How Infants Know Minds
... By recognising that aesthetic communication is operative on two levels, one more basic if also predominantly tacit (sharing), the other explicit and active (exchange), we can better understand the significance of aesthetic communication for selfhood and intersubjectivity in infancy, but also beyond. Now, looking at the infant from the perspective of reciprocal aesthetic communication is interesting from the point of view of early self and self-other relationships, a topic that has been widely discussed in developmental psychology (e.g., [16]). When do infants recognise themselves as different from other people, especially their mother or other intimate caregivers? ...
... First, in a way that might be described as phenomenological in bracketing certain dominant theorisations, it approaches the infant with a view to what it is like to be a baby [24]. This means withholding assumptions about what an infant cannot do in terms of intentional action, and instead looking at what they actually do [16]. Being an infant implies a certain life situation as compared to older humans, especially adults: being very young, very small, with few experiences and skills that have not yet developed. ...
... A "second-person perspective" is recommended by Reddy, who argues there is no "gap" between two people, because "minds are what bodies do." [16] (p. 14). ...
The article discusses communicative exchanges between infants and adults with a view to their performative aesthetic dimensions and implications for self and self–other relationships. It argues that infants are deictic and relational selves, who both respond and initiate aesthetic and performative exchanges with other persons. By recognising that aesthetic communication is operative on two levels, one more basic if also predominantly tacit (sharing), the other explicit and active (exchange), we can better understand the significance of aesthetic communication for selfhood and intersubjectivity in infancy, but also beyond.
... Infancy research has been able to document the readiness that infants have for interactive dyadic play, particularly for the musical dimensions of maternal vocal play and the rhythms of gestural games, which are now understood to form the groundings for linguistic development (Reddy, 2008). Organized rhythm and melody capture the baby's attention and are quickly remembered. ...
... Unfortunately, many adults are caught in these belief systems and do not realize that how they treat infants shapes who those infants become. As Reddy (2008) notes, attitudes towards infant capability shape responses to them. We only deeply engage with infants if we think they can understand us, link to our minds, otherwise too often we respond mechanically with imitation or conditioning. ...
... Unfortunately, Western psychology is still marbled with assumptions of dualism, emphasizing either a behaviourist (babies have no mind) or cognitive (the body is unimportant) approach. Reddy (2008) notes that cognitivism appears to presuppose a behaviourist stage in development: 'the infant is seen to begin life as a behaviourist, one with no recognition of mind, and only in childhood to become a cognitivist' (p. 11). ...
This collection of papers from world leaders in developmental psychology, neuroscience, music, education and psychiatry consolidates the lifetime work of Emeritus Professor Colwyn Trevarthen, FRSE. Spanning research from the 1960s to the present, Trevarthen’s contributions to science have changed our understanding of infancy, neuroscience, education and musicality. The present collection of papers from these diverse fields describes current issues, principles and perspectives for working practice on the role of intersubjectivity in early human life, its contribution to health and learning, and therefore its role in scientific understanding of the fundamentals of the human mind. By bringing together scholars, scientists, medical and educational practitioners, this book serves as a landmark for the field of intersubjectivity and celebrates Trevarthen’s 93rd birthday.
... Relatedly, Reddy (2003), (2008) stipulates that self-awareness begins to emerge much earlier in infancy than traditionally thought. According to Reddy's (2003Reddy's ( ), (2008 framework self-awareness can be observed in infants as young as two months old. At this age, infants start to show an awareness of being the object of others' attention and begin engaging in social interactions that indicate an early sense of self. ...
... This early presence of the DMN in newborns suggests that the network plays a fundamental role in brain organization from early in ontogeny, potentially laying the groundwork for later cognitive and social development. In conjunction with the behavioral research concerning the development of the self (Reddy, 2003(Reddy, , 2008Rochat, 2003Rochat, , 2024 reviewed above, this suggests that the self and its brain basis emerge early in infancy and develop more gradually than previously thought. ...
