Colwyn Trevarthen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1716613 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Colwyn Trevarthen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Colwyn |
| FAMILY NAME | Trevarthen |
| SIGNATURE | TREVARTHEN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1438-0086 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Exploratory Study on Dyadic Interactions with and without Objects in Western Humans and Chimpanzees
The aim of this study is to analyse the development of communication and cooperation in three different kinds of dyads: a western human dyad, a chimpanzee dyad, and a dyad composed of a human and a baby chimpanzee. These three different kinds of dyads participated in this research. We observed them for 12.37 h, 9 h, and 10.6 h, respectively, using narrative register and/or video tape recordings. The results show the different roles that objects p…
Parental Perception of Vocal Contact with Preterm Infants: Communicative Musicality in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
In this study, we evaluate mothers' subjective experience of speaking and singing to their infants while they are in their incubators. We also discuss the relevance of the theoretical framework of Communicative Musicality for identifying the underlying mechanisms that may help explain its beneficial effects, both for parents and infants. Nineteen mothers talked and sung to their stable preterm infants in the incubators, for 5 min each, in three s…
The Child's Curriculum
The Child’s Curriculum Group was created by former nursery school teachers concerned about reduction of local government support for the schools they had nurtured. They have a lifelong commitment to excellent provision for young children and their families and they urge recognition of the benefits to a child and their lifetime of learning when parents and nursery educators nourish companionship in discovery of meaning for work and play in early y…
Gender balance in the childcare workforce: Why having more men in childcare is important
The care and education of young children comprise one of the most gender-segregated occupations in the UK. Many a child in Scotland has no positive male influence in education until secondary school. Concerning pupils with behavioural or emotional difficulties, 71% are boys, and of those children excluded from school, 91% are boys. Boys who are doing much worse than girls educationally may be more likely to be involved in crime and have mental he…
The Human Nature of Music
Music is at the centre of what it means to be human - it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual 'patterns of action,' which we have identified as our innate 'communicative musicality.' To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro ana…
Split Brains and Human Consciousness
Neonatal Imitation
Communicative musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship
"Communicative Musicality explores the intrinsic musical nature of human interaction. The theory of 'communicative musicality' was developed from groundbreaking studies showing how in mother-infant communication there exist noticeable patterns of timing, vocal timbre and melodic gesture. Without intending to do so, the exchanges between a mother and her infant follow typical rules of musical performance, with distinct timing and melodic narrative…
The musical art of infant conversation: Narrating in the time of sympathetic experience, without rational interpretation, before words
Infants, like adults and many animals, move with rhythmic gestures that express motive states and changes of emotion and mood. But the communications of babies have a special creativity and message power. Infants are ready at birth to take turns in a “dialogue” of movements with a loving parent. They are attracted to extended engagement with human gestures, and sympathetic to many emotions — resonating to the impulses and qualities of movement; i…
Prelinguistic pitch patterns expressing ‘communication’ and ‘apprehension’
This study examined whether pitch patterns of prelinguistic vocalizations could discriminate between social vocalizations, uttered apparently with the intention to communicate, and ‘private’ speech, related to solitary activities as an expression of ‘thinking’. Four healthy ten month old English-speaking infants (2 boys and 2 girls) were simultaneously video- and audiorecorded in their homes under two conditions: (A) when the infant was playing w…
Infant Psychology Is an Evolving Culture
Commentaries| June 13 2003 Infant Psychology Is an Evolving Culture Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health C. Trevarthen C. Trevarthen The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Human Development (2003) 46 (4): 233–246. https://doi.org/10.1159/000070372 Article history Published Online: June 13 2003 Content Tools Views Icon Views Article con…
Making Sense of Infants Making Sense
Les théories courantes concernant l’état initial de l’esprit humain sont-elles adéquates ? Il est largement accepté que la sympathie de l'intelligence interpersonnelle, à la base de toutes les capacités sociales et culturelles, doit être apprise. On admet que le nouveau-né, entièrement dépendant des soins parentaux, aura des mécanismes d''attachement maternel ; mais les psychologues de la petite enfance n'accordent pas aux nourrissons une sensibi…
