article was prepared with the help of National Institutes of
Health Grant 1R01 HD21036-O1 Al, and a Hatch Act grant from the
Purdue University Agricultural Experiment station to Alan Fogel, and
National Science Foundation Grant BNS85-09793 and National Insti-
tutes of Health Grant K04 HD721 to Esther Thelen.
We thank J. A. S. Kelso for his patient tutorials on dynamic systems
theory and gratefully acknowledge the comments of the following per-
sons on earlier versions of the article: Lauren Adamson, Amanda Bar-
che, Kurt Fischer, Hui-Chin Hsu, Jeanne Karns, Eva Nwokah, Andy
Stremmel, Sueko Toda, and Ted Wachs.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Alan
Fogel, Department of Child Development and Family Studies, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907.
747
forms? The traditional "nativist" perspectives assume that de-
velopmental changes are embodied in the genes, or represented
in neural programs. Experience can modify maturational rate
but it cannot introduce qualitatively new forms. This model is
difficult to falsify because it can always be defended by an ap-
peal to some unobservable black-box cause. Contemporary the-
ories of development of cognition, language, and social and
emotional realms fall under the umbrella of what Wolff calls
the epigenetic-constructivist-interactionist point of view. Rather
than rely on the nativist assumptions of biologically driven de-
velopmental change, this view states that the organism develops
by acting on the environment, "restructuring itself as it changes
the environment" (Wolff, 1987, p. 234). Theories of this type
are those of Werner (1948), Vygotsky (1978), and Piaget (1963).
In Piaget's theory, development tends toward increasingly sta-
ble and equilibrated epistemic states via the invariant processes
of assimilation and accommodation. In Werner's version of the
theory, stages have an implicit hierarchical relation proceeding
through an invariant and irreversible sequence overtime.These
epigenetic perspectives, on close analysis, fail to explain how
equilibration can induce novel forms that are not already some-
how contained in the organism's structure or in the invariant
functions(Haroutunian, l983;Oyama, 1985; Wolff, 1987). As
Wolff succinctly states, "this perspective has not entirely elimi-
nated its nativist core or its ultimate appeal to a priori executive
agencies that anticipate the direction and end-stages of mental
development" (1987, p. 247).
In contrast to theories in which development is seen as pro-
gressing from global to more articulated states, our views are
aligned with general systems theory applied to the morphologi-
cal development of the embryo (Sameroff, 1984), with dynamic
systems theory applied to the newbom's adaptation to the post-
natal environment (Wolff, 1987), and with domain theory ap-
plied to the development of knowledge and skill (Fischer & Can-
748 ALAN FOGEL AND ESTHER THELEN
field, 1986; Turiel & Davidson, 1986). According to domain
theory, for example, knowledge acquisition over age is asyn-
chronous across domains, and, at any given age, performance
is an emergent product of the heterogeneity of cross-domain
knowledge and the nature of the environmental supports and
tasks. This approach was constructed in order to explain some
of the developmental "irregularities" of performance that did
not fit neatly into stage theories in which knowledge in all do-
mains is presumed to advance apace. Similar puzzles of com-
municative ontogeny have inspired the formulation presented
in this article.
Some Puzzles ofEarly Expressive Development
By 1 year of age, the human infant has a wide repertoire of
facial, manual, postural, locoraotor, vocal, and, sometimes, ver-
bal gestures with which to communicate affect and intent. Some
of these gestures have been available since birth, but change in
form and function during the first year. Newborn infants, for
example, show differential facial expressions appropriate to
taste or smell stimuli (Steiner, 1979), but newborn smiles occur
only in sleep. A smiling response to an appropriate social stimu-
lus emerges only after 1 or 2 months. Crying communicates dis-
tress throughout the first year, yet undergoes dramatic develop-
mental change in acoustic structure and intentionality
(Zeskind* 1985). Manual actions, such as pointing, have been
identified in 3-month-oids during social interaction, which is
many months before those actions are assimilated into their
mature and conventionally functional form (Fogel & Hannan,
1985; Trevarthen, 1977).
Communicative development, like development in other do-
mains, is puzzling because it is heterochronic; that is, elements
of behavior appear in an uneven sequence and are asynchro-
nously timed. As a consequence, these observations cannot be
explained by those organismic stage theories in which develop-
ment of all the elements is presumed to occur in synchrony,
controlled by an increasingly articulated centrally organized
structure. We offer instead a dynamic model where elements
can be assembled for functional ends in a more fluid, task-spe-
cific manner determined equally by the rnaturational status and
experiences of the child and by the current context of the action.
We assign causal equivalence to all of the elements of the sys-
tem, including the context and the effector apparatus, suggest-
ing that behavior may be understood only as the systems prod-
uct of these elements.
We begin with a general theory of motor action that estab-
lishes how a movement can be both structurally stable and func-
tionally flexible and that relies on systems principles of emer-
gent properties. The use of motor theory does not imply a pri-
macy for effectors over other developing components, but stands
as a paradigm for analyzing complex systems. We then show
how these principles can be extended to ontogenetic systems as
well. Finally, we propose a role for the physical and social con-
text in the emergence of new communicative forms. In the sec-
ond part of this article, we apply this dynamic system approach
to three types of early expressive actions: crying, smiling, and
pointing.
In its current formulation, our approach offers more a means
for framing questions about development than a method to gen-
erate specific predictions in particular domains. Nonetheless,
with the continued elaboration of synergetic principles to bio-
logical domains (e.g., Kelso & Schoner, in press), we believe this
approach holds promise both for more unifying principles and
for more predictive specificity in developmental analysis.
Dynamic Action Theory
The behaving human, like other organisms, is a complex, co-
operative system of high dimensionality on many scales: ana-
tomical units of muscles, joints, bones, and organ systems;
physiological processes that maintain and regulate life; and
neurological units of perception, integration, and motor con-
trol. If one were to count the elements involved in even a simple
act—a smile or a pointing gesture—a nearly infinite number of
degrees offreedom would be involved. Yet from these nearly
infinite degrees of freedom, behavior emerges as a fundamen-
tally low-dimensional output—as a recognizable pattern of
movement that is stable both within an individual and between
members of the species (Bernstein, 1967; Kelso & Scholz,
1986).
How can an internally complex system, composed of thou-
sands of neural elements and hundreds of muscle groups, be
compressed to produce such low-dimensional output? One so-
lution is to have plans or programs encoded in a central control-
ling agency, which in turn marshalls the lower elements partici-
pating in the action. This solution is not satisfactory, however,
because it only shifts the "degrees of freedom" problem to a
higher level, requiring the controller to represent and store the
component elements and perform the necessary computations
and transformations. These control problems become monu-
mental in the face of the nearly infinite variability demanded
by everyday tasks and because movements themselves are dy-
namic, with continually changing forces over time and space
(Bernstein, 1967).
A more satisfactory solution is to compress the internal de-
grees of freedom of high-dimensional systems by constraining
the elements to relate among themselves in a relatively fixed
and autonomous manner. In the motor system, a coordinative
structure is a functional grouping of muscles and joints, whose
mutual coordinations are regulated synergisticaily, as a whole
system (Kelso, Holt, Kugler, & Turvey, 1980; Kugler, Kelso, &
Turvey, 1980; Turvey, 1977). Thus, the elements of a smile are
not controlled as individual muscles, each receiving a centrally
generated command, but as a unitary, functional, interdepen-
dent system. In a smile, for example, the retraction of one lip
corner is not independent of the retraction of the other; in
smiles of greater intensity the eyes and brows are also synergisti-
caily involved. This preferential linkage of certain muscle com-
binations and sequences produces actions of a stable and recog-
nizable topography: Smiles are seen as smiles despite great vari-
ability in intensity and context. We will show how infants may
be endowed with such preferential linkages for actions at a very
early age, which then form the substrate for further develop-
mental change.
