Adult as guide: ¿the missing link of early development?

Abstract

Nobody has doubts about the importance of baby’s dyadic abilities in the first months of life, but the actual psychology doesn’t consider the presence of objects in those exchanges between baby and adult. Only at the end of the first year of life, it is considered that the baby starts to have a triadic experience, in which the baby communicates something to the adult about something in the world. The author goes beyond this. The triadic interactions exist at the beginning of life. The required abilities are too much for their possibilities. However, they are in contact to the world of objects. The adult show the world to the baby. Adult’s educational importance has to be observed here. The adults play an important role of guide so that the baby starts to use objects by its function, by means of ostentatious, symbolic and indexical gestures that are dealt with at the end of the article.