Infant Intersubjectivity: Research, Theory, and Clinical Applications
We review research evidence on the emergence and development of active “ self‐and‐other ” awareness in infancy, and examine the importance of its motives and emotions to mental health practice with children. This relates to how communication begins and develops in infancy, how it influences the individual subject's movement, perception, and learning, and how the infant's biologically grounded self‐regulation of internal state and self‐conscious p…
Mother–infant communication can be enhanced after conception by in‐vitro fertilization
To determine if stress associated with artificial pregnancy treatment might affect early communication, video microanalysis was applied to examine face‐to‐face play between infants and their mothers in the first 5 months. Three groups of infants participated: 8 born after in‐vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment employing parental gametes; 8 born after standard infertility treatment (INF), which did not include IVF; and 8 infants whose parents had …
Intrinsic motives for companionship in understanding: Their origin, development, and significance for infant mental health
Human beings are not merely social, they are inherently cultural. Infants are born with motives in their complex brains that lead them to learn through communicating about intentions, interests, and feelings with trusted companions, and to interpret with them a common reality. A baby is weak, immature in behaviour, and dependent on parental care and external regulation of emotions and protection from stress. But the baby is also capable and inter…
The Dance of Wellbeing: Defining the Musical Therapeutic Effect
Music making is a human activity that communicates motives - the underlying impulses for action, by which experience is gained, and which are accompanied by feelings. Music evokes narratives of experience, based on our innate ability to share the passing of expressive 'mind time', an ability that may be called 'musicality'. which is inseparable from the impulse to move with anticipation of rhythmic sensory consequences and varied emotional evalua…
Musicality and the intrinsic motive pulse: Evidence from human psychobiology and infant communication
Musicality in human motives, the psycho-biological source of music, is described as a talent inherent in the unique way human beings move, and hence experience their world, their bodies and one another. It originates in the brain images of moving and feeling that generate and guide behaviour in time, with goal-defining purposefulness and creativity. Intelligent perception, cognition and learning, and the potentiality for immediate sympathy betwee…
Explaining Emotions in Attachment
Book reviewed in this article: L.A. Stroufe, Emotional Development: The Organisation of Emotional Life in the Early Years
Music and Infant Interaction
(1997). Music and Infant Interaction. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Musikkterapi: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 61-65
The Child's Need to Learn a Culture1
This article draws on many years of research into the development of communication, play and cooperation in the first year of life to argue that, from their very earliest days, babies are highly motivated to learn, and are profoundly influenced in their learning by the interplay or ‘protoconversations’ between themselves and their parents and carers. The acquisition of language and thus thinking and understanding is supported by a relationship th…
The infant's role in mother–infant communications
Mothers talked to their infants via a video system designed so that each partner saw a full-face, life-size image of the other on a screen before them, perfect eye-to-eye contact being possible. They were presented either with live, real-time video sequences of their infants, where communication was therefore potentially mutually responsive, or else with the same sequence replayed some minutes later. The mother's babytalk differed consistently be…
Sharing a task in infancy
Babies show striking developments in their willingness to engage in a task with their mothers toward the end of the first year, well before speech begins, and this change turns the baby into an active pupil
The Dance of Wellbeing: Defining the Musical Therapeutic Effect
Music making is a human activity that communicates motives - the underlying impulses for action, by which experience is gained, and which are accompanied by feelings. Music evokes narratives of experience, based on our innate ability to share the passing of expressive 'mind time', an ability that may be called 'musicality'. which is inseparable from the impulse to move with anticipation of rhythmic sensory consequences and varied emotional evalua…
The Human Nature of Music
Music is at the centre of what it means to be human - it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual 'patterns of action,' which we have identified as our innate 'communicative musicality.' To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro ana…