How can groups of neuromuscular elements be both stable
and autonomous? How can the trajectories of movements be
generated without symbolic representations stored in the cen-
tral nervous system? There are many examples of pattern gen-
 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
eration without implicit instructions in the physical world, in-
cluding crystal growth and other chemical phenomena, turbu-
lent flow patterns, cloud formation, and even the oscillating
movements of a simple spring. (For recent reviews of complex
systems theory in physics, biology, and chemistry, see Haken,
1983; Prigogine, 1980; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984; Rosen,
1978.) In each case, structural or temporal regularity results
from the assembly of the system under certain energy con-
straints, that is, an order not simply predicted by the nature of
the single elements alone, such as the molecules in the aggrega-
tion. In addition, it is characteristic of such systems to respond
to changes in certain parameters (e.g., the energy supplied to
the system) in a discontinuous manner. If the pressure on water
flowing in a pipe is increased linearly, the resulting flow pat-
terns—random, turbulent, or laminar—appear as nonlinear
phase shifts, that is, without stable intermediate states. We pro-
pose that similar emergent phase shifts play a central role in
explaining behavioral change in both the real-time, motor
realm and in development.
One important systems property of coordinative structures
is that they simplify the problems of storage and execution of
action plans by generating new information that is not present
in the initial conditions of the structure of the muscles, bones,
and neurons. In the postural system, for example, as a person
is shifted off balance, gravity and local changes in the velocity
and acceleration of the trunk evoke compensatory responses in
the limbs and trunk that synergistically produce a stable pos-
ture. It is unnecessary to invoke a centrally stored postural "set
point" that corrects for fluctuations in a typical homeostatic
fashion. Rather, the dynamic interaction of the moving seg-
ments is enough to produce balance as an emergent systems
property of the unique combination of displacements in that
particular situation. Thus, stability of behavioral outcomes is
an important characteristic of coordinative structures. As an-
other example, a speaker can utter a target phoneme despite
natural perturbations of speech (such as with food in the
mouth) or experimentally induced perturbations introduced
during the utterance (Kelso & Tuller, 1984). Presumably, the
combination of tongue, jaw, and lip articulators used in the ut-
terance are not "hard-wired" to produce a ba sound, but are
flexibly assembled to self-adjust to the ongoing demands of nat-
ural speech and, even, to preserve the speech goal in the face
of large perturbations. Coordinative structures, therefore, are
sources of order and stability, not mere recipients of com mands.
A second important systems property of coordinative struc-
tures are phase shifts. This means that functionally assembled
coordinative structures retain a topographic stability within a
range of values of certain parameters, but when those critical
values are exceeded, new modes of coordination may emerge.
The gait patterns of a quadruped are a useful example. When a
horse increases the speed of its locomotion in a linear fashion,
the resulting gait patterns are distinctly nonlinear. That is, the
horse will walk first, then trot, then gallop. Each pattern is
qualitatively distinct, with no stable intermediate stages. Sim-
ilarly, if adults are asked to flex and extend their hands at the
wrist in an asymmetrical mode (one handflexeswhile the other
extends) and to speed up the movements, they abruptly shift
into a symmetrical mode at a predictable point in the speed
scalar (Kelso & Scholz, 1986). In both cases, the interlimb coor-
749
dination is not determined by a "switch" somewhere in the ner-
vous system that calls forth a new program, but is emergent
from dynamic constraints in the system's anatomical structure
and its unique and nonlinear dissipation of energy. Order
emerges as a dynamic rather than as a prescriptive phenomena.
Process ofStability and Change: A Dynamic Systems
Approach
The motor theory just reviewed is based on a set of principles
that we believe have general applicability to a variety of aspects
of human functioning, not only those in the motor realm. Spe-
cifically, we propose that a set of components, some from the
individual and some from the context, can be organized in a
fluid and task-specific manner so that the resulting behavior is
the systems product of all these components. The phase shifts
that arise in real time, as components change in relation to each
other and the context, can be used as a general model for how
complex systems change in ontogenetic time. Generalizing
from a motor theory to the development of communicative ac-
tion does not, in other words, imply that communication is an
exclusively motor process.
Stability and change are both fundamental characteristics of
biological systems in general and coordinative structures in par-
ticular. In spite of high dimensionality of the components and
a variety of initial conditions and environmental perturbations,
coordinative structures can maintain their characteristic topog-
raphy and function to reach a goal. The same components that
create stability may also be involved in shifting the system dis-
continuously to some other stable configuration. How can this
happen?
Stability
With a finite population of possible component structures
and processes within the individual, the constraints of the task
produce a dynamic cooperativity of the components. Depend-
ing on the task and on the current state and ontogenetic history
of the individual, some components will contribute dispropor-
tionately to the behavioral outcome. These dominant compo-
nents will appear to "drive" the system, or act as synchronizers
for other ongoing components. The nature of the cooperativity
is not rigidly fixed beforehand, but is strictly a function of the
status of the organism in a particular task context. Thus, behav-
ioral outcome is never "hard-wired," but is characterized by
an inherent indetermi nancy that occurs when low-dimensional
behavior is assembled from the high-dimensional array of com-
ponents (Weiss, 1969; Wolff, 1987).
However, within a range of contexts and organismic states,
systems theories predict that behavior will retain a dynamic sta-
bility, that is, an overall task orientation and resistance to minor
perturbations (in the terminology of dynamics, these are re-
ferred to as attractor states [Abraham & Shaw, 1982]). Thus,
the systems will tend to prefer certain response modes (from
all possible compressions of the degrees of freedom), and these
preferred responses may be stable during a particular time scale
of observation. For example, one way of interpreting Wadding-
ton's notion of canalization is that as organisms develop, their
750 ALAN FOGEL AND ESTHER THELEN
response modes or attractor states become increasingly stable
and well-defined.
Change
In both real and developmental time, new states emerge when
components are pushed past critical values or the relations
among the components change, leading to discontinuous phase
shifts in the low-dimensional output. Specifically, we envision
the sources of developmental change as arising in two ways:
1. Scalar changes in one or more existing components.
Linear and continuous changes in single- or multiple-compo-
nent structures and processes may act as the catalysts to shift
the entire system into new modes of organization. The compo-
nent that acts as the primary agent of change is known in dy-
namic systems terminology as the control parameter, or the ele-
ment driving the system through a phase shift (Kelso & Scholz,
1986). Note that all the component elements are essential to the
system outcome. The control parameter is no more important
than any other system component, because the low-dimen-
sional output is uniquely determined by all the components act-
ing together.
This dynamic view of development is similar to Soil's (1979)
concept of rate-limiting processes. Soil discovered that in the
morphogenesis of the slime mold dictyostelium, several pro-
cesses developing in parallel were essential for the appearance
of each developmental stage. However, the appearance of the
distinctive stage was a function of the slowest process, which
acted as the timer, or control parameter, to shift the organism
into a new morphology. That is, to produce stage xf the products
of processes a, b, ct and d are all essential. If a, b, and c are
accumulated to sufficient concentrations, then the process lead-
ing to the minimum concentration of d will regulate the pro-
cess. Soil identified at least six such rate-limiting processes, each
specific for a particular stage. He determined that the processes
worked in parallel because an environmental variable, temper-
ature, affected the appearance of the stages differentially, sug-
gesting that different processes acted as control parameters foT
different stages. We propose below that control parameters also
change during human development.
Because development is holistic, a small change in the control
parameter can reverberate and result in major consequences for
the entire system. Major reorganizations of the organism char-
acterized as stage shifts, therefore, may not be regulated by cen-
trally organized instructions. Developmental change may be a
spontaneous, systemic reorganization of subsystems that occurs
only when all of the necessary components become available
and when the task recruits and coalesces those components.
Ontogenetic changes may be controlled not by an epigenetic
ground plan, but by changes in particular control parameters
(Fogel, 1985;Oyama, 1985;Thelen, 1985b; Wolff, 1987).
According to our approach, the control parameter moving
the system into new forms of behavior may, at any particular
time, reside within the organism or within the task context.
There is no formal difference between endogenous and exoge-
nous sources of change because organismic and contextual vari-
ables are equally important in the dynamic assembly of behav-
ior. The control parameter may arise from within an individual
as a result of maturation or the shift of a component from one
functional system to another. However, the environment can
also move the system into new modes, leading to a behavioral
performance that a child alone, or in another environment,
could not produce. There are many examples in cognitive de-
velopment in which contextual manipulations, adult assistance,
or practice reveals abilities in children thought to reside in later-
developing stages (see, for example, Turiel & Davidson, 1986).
We present examples below in which parents especially may act
as control parameters and temporarily enhance performance.