... While traditional approaches, such as the mirror self-recognition task, have focused on the self's emergence around 18-24 months, much existing research with young infants challenges this developmental timeline for the emergence of the self. In fact, the research programs by Reddy (2003Reddy ( ), (2008 and Rochat (2003) indicate that self-awareness begins much earlier, perhaps from as young as two months of age, and is continuously shaped by social interactions. Neuroimaging studies further support this hypothesis by showing that: (a) functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN)-a critical neural substrate for self-related processing-is present from early in infancy (Doria et al., 2010;Gao et al., 2009;Hu et al., 2022;Kelsey et al., 2021;Yu et al., 2023) and (b) brain regions implicated in the DMN display enhanced functional responses when infants process self-relevant cues (see Grossmann, 2015Grossmann, , 2017. ...
The notion that the self is fundamentally social in nature and develops through social interactions has a long tradition in philosophy, sociology, and psychology. However, to date, the early development of the social self and its brain bases in infancy has received relatively little attention. This presents a review and synthesis of existing neuroimaging research, showing that infants recruit brain systems, involved in self-processing and social cognition in adults, when responding to self-relevant cues during social interactions. Moreover, this review draws on recent research, demonstrating the early developmental emergence and social embeddedness/dependency of the default-mode network in infancy, a brain network considered of critical importance to the sense of self and social cognition. This stands in contrast to research pointing to the relatively late ontogenetic emergence of the conceptual self, by about 18-24 months of age, as seen in the mirror-self recognition test. Based on this review and synthesis, the social self first hypothesis (SSFH) is formulated, presenting an integrated view, arguing for the early ontogenetic emergence of the social self and its brain basis. This developmental account informs and extends existing evolutionary thinking, emphasizing the primary role that social interdependence has played in the evolution of the human mind.
... Relatedly, Reddy (2003), (2008) stipulates that self-awareness begins to emerge much earlier in infancy than traditionally thought. According to Reddy's (2003Reddy's ( ), (2008 framework self-awareness can be observed in infants as young as two months old. At this age, infants start to show an awareness of being the object of others' attention and begin engaging in social interactions that indicate an early sense of self. ...
... This early presence of the DMN in newborns suggests that the network plays a fundamental role in brain organization from early in ontogeny, potentially laying the groundwork for later cognitive and social development. In conjunction with the behavioral research concerning the development of the self (Reddy, 2003(Reddy, , 2008Rochat, 2003Rochat, , 2024 reviewed above, this suggests that the self and its brain basis emerge early in infancy and develop more gradually than previously thought. ...
... While traditional approaches, such as the mirror self-recognition task, have focused on the self's emergence around 18-24 months, much existing research with young infants challenges this developmental timeline for the emergence of the self. In fact, the research programs by Reddy (2003Reddy ( ), (2008 and Rochat (2003) indicate that self-awareness begins much earlier, perhaps from as young as two months of age, and is continuously shaped by social interactions. Neuroimaging studies further support this hypothesis by showing that: (a) functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN)-a critical neural substrate for self-related processing-is present from early in infancy (Doria et al., 2010;Gao et al., 2009;Hu et al., 2022;Kelsey et al., 2021;Yu et al., 2023) and (b) brain regions implicated in the DMN display enhanced functional responses when infants process self-relevant cues (see Grossmann, 2015Grossmann, , 2017. ...
The notion that the self is fundamentally social in nature and develops through social interactions has a long tradition in philosophy, sociology, and psychology. However, to date, the early development of the social self and its brain bases in infancy has received relatively little attention. This presents a review and synthesis of existing neuroimaging research, showing that infants recruit brain systems, involved in self-processing and social cognition in adults, when responding to self-relevant cues during social interactions. Moreover, this review draws on recent research, demonstrating the early developmental emergence and social embeddedness/dependency of the default-mode network in infancy, a brain network considered of critical importance to the sense of self and social cognition. This stands in contrast to research pointing to the relatively late ontogenetic emergence of the conceptual self, by about 18 to 24 months of age, as seen in the mirror-self recognition test. Based on this review and synthesis, the social self first hypothesis (SSFH) is formulated, presenting an integrated view, arguing for the early ontogenetic emergence of the social self and its brain basis. This developmental account informs and extends existing evolutionary thinking, emphasizing the primary role that social interdependence has played in the evolution of the human mind.
... In other words, what was assumed to be autonomous infant performance was in fact modulated by its dyadic, co-constructed context. Similarly, in a seminal text on infant mind-reading, Reddy (2008) demonstrated how domestic pets sharing in the daily routines of home-life joined the co-construction of a time-and contextappropriate routine with human-oriented signals and behaviours. ...