Explaining Emotions in Attachment
Book reviewed in this article: L.A. Stroufe, Emotional Development: The Organisation of Emotional Life in the Early Years
Music and Infant Interaction
(1997). Music and Infant Interaction. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Musikkterapi: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 61-65
Mother–infant communication can be enhanced after conception by in‐vitro fertilization
To determine if stress associated with artificial pregnancy treatment might affect early communication, video microanalysis was applied to examine face‐to‐face play between infants and their mothers in the first 5 months. Three groups of infants participated: 8 born after in‐vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment employing parental gametes; 8 born after standard infertility treatment (INF), which did not include IVF; and 8 infants whose parents had …
Sharing a task in infancy
Babies show striking developments in their willingness to engage in a task with their mothers toward the end of the first year, well before speech begins, and this change turns the baby into an active pupil
The infant's role in mother–infant communications
Mothers talked to their infants via a video system designed so that each partner saw a full-face, life-size image of the other on a screen before them, perfect eye-to-eye contact being possible. They were presented either with live, real-time video sequences of their infants, where communication was therefore potentially mutually responsive, or else with the same sequence replayed some minutes later. The mother's babytalk differed consistently be…
The Child's Need to Learn a Culture1
This article draws on many years of research into the development of communication, play and cooperation in the first year of life to argue that, from their very earliest days, babies are highly motivated to learn, and are profoundly influenced in their learning by the interplay or ‘protoconversations’ between themselves and their parents and carers. The acquisition of language and thus thinking and understanding is supported by a relationship th…
Music and Infant Interaction
(1997). Music and Infant Interaction. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Musikkterapi: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 61-65
Explaining Emotions in Attachment
Book reviewed in this article: L.A. Stroufe, Emotional Development: The Organisation of Emotional Life in the Early Years
Musicality and the intrinsic motive pulse: Evidence from human psychobiology and infant communication
Musicality in human motives, the psycho-biological source of music, is described as a talent inherent in the unique way human beings move, and hence experience their world, their bodies and one another. It originates in the brain images of moving and feeling that generate and guide behaviour in time, with goal-defining purposefulness and creativity. Intelligent perception, cognition and learning, and the potentiality for immediate sympathy betwee…
The Dance of Wellbeing: Defining the Musical Therapeutic Effect
Music making is a human activity that communicates motives - the underlying impulses for action, by which experience is gained, and which are accompanied by feelings. Music evokes narratives of experience, based on our innate ability to share the passing of expressive 'mind time', an ability that may be called 'musicality'. which is inseparable from the impulse to move with anticipation of rhythmic sensory consequences and varied emotional evalua…
Infant Intersubjectivity: Research, Theory, and Clinical Applications
We review research evidence on the emergence and development of active “ self‐and‐other ” awareness in infancy, and examine the importance of its motives and emotions to mental health practice with children. This relates to how communication begins and develops in infancy, how it influences the individual subject's movement, perception, and learning, and how the infant's biologically grounded self‐regulation of internal state and self‐conscious p…
Mother–infant communication can be enhanced after conception by in‐vitro fertilization
To determine if stress associated with artificial pregnancy treatment might affect early communication, video microanalysis was applied to examine face‐to‐face play between infants and their mothers in the first 5 months. Three groups of infants participated: 8 born after in‐vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment employing parental gametes; 8 born after standard infertility treatment (INF), which did not include IVF; and 8 infants whose parents had …
Intrinsic motives for companionship in understanding: Their origin, development, and significance for infant mental health
Human beings are not merely social, they are inherently cultural. Infants are born with motives in their complex brains that lead them to learn through communicating about intentions, interests, and feelings with trusted companions, and to interpret with them a common reality. A baby is weak, immature in behaviour, and dependent on parental care and external regulation of emotions and protection from stress. But the baby is also capable and inter…
Making Sense of Infants Making Sense