In the motor system examples of quadruped gait and human
manual movements mentioned earlier, the scalar increase in en-
ergy delivered to the limbs (increasing speed) was the control
parameter that shifted the movements from one stable mode of
coordination to another, qualitatively distinct mode. The identi-
fication of the control parameter in these real-time motor exam-
ples is straightforward, but, in developing systems, the nature of
the control parameter may be less than obvious. When human
infants shift into new developmental stages, it is often assumed
that improvements in the most salient component have driven
the new stage. On closer inspection, however, some of these sa-
lient components appeared in the infant's repertoire considera-
bly earlier than the performance of the target behavior. Some-
times, these components are present at early ages, but at low
frequencies. In other cases, these components are used fre-
quently, but as part of entirely different functional systems. In
either case, the identification of an important component before
the appearance of the fully functional behavior suggests that the
control parameter driving the system into the new stage must
be sought in other organismic structures or processes, or in the
nature of the context or task.
It is difficult to identify the control parameters in developing
systems, because unlike real-time systems, in which the compo-
nent structures and processes are relatively stationary, the com-
ponents in developing systems themselves change over time in
a nonlinear and asynchronous manner. Although in broad
sweep, developmental events appear sequential and synchro-
nous, the particular elements may be comparatively accelerated
or retarded in relation to one another, and, within each compo-
nent, there may be spurts and times of relative quiescence. In
short, development can be envisioned as a heterochronic series
of different developmental processes, each with separate but in-
teracting timetables (Rader, 1985; Satoh, 1985). At any given
point in time, however, the behavior of the organism as a whole
cannot be predicted by the developmental status of only one
component, because it is the systems interactions among the
components that is crucial. This leads us to suggest a second
source of development change.
2. Change from one control parameter to another. We hy-
pothesized that the underlying process in developmental shifts
was the scalar change of one or several control parameters.
However, as components themselves grow and differentiate and
as the physical and social contexts of the infant and child change
as a result of its development, new components may assume the
role of control parameters. Indeed, the very striking changes
both in the infant, and in its ecological niche during the first
year would predict that different structures and processes would
drive the system at different ages. The control parameters for
some developmental transitions may be changes in underlying
physical or physiological variables, including nonneural com-
 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
ponents such as somatic growth or hormonal status. Other shifts
may be directly related to observable events in the central ner-
vous system; the maturation of the hippocampus, for example,
has been implicated in the appearance of certain types of spatial
memory (Nadel & Zola-Morgan, 1984). Whatever the neuro-
logical substrate, there is considerable evidence that major reor-
ganizations in behavior occur at definable periods during in-
fancy (e.g., McCall, Eichorn, & Hogarty, 1977) and that these
cognitive changes may have profound and system-wide rever-
berations, acting as control parameters in a number of domains.
However, the identification of control parameters in both real
and ontogenetic time must remain an empirical exercise, be-
cause developmentalists have too easily sought to explain phase
shifts by resorting to neurology or black-box cognitive reorgani-
zations. Although hippocampal maturation may be a necessary
component of spatial memory, the control parameter for partic-
ular spatial skills may indeed be the onset of independent loco-
motion (Bertenthal, Campos, & Barrett, 1984). Pipp, Fischer,
and Jennings (1987), showed that the acquisition of knowledge
about self and mother had both age- and domain-specific con-
trol parameters, \bung infants consistently recognized mother
before self; these authors suggested that the onset of representa-
tion in the second year allowed infants to go beyond their senso-
rimotor experience, which limited their ability to see their own
bodies. In addition, when infants were asked to act on them-
selves or act on the mother in various tasks of agency, older in-
fants resisted the role of acting as a baby, possibly because it was
affectively unpleasant for them to imagine this scenario. Thus,
both constraints of the body architecture and affective compo-
nents of the task as well as knowledge structures acted as control
parameters.
Although our dynamic systems approach cannot identify a
priori the particular control parameter for a given domain and
age, it is useful because it directs the researcher to a level of
specificity at which the constraints on developmental change
may be revealed. Before showing how a dynamic systems ap-
proach helps one understand communication development, we
will illustrate the utility of the perspective with two examples:
one in the motor domain, and the second to show how parents
can act as control parameters in the performance of new skills.
These examples are chosen because they can be supported by a
body of empirical findings.
Dynamic Systems Approaches in Two Domains
1. Stepping and walking in infants. The traditional view of
the ontogeny of human upright locomotion is that the develop-
ing motor cortex gains control over lower, subcortical or reflex-
ive elements. Thus, McGraw (1943) attributed the decline in
the well-known newborn stepping response to the maturation
of "inhibitory centers" in the cortex, and the onset of walking
to the subsequent maturation of cortical centers of voluntary
control. Other prescriptive accounts of locomotor onset empha-
size the role of cognitive structures (Zelazo, 1983) or a succes-
sion of hierarchical pattern-generating circuits (Forssberg,
1985). Although the role of the voluntary components in the
initiation of walking is indisputable, the actual developmental
course of this skill is more dynamic and complex than these
751
single-causal explanations would suggest (Thelen, 1984, 1986;
Thelen & Cooke, 1987).
We examine specifically two developmental transitions: the
"disappearance" of newborn stepping, and the subsequent on-
set of independent locomotion. In the first month or so of life,
infants perform "stepping" movements when held upright and
when they are sufficiently awake and aroused to move. General
behavioral activation appears to be the control parameter mov-
ing the system through real-time phase shifts of no-stepping
(asleep or drowsy), stepping (awake, alert, fussy) to no-stepping
(crying hard) (Thelen, Fisher, Ridley-Johnson, & Griffin,
1982). At about 2 months, however, awake infants no longer
usually step when held upright. Thelen & Fisher (1982) pro-
posed that the acceleration of one component process—the de-
position of subcutaneous body fat, which is especially rapid in
the first postnatal months—outpaces the growth of another
component process, the acquisition of muscle mass and
strength, so that infants are unable to lift their increasingly
heavy legs. Reducing the biomechanical demands on the legs by
submerging infants waist-high in water or placing them supine
unmasked the underlying coordinative pattern (Thelen, Fisher,
& Ridley-Johnson, 1984). Thus, within the context of the up-
right posture, the nature of the control parameter changed from
general behavioral activation to the deposition of subcutaneous
fat. Presumably, when some critical fat/muscle mass or strength
ratio was reached, the system switched into a new output
phase—no stepping. The ontogenetic timing of this phase shift
is a result of the asynchrony between components, not of a sin-
gle central commanding agency. Note again that the fat/muscle
ratio acted as a control parameter only in a particular context;
when infants were supine, the system was assembled dynami-
cally and specifically to that context, and kicking in the supine
position was again a function of behavioral activation (Thelen,
1985a). It was not the availability of the components alone, but
their task-specific relations that determined the topography of
the behavioral outcome.
The onset of independent locomotion can also be viewed
from this systems perspective. When infants take theirfirstinde-
pendent steps, the new stage is the result of many component
abilities. Some of these have been in place long before the phase
shift. For example, Thelen and her colleagues have demon-
strated that the capability to generate alternating steps may be
available many months before independent walking. If infants
are supported over a motorized treadmill, they perform well-
coordinated stepping movements that are responsive to the
speed of the treadmill (Thelen, 1986). In a longitudinal study
of nine infants, one infant demonstrated this ability at 1 month,
and all of the infants performed some steps by 4 months of age
(Ulrich, Thelen, & Niles, 1987). Although involuntary, these
steps are not reflexive, because infants can exquisitely adjust
these steps to the demands of a task; specifically, infants main-
tained bilateral coordination when each leg was on a treadmill
belt driven at a different speed (Thelen, Ulrich, & Niles, in
press).
Likewise, infants appear to have both the motivation to loco-
mote and the ability to initiate voluntary leg movements long
before the onset of walking, because they will move by creeping,
crawling, or rolling to reach desired goals. They are responsive
to and make postural corrections for visual-flow information
752 ALAN FOGEL AND ESTHER THELEN
and vestibular perturbations in advance of actual walking, al-
though these abilities certainly improve after the onset of up-
right locomotion. Thus, none of these components are the con-
trol parameters for independent walking.
Thelen has proposed that for this skill the control parameter
is the ability to support the weight on one leg, an action that is
likely a combination of muscle strength and balance ability. The
treadmill experiments suggested that the crucial factor in elicit-
ing stepping was the stretch of the stance leg backward as the
weight was shifted forward, which allowed the spring-like re-
lease of the forward swing of the leg. In normal locomotion,
walkers must be able to maintain a strong pillar of support in
this stance leg, but new walkers are notoriously unstable in the
stance leg. The treadmill, a contextual manipulation, mechani-
cally stretched the stance leg backward and acted as a control
parameter for the assembly of the coordinated stepping skill.
