Origin and Demise of Socio-cultural Presentations of Self from Birth to Death: Caregiver ‘Scaffolding’ Practices Necessary for Guiding and Sustaining Communal Social Structure Throughout the Life Cycle

Abstract

The emergence, social differentiation, and reproduction of human communities require socialization of the young. Socialization practices require caregivers and socially distributed, intuitive, normative knowledge systems to enable progeny to acquire and sustain habitual, socially organized skills and belief systems. Neurobiological, cognitive, emotional, and socio-cultural evolution enabled and paralleled the acquisition of communicative and socio-cultural skills indispensable for the emergence and reproduction of a sense of others. Stable adult capacities differentially weaken over the life cycle. This ‘reverse socialization’ means gradual loss of self, sense of others, and decline of routine practices necessary for reproduction of communal life. A modest corpus of data (10 minutes of discourse between six couples, two deemed ‘normal’, and four where one spouse diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease or Frontotemporal Dementia) is used to illustrate caregiver scaffolding simulation of appropriate socio-cultural interaction, illuminating the origin and demise of socio-cultural presentations of self from birth to death.