Les théories courantes concernant l’état initial de l’esprit humain sont-elles adéquates ? Il est largement accepté que la sympathie de l'intelligence interpersonnelle, à la base de toutes les capacités sociales et culturelles, doit être apprise. On admet que le nouveau-né, entièrement dépendant des soins parentaux, aura des mécanismes d''attachement maternel ; mais les psychologues de la petite enfance n'accordent pas aux nourrissons une sensibi…
Infant Psychology Is an Evolving Culture
Commentaries| June 13 2003 Infant Psychology Is an Evolving Culture Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health C. Trevarthen C. Trevarthen The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Human Development (2003) 46 (4): 233–246. https://doi.org/10.1159/000070372 Article history Published Online: June 13 2003 Content Tools Views Icon Views Article con…
Prelinguistic pitch patterns expressing ‘communication’ and ‘apprehension’
This study examined whether pitch patterns of prelinguistic vocalizations could discriminate between social vocalizations, uttered apparently with the intention to communicate, and ‘private’ speech, related to solitary activities as an expression of ‘thinking’. Four healthy ten month old English-speaking infants (2 boys and 2 girls) were simultaneously video- and audiorecorded in their homes under two conditions: (A) when the infant was playing w…
The musical art of infant conversation: Narrating in the time of sympathetic experience, without rational interpretation, before words
Infants, like adults and many animals, move with rhythmic gestures that express motive states and changes of emotion and mood. But the communications of babies have a special creativity and message power. Infants are ready at birth to take turns in a “dialogue” of movements with a loving parent. They are attracted to extended engagement with human gestures, and sympathetic to many emotions — resonating to the impulses and qualities of movement; i…
Communicative musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship
"Communicative Musicality explores the intrinsic musical nature of human interaction. The theory of 'communicative musicality' was developed from groundbreaking studies showing how in mother-infant communication there exist noticeable patterns of timing, vocal timbre and melodic gesture. Without intending to do so, the exchanges between a mother and her infant follow typical rules of musical performance, with distinct timing and melodic narrative…
Split Brains and Human Consciousness
Neonatal Imitation
The Child's Curriculum
The Child’s Curriculum Group was created by former nursery school teachers concerned about reduction of local government support for the schools they had nurtured. They have a lifelong commitment to excellent provision for young children and their families and they urge recognition of the benefits to a child and their lifetime of learning when parents and nursery educators nourish companionship in discovery of meaning for work and play in early y…
Gender balance in the childcare workforce: Why having more men in childcare is important
The care and education of young children comprise one of the most gender-segregated occupations in the UK. Many a child in Scotland has no positive male influence in education until secondary school. Concerning pupils with behavioural or emotional difficulties, 71% are boys, and of those children excluded from school, 91% are boys. Boys who are doing much worse than girls educationally may be more likely to be involved in crime and have mental he…
The Human Nature of Music
Music is at the centre of what it means to be human - it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual 'patterns of action,' which we have identified as our innate 'communicative musicality.' To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro ana…
Parental Perception of Vocal Contact with Preterm Infants: Communicative Musicality in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
In this study, we evaluate mothers' subjective experience of speaking and singing to their infants while they are in their incubators. We also discuss the relevance of the theoretical framework of Communicative Musicality for identifying the underlying mechanisms that may help explain its beneficial effects, both for parents and infants. Nineteen mothers talked and sung to their stable preterm infants in the incubators, for 5 min each, in three s…
Exploratory Study on Dyadic Interactions with and without Objects in Western Humans and Chimpanzees
The aim of this study is to analyse the development of communication and cooperation in three different kinds of dyads: a western human dyad, a chimpanzee dyad, and a dyad composed of a human and a baby chimpanzee. These three different kinds of dyads participated in this research. We observed them for 12.37 h, 9 h, and 10.6 h, respectively, using narrative register and/or video tape recordings. The results show the different roles that objects p…
Psychology (19 works) · Developmental psychology (11 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Communication (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (5 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (5 works) · Infant Health and Development (4 works)