During development, the infant must develop strength and bal-
ance to produce the requisite support ability, which allows the
coordinative pattern to emerge.
Thus, in this classic U-shaped developmental phenomenon
(Strauss, 1982), the disappearance and reappearance of step-
ping was the result of system-wide reorganizations determined
by different control parameters: in the early months a critical
fat/muscle ratio, and later in the first year, a critical combina-
tion of strength and balance. At each time, however, the behav-
ior was not hard wired, but assembled in a context-specific
manner, because contextual manipulations could substitute for
organismic control parameters in effecting the phase shifts.
2. Apprenticeship interactions. In the dynamic systems
perspective there is noformal difference between control param-
eters that arise endogenously and those that come from exoge-
nous sources. The environment can contribute control parame-
ters—just as the treadmill mechanically stretches back the
stance leg of the prewalking infant—that spontaneously com-
bine with those available to the child to create behavioral per-
formance that the child alone, or in another environmental con-
text, could not produce.
During social interaction with infants, adults can temporar-
ily enhance a child's performance beyond the level at which the
child is capable of functioning alone. Adults supply supportive
"frames" by which the infant can organize existing, but incom-
plete, behavior patterns into functional systems. This phenome-
non has been described in a number of ways: as framing (Fogel,
1977), apprenticeship (Kaye, 1982), scaffolding (Bruner, 1983),
and the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). The
particular adult behavior that the child uses to enhance perfor-
mance depends both on the type and level of the child's own
abilities and on the nature of the task. The adult brings cultur-
ally appropriate tools, symbols, and actions. By analyzing the
child's particular limitations, the adult creates a zone of proxi-
mal development in which the child can use his own knowledge
and skill to make a contribution to a complex joint enterprise.
Holding an object steady and within arm's reach while a 4-
month-old attempts a grasp, elaborating on toddler's one-word
utterances and asking leading questions to elicit further re-
sponses, and teaching a child to play a musical instrument via
a series of simple yet challenging exercises are all examples of
interaction in the zone of proximal development.
We propose that these types of adult-child interactions illus-
trate a dynamic systems approach to development. The partic-
ular actions and objects that the adult chooses to support the
child's effort will depend on the child's existing level of compe-
tence, on the context, and on the nature of the task. Because
these actions enhance the child's competence in the zone of
proximal development, we suggest that these actions are control
parameters arising from extrinsic sources. The mere presence
of the adult action allows the infant's existing abilities to be-
come dynamically reorganized in order to permit the emer-
gence of a skill that the child did not previously manifest. It is
not the child's existing set of competencies alone, nor only the
adult's sensitive framing of those skills, but the task-specific dy-
namic interaction of all these elements that creates the emer-
gent skill.
For example, newboras have relatively rudimentary self-
calming skills (Kessen & Mandler, 1962). Adults may provide
extrinsic control parameters for the emergence of a state of calm
through holding, rocking, and the provision of nipples on which
to suck. The particular device or action leading to calming de-
pends on what works for the infant and on what is available to
the adult. In any case, a relatively discontinuous phase shift
is occasioned by a small change in some extrinsic control pa-
rameter.
Likewise, adult actions, such as turn taking, initiating, and
complementarity of response, appear to play a crucial and
changing role in the development of communication and dis-
course skills. Adults have relatively little effect on discourse with
a newborn whose behavior consists primarily of endogenous cy-
cles of action and pause. Nonetheless, even in the newborn,
adults create a semblance of dialogue by fitting their behavior
(jiggling) into pauses in the infant's bursts of sucking. By the age
of 2 weeks, however, the adult actions have changed the infant's
behavior; making the children look more mature as they make
small shifts in the time of onset of sucking in response to the
mother's jiggling (Kaye, 1977).
Adults continue to provide the scaffolds by which infants
build more mature social interaction. At 3 months, for exam-
ple, infants' alternations of action and pause in expressive be-
havior appear to cycle with endogenous activation levels.
Adults, however, initiate, frame, and maintain the dialogue.
They do this by a steady gaze as the baby cycles spontaneously
between looking at and away from the adult. Once the infant
gazes at the adult, dialogue is created by exchanges of facial
expression and vocalization (Fogel, 1977; Kaye &Fogel, 1980).
The actions serving as control parameters for infant-parent
discourse shift again by 6 months of age, as a function of the
child's development level and the altered nature of the task, as
purely social displays are replaced by interactions with objects.
By this age, infants are becoming more active social partners,
who are themselves able to initiate and maintain bouts of mu-
tual gazing and smiling (Cohn & Tronick, 1987; Kaye & Fogel,
1980). The adult's role concomitantly changes from providing
extrinsic support for social discourse to supporting object-me-
diated social interactions. Adults frame social object play by
moving objects in and out of view and of reach, by taking the
initiative in games of hide and seek, and by give and take (Ad-
amson & Bakeman, 1985; Bruner, 1983).
Adults continue to stay developmentally ahead of the infant
by providing appropriately framed control parameters at each
 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
new period in the development of social skill. In a study of ob-
ject-centered interactions during the second year of life, Heck-
hausen (1984) found that adults attempted to balance the
child's limitations in order to facilitate the task. Adult's help,
however, was not superfluous nor was it merely supportive: The
adult attempted to promote the infant's development through
assistance that was challenging rather than simply for the pur-
pose of ensuring success in the task. In fact, by the end of the
second year, children began to refuse the adult's help when they
perceived it as superfluous or unchallenging.
By age 2, the extrinsic control parameters supplied by the
adult shift from object manipulation and overt expressive be-
havior to jointly shared symbols and affective states. Slade
(1987) found that both level and duration of symbolic play epi-
sodes for 2-year-olds increased when an adult was present. With
an adult, the children were more likely to display symbolic ac-
tions (naming), self-directed pretend play (combing one's hair),
object-directed pretend play (feeding a doll), object combina-
tions, and the planning out of pretend sequences. Apparently
adults provide concrete support for symbolic acts by entering
into play routines and directly responding to the child's use of
symbols in communicative contexts. As in the other examples
cited in this section, the adult provides an extrinsic control pa-
rameter that allows the infant to behave at a level of skill more
advanced than that which might be observed when the infant is
alone or with peers. The emergent behavior—dialogue, object
exploration, or symbolic action—is not hard wired, but rather
assembled in the context of the adult-child interaction.
A Dynamic Systems Approach to Development:
Summary
The dynamic systems approach to developmental change has
three important characteristics. It is;
1. Independent of time scale. In this perspective, the same
principles govern processes of system stability and change in
real and ontogenetic time scales, (The perspective may be
equally valid over phylogenetic time; see for example, Gould,
1977.) The same systems properties that account for the discon-
tinuous shift between walking and running in real time, for ex-
ample, may be used to explain the acquisition of a new skill in
developmental time. The approach therefore applies equally to
behavior and development and points to how developmental
change can be understood as the result of real-time processes.
2. Independent of source of change. There is no formal
difference between endogenous and exogenous changes in com-
ponents and their relationships. Emergent states can be created
either by means of environmental support or as a result of
changes of components within the individual. The approach,
therefore, does not artificially separate infant and environment
and can account specifically for the role of the adult in the con-
struction of new skills.
3. Independent ofepigenetic instructions. In a complex sys-
tem with high dimensionality, discontinuous phase shifts of sys-
tem organization at the low-dimensional level are brought
about by relatively small changes in just a few control parame-
ters. It is not necessary, therefore, to genetically program the
timing of emergence of developmental stages. All that is needed
is the specification of components linked preferentially (that is,
753
stochastically, rather than rigidly). This is enough to guarantee
equifinal ontogenetic histories within a species built by idiosyn-
cratic experiences within individuals.
Communication as a Developing System
Complex skills like communication are multidetermined, in-
corporating elements of cognition, sensation, perception, affect,
and motor control. A communicative action cannot be per-
formed unless all of the components skills are in place and avail-
able to the individual, because the action is the systems product
of the essential cooperating elements. Because new skills seem
to appear as a piece during development—uttering the first
word or pointing at a distant object—it may seem as though all
of the components developed in synchrony, orchestrated by a
language or skill acquisition "program."
The ability of a stable patterned output to "float" from one
functional system to another (Thelen, 1981) suggests that devel-
opmental outcome is to some degree dependent on what is avail-
able at the periphery, that is, what the neuromuscular system
and the constraints of dynamics can generate. Thus, behaviors
that appear "too early " or "too late" should not be dismissed
as epiphenomenal. Rather, the ontogenetic histories of coordi-
native structures can be used as core data in theories of develop-
mental change (Fogel, 1985).
Communicative actions, like other behavior, emerge from the
ecological demands of infancy, from phylogeuetic constraints
on ontogeny, which delimit plasticity, and from the self-organiz-
ing nature of action systems. Because human infants are motor-
ically immature, expressive channels using small muscle groups
(e.g., crying and facial expressions) are among thefirstto func-
tion. These issues will be considered in the next section.
The subsequent course of expressive development must then
be viewed as the interaction of these coordinative structures in
an everchanging matrix of cooperating structures and pro-
cesses. As we will show, with increased postural support, with
the growth of voluntary control, and with changing ecological
demands, the nature and uses of these coordinations will
change.
Phylogenetic Perspectives on Communicative Ontogeny
Developing organisms are faced with conflicting demands.
On the one hand, they must undergo growth and differentiation
toward becoming reproductively active adults. On the other
hand, they must have physiological and behavioral adaptations
that ensure their survival at every point during development
(Oppenheim, 1981). For example, human newborns can only
survive within a limited range of body temperature, yet their
physiological capability to thermoregulate on their own func-
tions poorly at birth. A covering of fur or feathers would help,
but this is clearly an adaptive solution beyond the range of phy-
logeny.
Thus, compromises must be reached within these phyloge-
netic constraints and thefiniteenergy resources available to the
developing organism. A number of possibilities can be imag-
ined. First, some necessary systems might be developmentally
accelerated while others are retarded. For example, in the case
of thermoregulation, it appears that the deposition of subcuta-
754 ALAN FOGEL AND ESTHER THELEN
neous body fat takes precedence in thefirstfew months over the
increase in muscle tissue: Thermoregulation, in this case, is a
more important developmental adaptation at this age than
strength.
A second strategy for both survival and development is to ap-
propriate the specific behaviors suited to meet the particular
ontogenetic demands. For human infants, one way to compen-
sate for poor thermoregulation is to have the parent provide
necessary warmth and cooling. For this to happen, however, be-
havioral adaptations must ensure the close contact of the child
and the parent and the ability of the parent to provide artificial
temperature regulation for the infant (or both). Because infants
lack the motoric ability to establish and maintain close contact,
they have evolved expressive actions that signal to parents their
physiological discomfort, just as parents have evolved sensitiv-
ity to those signals.
By viewing expressive behavior, then, as a result of both con-
temporaneously adaptive demands and phylogenetic con-
straints, we can begin to understand the heterochronic develop-
ment of component structures and processes. The relatively
large size of the human cerebrum in relation to female pelvic
dimensions means that human infants must be born at a com-
paratively earlier state in fetal development than other primates
(Gould, 1977). As a result, this "fetal" infant has a relatively
weak body lacking the muscle mass and strength necessary to
support its body against gravity and to maintain the stances and
postures for instrumental action (Reed, 1982;Thelen, 1984).
Despite the general immaturity of the motor system, infants*
ensure their viability by the accelerated development of sensory
systems and selective motor systems that can perform commu-
nicative actions requiring little muscle strength. Some of these
coordinations, like crying and smiling, may have been selected
by phytogeny for both current and future communicative ac-
tions; others, like kicking and mouthing, may be coordinations
available for other purposes—locomotion or feeding—and only
used opportunistically by younger infants as expressions. These
coordinative structures can then be reused as part of other func-
tional systems later in life (Fogel, 1985;Thelen, 1985b).
Because the infant uses a variety of behavioral forms for on-
togenetic adaptations (i.e., to meet a specific need during a lim-
ited period of ontogeny), a close examination of the ontogenetic
histories of individual coordinative structures would "consist
of multiple arrests, deletions, regressions, and the elimination
of earlier behavioral forms, and the emergence of qualitatively
new forms whose antecedents are by no means self-evident"
(Wolff, 1987, p. 249). In his classic monograph on evolution,
Gould (1977) makes the compelling argument that organisms
build new forms from already existing parts. Precisely because
organisms exist as cooperative systems, they are stable assem-
blies that resist drastic structural or physiological changes. It is
easier for phylogeny and ontogeny to recruit, modify, and reas-
semble elements already integrated into the system than to
build parts anew (Gould & Lewontin, 1979). It is this opportu-
nistic use of elements already in place that explains many of the
discontinuities and shifting functions of early communicative
action (Fogel, 1985).
Bates (1979) has applied Gould's concepts to language evolu-
tion. Bates proposed that language capacity did not arise de
novo phylogenetically, but through a "reorchestration of capaci-
ties that evolved separately in the primate line, presumably in
the service of other functions" (p. 132). The evolution of lan-
guage was not, therefore, a result of a dedicated genetic struc-
ture, but of many component abilities coalescing around a
task—the need to communicate symbols across acoustic-artic-
ulatory channels.
Reinterpreting Communicative and Expressive
Development From a Dynamic Systems Perspective
Communication is defined broadly as information from a
sender that causes a change in a receiver. This simple definition
of communication has been used in a wide range offields,from
semiotics (Sebeok, 1965) to animal behavior (Smith, 1977; Wil-
son, 1975) to psychology (Buck, 1982). It has the advantage of
recognizing both spontaneous and intentional information
transfer in biological systems as diverse as the human infant and
the honeybee.
Cognitive developmentalists have conceptualized the exis-
tence of communicative milestones that cut across specific mo-
dalities of expression, such as the transition from spontaneous
to intentional communication (corresponding to cognitive ad-
vances in the understanding of causality and space occurring
near the end of thefirstyear of life) and from preverbal to verbal
forms of communication (corresponding to the cognitive ad-
vance of the acquisition of symbols at the end of the second
year of life). The intention to communicate is judged from the
infant's persistent efforts to signal the other person, the sequenc-
ing of the gesture with looking at the other person, and looking
at the object about which the child intends to communicate
(Harding & Golinkoff, 1979). In the second year, as symbolic
abilities grow, nonverbal gestures become integrated with words
and sentences into linguistic communication.
The dynamic systems approach does not ignore cognitive
changes contributing to communicative development. The sys-
tems approach directs our attention to cognitive and also to
other potential contributors to communication, contributors
such as facial and manual motor actions that appear in the rep-
ertoire of infants long before they are used intentionally by the
infant to communicate. By tracing the ontogenetic history of
individual actionsfromfirstappearance to later communicative
usage, we can show that they often develop within functional
systems that are not, at the outset, related to communication
or expression. Coordinative structures that are precursors to
communicative skill can be found early in life in systems serv-
ing respiratory, arousal regulatory, locomotor, and exploratory
functions.
Developmental changes in emotion have been explained
from a number of different theoretical perspectives. Cognitive
developmental accounts tie ontogenetic changes in crying and
distress expression, for example, with cognitive-structural shifts
(Campos & Stenberg, 1978; Piaget, 1963; Sroufe, 1979). Spe-
cifically, the transition from the emotion of distress (merely a
visceral discomfort response) present at birth to disappoint-
ment beginning in the second or third month of life is due pri-
marily to the emergence of primary circular reactions and sim-
ple anticipation. The shift from mere distress to anger, occur-
ring later in the first year is presumed to be related to the
infant's growing conception of causality and intentionality.
 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
Similarly, fear replaces wariness at the end of the first year as a
result of the acquisition of object permanance.
An alternative perspective is that emotional development is
driven developmentally by noncognitive, affective aspects of hu-
man action (Campos & Stenberg, 1978;Izard&Haynes, 1986;
Steiner, 1979). In this perspective, emotional expressions can be
elicited spontaneously in the absence of cognition. For example,
facial expressions of emotion can be elicited in animals who
have had their cerebral hemispheres removed, leaving the brain
stem intact (Steiner, 1979). Anger expressions in response to
pain stimuli can be induced at 2 months, before cognitive ap-
praisal believed to be associated with anger has developed
(Izard, Hembree, Dougherty, & Spizzirri, 1983). In this view,
affect plays a primary role and cognition a secondary role in
ontogeny. Infants do not first appraise a situation cognitively
and then decide what to feel. Rather, emotion is a spontaneous
response that serves to guide both individual and interpersonal
behavior (Bretherton, Fritz, Zahn-Waxier, & Ridgeway, 1986;
Izard, 1977).
In the traditional cognitive and affective theories of emo-
tional development, change is driven by structural neurological
shifts. Whether that change occurs in the cerebrum or the brain
stem matters little here. Structural views presume the existence
of a single developmental clock that imposes order on legions
of subcomponents: The components advance synchronously,
subject perhaps to minor horizontal decalage shifts within do-
mains. In the dynamic systems view, components develop at
different times and with different rates. The particular subcom-
ponent that becomes the control parameter changes over time.
At one age, a cognitive shift may control developmental reorga-
nization of emotion. At another age, this reorganization may be
controlled by a motor advance, a shift in state control, a change
of social interactive skill, or the learning of a display rule regu-
lating the timing of emotional displays with regard to social
context (Fogel, 1985; Fox & Davidson, 1984; Thelen, 1985b;
Thelen & Fogel, in press; Wolff, 1987; Zivin, 1986).
Although there are no prospective studies of expressive and
communicative development based on a dynamic systems ap-
proach per se, the following review attempts to reinterpret exist-
ing data from a systems perspective. In the next section, we re-
view the research on three different coordinative structures that
appear at or near birth—crying, smiling, and pointing—and
show that they are organized developmentally into a variety of
different functional systems and subject to a series of different
control parameters as each of the functional systems emerges.
Crying
Crying exhibits a complex ontogenetic history during the first
years of life and stands as an excellent illustration of the conflu-
ent and shifting influences of organismic and environmental
factors (especially social environmental factors) on expressive
development.
In the newborn period, Wolff(1967) showed that at least four
different types of cry could be created and controlled by varia-
tions in duration of the components of the basic respiration cy-
cle: expiration, rest, inspiration, rest. The "rhythmical" cry had
average durations of .62, .09, .04, and .20 s for each of the four
components respectively, whereas the "pain" cry in response to
755
a pin prick to the sole of the foot had mean values of 3.83,3.99,
. 18, and .16 s, respectively. Even though respiration is a continu-
ous behavior and the duration of respiration and rest periods
can vary continuously, there are discretely different types of cry,
suggesting the existence of discontinuous phase shifts in real-
time processes- In many cases, Wolff found that the transition
to each of these cry types could be controlled by specific envi-
ronmental stimulation at specific levels of behavioral activation.
Around the second month, a qualitatively different cry
emerges, the so-called irregular or fussy cries. The cry becomes
more elaborated during thefirstyear with the addition of novel
articulatory features, such as variations in vocal intensity, bila-
bial friction noises, and "squealing." These changes in the abil-
ity to control the auditory features of the cry become coordi-
nated with infant goal-directed action as cries become per-
ceived by caregivers as demands for particular objects or
actions. Corresponding to changes in the infant's ability to ref-
erence distant objects with a reach or a point, at about the age
of 9 months, the cry becomes "less persistent, more punctuated
by pauses during which the infant checks on the uptake by the
mother or by other adults" (Bruner, 1983, p. 92). Soon, accord-
ing to Bruner, the cry becomes more ritualized and perfunctory
as it becomes incorporated into a demand/request function in
coordination with referential gestures of the arms and hands.
The cry continues to become more complex after the first
year as well. Compared with younger infants, older infant's cries
are slower to build and decline, and there are more variations in
the intermediate states. Infants observed in Ainsworth's strange
situation at 12 Vz and 19 Vt months (Thompson & Lamb, 1984)
initiated crying with intermittent brief distress vocalizations,
proceeded to longer but arrhythmic cries (fussing), then re-
turned to a regular, rhythmic pattern with higher intensity (sob-
bing). The toddlers increased the intensity of the cries by varia-
tions of pitch in addition to rhythm and duration (screaming).
Infants added audibility of respiration in producing the most
intense cries (panic and hyperventilated cries).
What are the potential control parameters that shift the in-
fant into these new forms of vocal expression? As Wolff showed,
the basic structure of the cry is intimately tied to respiratory
cycles (and, indeed, crying is likely to have been phylogeneti-
cally derived from respiratory movements). Changes in the res-
piratory apparatus may serve as control parameters for the de-
velopmental shift in crying seen at 2 months. The irregular/
fussy cry can only be produced after the development of the
explosive respiratory phenomenon known as forced expulsion
of air, a kind of cough-cry combination. Increasing lung
strength and efficiency also alters the pitch and duration of cry
phases (Prescott, 1975).
Subsequent changes in the cry pattern may also be regulated
by anatomical and physiological control parameters. For exam-
ple, the large forces generated during feeding and oral explora-
tion during the early months may induce major changes in the
oral musculature (Bosma, 1975). These motor structures may,
in turn, be used opportunistically by both the crying and speech
system. Similarly, there is increasingly elaborated fine motor
control over the speech articulators during the second half of
the first year. It is not surprising, therefore, to note that the in-
crease of complexity of cry sounds coincides with the period of
speech-like babbling, and that these new features—including
756 ALAN FOGEL AND ESTHER THELEN
variations in vocal intensity, bilabial friction noises, and
"squealing"—appear also in noncry vocalizations (Stark,
1978). In short, although the context and functional conse-
quences of cry and noncry vocalizations are different, develop-
mental changes in components common to both may shift both
systems into new emergent forms.
In addition to respiration and the oral motor-control system,
the emergence of other skills may also control the timing of on-
togenetic changes in crying. Head turning (Turkewitz, 1977),
hand-to-mouth and kicking (Wolff, 1987), and sucking (Kessen
& Mandler, 1962) accompany and inhibit (or both) cries in new-
borns. Gaze aversion in 3-month-olds (Stern, 1974), controlled
hand-to-mouth behavior in 5-month-olds (Fogel, 1985), and in-
tentional avoidance behavior in 12-month-olds (Ainsworth,
Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) may all play important roles in
the ontogeny of crying.
This multicausal perspective makes a wide variety of pre-
sumed ontogenetic control parameters amenable to experimen-
tal manipulation. If we believe that the control of developmental
change lies primarily in neurological structures, we cannot be
expected to study human development experimentally. If, on
the other hand, we assume that neurological factors are no more
or less important than peripheral and contextual factors in
causing developmental change, then we can search for develop-
mental phenomena that are ethically amenable to experimental
analysis. Suppose, for example, that we wish to study hand-to-
mouth behavior as a hypothetical control parameter in the on-
togeny of crying. We would first want to document the natural
history of both crying and hand-to-mouth in relation to each
other over a particular developmental period, possibly by rela-
tively frequent observations of a small number of infants (Fogel,
1981, 1982a; 1985; Wolff, 1966; 1987).
The changing temporal associations between the behaviors
will serve as hypotheses for morerigorousexperimental manip-
ulations. An example of such a manipulation is to gently inhibit
infants' spontaneous hand-to-mouth action during crying, fuss-
ing, and noncrying periods. Alternatively, one could facilitate
hand-to-mouth contact by reducing the degrees of freedom of
uncontrolled arm movements, comparing the effects of such fa-
cilitation during both cry and noncry states. The specific exper-
imental strategy must be guided by a thorough knowledge of
the spontaneous behavior of the infant at different ages and in
varying conditions. No single dynamic systems perspective can
provide the specific experimental strategy nor predict a systems
outcome in the absence of a detailed natural history. However,
the concept that extrinsic components can substitute for intrin-
sic ones in the emergence of new behavioral organizations sug-
gests a general experimental strategy useful in the study of ex-
pressive and communicative action.
We do not wish to argue that cognitive and affective systems
are unimportant for developmental changes in crying, but
rather that such explanations ignored the organizing power
of other components that enter into the cry. The size of the
lungs, the strength of the oral muscles, and the steadiness of the
hand are essential factors in the ontogeny of the cry expressive
system.
Smiling
Like crying, smiling can be observed as a stable pattern of
movement present at birth and having a complex ontogenetic
history. Neonatal smiles have a rather simple morphology. The
face remains relaxed while only the mouth stretches sidewards
and upwards bilaterally, suggesting a preferential linkage of the
retractor muscles on either side of the mouth. Facial grimaces
that are morphologically identical to smiling have been ob-
served in preterm infants as young as 26 weeks gestational age
(Wolff, 1987). The newborn smile is a spontaneous behavior
that occurs primarily in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep
states. REM smiles tend to occur in bursts of several smiles in a
row, followed by pauses with no smiles (Emde & Koenig, 1969).
Smiling thus is a stable coordinative structure that appears in
the repertoire before it has any function vis-a-vis emotional ex-
pressiveness, and perhaps even before the coordinative struc-
ture is associated systematically with some internal motiva-
tional state.
By the second week, smiles begin to appear during waking
states. The basic morphology of the mouth movement is the
same, but the lip corners retract farther and the mouth may
open slightly, the cheek muscles contract, the skin around the
eyes wrinkles, while the eyes themselves remain somewhat
glassy. Although REM smiles occur in bursts, waking infants
under 2 months will smile only once or twice in a 5-min period
of face-to-face social interaction. A dramatic change occurs at
about three months as smiling begins to increase in frequency
and becomes nonrandomly distributed in real time. Smiling oc-
curs in "clusters" containing a series of smiles separated by rel-
atively brief pauses (Fogel, 1982b). In a longitudinal study of 52
subjects, the mean rate of smile clusters increased from .04 per
min at 6 weeks, to .72 per min at 13 weeks, and 1.10 per min
at 26 weeks, a statistically significant change (Fogel, 1982b;
Kaye& Fogel, 1980).
Demos (1982) found wide individual differences in smiling
behavior between 7 and 24 months. Infants developed idiosyn-
cratic "blends" of smiling with other types of facial expressions
such as surprise, excitement, and anger. In addition, the infants
Demos observed had a considerable repertoire of nonaffective
expressive movements accompanying the smile. These included
nose wrinkles, jaw drops, blinks, blows, and brow raises that
served to communicate affects from pleasure to mischief. To-
ward the end of the second year, these children could produce
messages related to mugging,flirtation,coyness, and teasing by
an appropriate combination of the invariant smile morphology
with some other expressive movement.
These studies show that during the first year smiling changes
in morphology, temporal organization, and in its sequential
linkage with other expressive actions. Equally dramatic devel-
opmental shifts characterize the function and eliciting contexts
of smiles over the first year. Newborn smiles are clearly associ-
ated with behavioral state, especially REM sleep and drowsi-
ness. Wolff (1987) found that drowsy smiles were most likely to
occur within 2 s of eye closure in infants whose lids were already
drooping. This suggests that smiling in newborns occurs when
external sensory input is abruptly removed.
During thefirstfew weeks of life, specific perceptual features
of the environment replace endogenous state shifts or general
levels of sensory input as elicitors of smiles. In particular, in-
fants smile upon hearing familiar voices and sounds, less regu-
larly upon sensing tactile stimulation, and not at all upon re-
ceiving visual stimulation. However, this again changes, so that
 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
by 6 weeks visual stimuli become the predominant elicitors of
smiles, and the infant smiles primarily in alert states. There is
an increasing specificity in the visual stimuli required to elicit
a smile, from two eye spots at 6 weeks to a familiar face at 12
weeks (Spitz, 1965).
During the period from 3 to 6 months, infant's smiles are
more likely to co-occur with their looking at mother than with
periods of looking at objects. By 6 months, smiling may serve
the infants' widening range of intentions to acquire and explore
objects, as smiles are used systematically to regulate social in-
teractions and to bring adults into their object exploratory rou-
tines (Adamson&Bakeman, 1985; Fogel, 1982b; Kaye&Fogel,
1980). By the end of the first year smiling serves a variety of
communicative functions, including the intent to flirt or to do
mischief (Demos, 1982).
How, then, can we begin to characterize this complex ontoge-
netic course of an expressive behavior that changes in morphol-
ogy, in timing, in eliciting contexts, and in function? It is clear
that no one control parameter orchestrates these shifts, but that
a number of variables, some more "central" and others more
"peripheral" may be responsible for the emergence of new
forms.
The transition in the newborn period from state-dominated
to visually elicited smiles, for example, may result from steady
increases in motor efference as smiling "spreads" awayfromthe
mouth to include larger regions of the face, from the gradually
increasing control over attention and over sleep/wake cycles,
and from the growing dominance of visual over tactual stimula-
tion. At 3 months the control parameters for the emergence of
repeated sequences of smiling to familiar persons and objects
may be cognitive-developmental shifts related to stimulus rec-
ognition as well as noncognitive factors related to the affective
regulatory shifts occurring during this same period (Fogel,
1982a).
Although cognitive and neurological changes no doubt con-
tribute to the developmental shift in smiling as well as the
changes in attention and motor control occurring between 2
and 6 months (McCall, Eichorn, & Hogarty , 1977), centrally
orchestrated stage shifts cannot be the sole explanation for the
ontogenetic course of smiling. Piaget (1963), for example, as-
sumed that the emergence of exogenous smiling at 2 months
was the result of the cognitive development of recognitory as-
similation, a view taken up later by Sroufe (1979). This per-
spective does not take into account the development of the smile
response from its origins in neonatal sleep states, the increasing
dominance of visual over tactual elicitors, nor the changes in
smile morphology and temporal organization. The cognitive-
structural explanation only accounts for the increasing speci-
ficity of eliciting stimuli during this period.
The value of the dynamic systems perspective is to open the
issue of developmental induction in human infants to rigorous
empirical analysis by abandoning appeals to central organizers,
genetic ground plans, and other black-box agencies of change.
In lieu of experimental studies that systematically vary the con-
ditions under which each of the components listed above may
influence the form, timing and function of smiling over the first
2 months, we can only speculate about the causes of develop-
mental change. Experimental strategies similar to those dis-
cussed for the study of crying may also be applied to smiling.
757
One of the major investigators of smiling during this period has
been Wolff (1966, 1987), who systematically varied the modal-
ity of stimulation, the form of presentation, and the type of
stimulus across a variety of sleep and waking states of infants
at different ages between birth and 3 months. For older infants,
one could vary the visual access of the social partner, the avail-
ability and relation of the social partner to objects, and the re-
sponses of the partner to the infants' smiles. This type of re-
search, in which a variety of potential parameters are covaried
across an epoch of developmental transition, can serve as one
model of inquiry generated by a dynamic systems perspective.
Pointing
Pointing as a referential gesture emerges near the end of the
first year of life. One commonly held view is that pointing
differentiates from the movements of reaching and grasping,
partly in order to economize the movement as a gesture needed
for signaling and partly as a conventionalization of the adult
expression learned through imitation and shaping (Bates, Ca-
maioni, & Volterra, 1975; Bruner, 1983; Leung & Rheingold,
1981;Masur, 1983; Murphy, 1978). This assumes that cognitive
developments at this age—the ability to carry out, plan, and
signal intentions—induce the child to learn new behavior; this
is a purely cognitive interpretation. This view, however, is based
on observations of infants beginning at the age of 8 months. In
this section, we shall review research showing that index-finger
extension is a coordinative structure used reliably by infants as
young as 2 months of age. A dynamic systems perspective on
the development of referential gestures, such as pointing, should
account not only for the emergence of the function of inten-
tional communication at the end of the first year, but also the
organization and reorganization of the action of the hand and
its changing functions over thefirstyear of life.
There are no systematic studies of the repertoire of manual
action in newborn s comparable to the studies on facial action.
However, index-finger extensions have been reported in infants
as young as 2 months old (Trevarthen, 1977). These index-finger
extensions are coordinative structures appearing in nonrandom
contexts and with ontogenetic significance. Index-finger exten-
sions have been coded reliably in real time when points of less
than 2-s duration were eliminated (Hannan. 1982). In a sample
of 28 three-month-old infants, 64% of the subjects had at least
one index-finger extension, and some as many as six in a 2-min
session of face-to-face interaction with the mother (Fogel &
Hannan, 1985). For convenience, we use the word pointing to
refer to index-finger extensions in infants, although by doing so
we do not mean to imply that the expression is an intentional
act of the infant.
Several studies have shown that pointing remains in the rep-
ertoire of the infant between the 2nd and 10th month. In a lon-
gitudinal case study of two infants observed weekly over the first
year, the frequency of pointing did not vary systematically with
age. Reaching and grasping, on the other hand, had a marked
increase in both babies at the age of 4 months (Fogel, 1981;
Platzman, 1983), showing clearly that pointing does not differ-
entiate from reaching at the end of the first year. In addition, a
longitudinal study of 15 infants followed monthly over the first
758 ALAN FOGEL AND ESTHER THELEN
year found instances of pointing at every observation (Hannan,
1987),
Like smiling and crying, pointing also changes in function
over the first year. In 2- and 3-month-old infants, the pointing
action occurs just before or just after a vocalization or mouth
movement such as sucking, mouthing, or chewing. When babies
point, they are neither smiling nor crying, but in a neutral and
attentive affective state and not concurrently vocalizing (Fogel
& Hannan, 1985; Hannan, 1982; Platzman, 1983). These early
points are not coordinated with gaze direction or arm exten-
sion. At 3 months, pointing rarely occurs when the arm is ex-
tended. More often, one or both arms are in a moderate state
offlexion.Furthermore, early pointing does not seem to be di-
rected to the focus of attention.
At 6 months, pointing continues to occur in social situations
and nondirectional pointing may also appear on the hand of the
nonextended arm when an object gains the infant's attention
(Thelen & Fogel, in press). Between 6 and 9 months, pointing
occurs when the infant is sitting, usually with aflexedarm, and
is used, along with other manipulative actions of the hands, to
touch objects that the infant is exploring (Thelen & Fogel, in
press; Wakaba, 1981).
By 11 months, pointing occurs directionally to an object
from a sitting or standing posture and with an extended arm
(Hannan, 1987; Thelen & Fogel, in press). Pointing at the end
of the first year is an intentional action, used primarily as an
extension of the orienting response, which can be inferred be-
cause the infant does not look systematically between the object
of interest and a nearby adult (Kinsbourne, 1986; Lempert &
Kinsbourne, 1985).
What explains these developmental changes in the eliciting
context and functions of pointing over the first year? The shift
around 6 months from spontaneous and nondirectional index-
finger extension on a nonextended arm to the use of index-finger
extension as a tool for exploring the object world may be ex-
plained by the development of arm control and articulation
over thefingersin manipulative tasks. Pointing, available as a
coordinative structure since at least 2 months of age and already
associated with the direction of the infant's attention, may be
used opportunistically with other newly developed skills of
grasping, palming, rotating, and the picking up and letting go
of objects.
It has been assumed in previous research that the shift from
spontaneous pointing to the emergence of referential pointing
at the end of the first year is a manifestation of the three-way
cognitive integration between self, adult, and object and the in-
fant's awareness of their roles in communicative exchanges
(Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975; Masur, 1983). Although
this cognitive factor may act as a control parameter for this de-
velopmental shift in the function of pointing, other control pa-
rameters may also play a role, such as gross motor control over
posture and upper limb movement contributing to the direction
of pointing displayed with an extended arm. These factors are
not the ones likely to explain the shift in the function of pointing
at 6 months, reminding us that the dynamic systems approach
predicts changes over time in the parameters controlling devel-
opmental change.
Data on the ontogeny of pointing come primarily from longi-
tudinal natural history studies (Fogel, 1981; 1985; Hannan,
1982; 1987; Platzman, 1983;Trevarthen, 1977), which we have
interpreted from the perspective of a dynamic systems view.
Without further experimental study, however, these conclusions
remain tentative. Presumed control parameters at a given age
should be varied in relation to tasks in which pointing is typi-
cally elicited and under various levels of behavioral activation.
For example, during the period between 8 and 12 months, when
pointing seems to shift from an exploratory to an indicating
function, the infant could be shown objects at a distance as well
as objects within reach. Motivational state could be varied by
using both familiar and unfamiliar objects. In addition, the in-
fant's arms could be left free, gently restrained in the infant's
sides, or propped so as to discourage or enhance the possibility
of pointing. One would expect higher rates of pointing as an
emergent phenomenon only under specific conditions.
Discussion
In this article we have presented evidence that communica-
tive action develops in thefirstyear of life in the context of pro-
cesses and functions that are not, for the infant at least, commu-
nicative. We have discussed communicative ontogeny from a
dynamic systems perspective that focused on heterochronic de-
velopment and on functional reorganization of coordinative
structures. We have also conceptualized aspects of the social
and physical environment as control parameters that unmask
emergent patterns of action unavailable to the infant in other
contexts.
The data presented in support of the dynamic systems ap-
proach are not meant to be conclusive, but suggestive. Most of
the current research on communication and expression during
the first year is from longitudinal natural-history observations,
many of which are done on a small number of subjects. This is
a necessary first step in documenting the variety of potential
control parameters that may be operating in complex develop-
ing systems, but more needs to be done. Specifically, we have
outlined a number of concrete experimental strategies that fol-
low from a dynamic systems approach.
First, the investigator must identify a set of candidate control
parameters that are ethically manipulable: in many cases these
will be motor and context factors (cf. Blass, 1987; Heckhausen,
1984;Slade, 1987;Thelenetal., 1984).Cognitive,affective,and
neurological control parameters may also be studied by relying
on natural variations across ages and infants (cf. Pipp et al.,
1987; Wolff, 1987).
Second, experimental situations must be invented in which
the behavioral system under study is predicted to emerge spon-
taneously once requisite levels of the control parameter are pro-
vided. Systematic variation in the control parameter should
lead to observable change in the behavioral organization of the
system under study. For example, in Blass' (1987) research on
newborns, sucrose delivered to the lips elicited coordinated
hand-to-mouth behavior only when the infant's level of behav-
ioral activation (the control parameter) brought the infant into
a prior state of distress. In Wolff's study (1987), newborn smil-
ing was spontaneously emergent during drowsiness only if the
infant's eyes were drooping before they closed. Other instances
of eye closure (blinking, squinting, etc.) did not lead to smiling.
The control parameter in this case again is behavioral activation
 COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
leading to sleep and an abrupt cut off of external stimulation.
In Thelen's research, stepping could be elicited after it had "dis-
appeared" by placing infants supine or in water, revealing that
the fat-to-muscle ratio of the legs is the control parameter re-
sponsible for the suppression of stepping in early infancy.
Finally, these demonstrations of emergent phenomena in re-
lation to experimentally controlled parameters must be tested
against reasonable alternatives. If one believes that the experi-
mental evidence is confounded by possible covarying factors, it
is necessary to independently vary those factors. The centrally
generated neurological control parameter as an alternative
hypothesis may be studied by conducting tests with other man-
ipulable parameters across a narrow range of ages presumed to
be associated with neurological shifts, a strategy used by Pipp,
Fischer, and Jennings (1987) in their study of the role of affect,
cognition, and body architecture in the development of the
child's concept of self. Examples of research models that might
be applied to the study of communication and expression
are presented above in the sections on crying, smiling, and
pointing.
From a dynamic systems perspective, as opposed to a unified
cognitive or epigenetic ground plan for development, there is
little reason—aside from the surface analogy between early vo-
cal and manual gestural behavior and later linguistic behavior—
to choose any particular early action system over any other in
the search for the developmental origins of conventionalized
communication. Indeed, we have shown that a number of "non-
communicative" systems in early infancy may serve as control
parameters in the development of communication skills, sys-
tems such as respiration, locomotion,finemotor control, visual
orienting, postural adjustments, perception.
Ontogeny is organized so that the infant can be engaged in
necessary adaptive tasks of the moment, allowing the relations
between components to emerge spontaneously over the course
of development. The arm and postural actions that sustain
pointing are developed in noncommunicative, large motor-ac-
tion contexts. The baby's goals in controlling posture and loco-
motion are not related to communication or attention per se.
The speech motor apparatus used by both crying and noncry
vocalizing is probably developed as those same muscles are used
for the relatively "large motor" oral tasks of chewing, swallow-
ing, and oral/tactile exploration. If there is a phylogenetic
"ground plan" for the emergence of communicative action, it is
only that fundamental survival tasks, such as eating and mov-
ing, come first, that muscle cells can grow only at a finite rate,
and that opportunistic coordinations are possible when compo-
nents are designed to be preferentially linked in the context of
the near universal task demands of human infancy.
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Received December 31,1986
Revision received June 4, 1987
AcceptedJunell,i987 •

1988 APA Convention "Call for Programs"

The APA "Call for Programs" for the 1988 annual convention will appear in the October issue
of the APA Monitor. The 1988 convention will be in Atlanta, Georgia, from August 12 to August
16. Deadline for submission of programs and papers is December 21,1987. This early deadline
is required because the 1988 convention is earlier in August than in the past. Additional copies
of the "Call" will be available from the APA Convention Office in October.