... Overall, researchers have advanced strong arguments toward adopting dynamical, embodied (Fantasia, De Jaegher & Fasulo, 2014b;Lux, Gredebäck, Non & Krüger, 2022;Maruyama et al., 2014;Reddy, 2008), and ecological (Adolph, 2019) theories and methods to the study of social interactions and social cognitive development. We deem these arguments equally necessary to studying how humans learn to become skilled, engaged participants in shared activities. ...
... A few yet important differences characterise cognitively-focused approaches and those endorsing ecological, dynamical, embodied stances. One crucial difference entails which role is assigned to the body and its development in relation to the environment, or the extent to which it is conceived as a primary source of development in other domains (De Jaegher, 2009Gallagher, 2008a;Reddy, 2008Reddy, , 2015. The bodyone's own and others' -and its manifestations as constitutive of how humans learn and gain knowledge through and about the surrounding world (Adolph, 2019;Reddy, 2008;Thelen, 1995). ...
Joint action, generally defined as working together towards a common purpose, has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science, from philosophical appraisal of its core concepts to empirical mapping of its psychological development. Within mainstream cognitive accounts, to engage in a joint action requires an inferential process of representing the other’s intentions and plans to enable social coordination for a shared goal. However, growing endorsement of a contrasting view from embodied and situated accounts of social cognition proposes that joint action is better understood as a dynamic, situated interactional process where participants "roll into" joint action without requiring reflective or representational awareness of it. This work proposes a rethinking of how we conceive the nature of action and its development as joint action early in human life. With particular reference to developmental studies, we advance a rationale for the conceptual framework of joint action to include its temporal and sequential structures, and their intrinsic prospective qualities of human action, solitary or shared, as key analytical aspects for the study of how infants understand and share meaning with another, in joint interaction.
Keywords: joint actions, infancy, embodied social cognition, time, sequentiality, prospectivity
... A turn to developmental psychology is instructive in approaching this question. It shows, not only that human infants are deeply dependent on others, but also that, right from birth onwards, the interactions between infants and their caregivers display an emotional involvement of both partners (Reddy 2010). Importantly, these affectively laden interactions play a crucial role in shaping how we come to experience ourselves, others, and the world around us. ...
... This suggests that they are selectively rather than indiscriminately receptive to the emotional information provided by others. their requests be responded to and feel negative affect when the interactions between themselves and their caregivers break down (Reddy 2010). This can be demonstrated, for example, by means of the still-face paradigm. ...
What role do emotions play for the development of one’s self? This essay will discuss the importance of affect-laden interactions with others for the development of our ability for autonomous agency in childhood and beyond. I will explore, first, how affective encounters with others enable reasons-responsive agency by introducing us into the space of reasons and by providing us with interpretive frameworks of perceiving the world relative to our aims, concerns, and values. However, the very same mindshaping processes that enable agency in the sense of reasons-responsiveness also make us susceptible to agency-undermining social practices. Yet the proper response to these threats to our agency should not be seen in a turn towards introspection and a retreat from sociality or the emotions. Rather, as I will argue in the second part of the chapter, we need to harness and foster our social and emotional abilities in the service of cultivating our skills of autonomy competence.
... They are avowed empiricists with strong claims of science. But they have always taken the transference seriously in the design of their experiments and in the discrimination of emotional factors in infantile development [2,6]. In a by-line, almost an afterthought, in a paper on autism, they suggested. ...
... inappropriately (wrong words or phrases) 6. Child has deviant communication with a formal, fussy, old-fashioned, or 'robot-like' language 11. ...
... A turn to developmental psychology is instructive in approaching this question. It shows, not only that human infants are deeply dependent on others, but also that, right from birth onwards, the interactions between infants and their caregivers display an emotional involvement of both partners (Reddy 2010). Importantly, these affectively laden interactions play a crucial role in shaping how we come to experience ourselves, others, and the world around us. ...
... This suggests that they are selectively rather than indiscriminately receptive to the emotional information provided by others. their requests be responded to and feel negative affect when the interactions between themselves and their caregivers break down (Reddy 2010). This can be demonstrated, for example, by means of the still-face paradigm. ...
... (2) Teachers often prompted and scaffolded these ostensive gestures, either directly or indirectly. As shown in Observation 1, ostensive gestures of giving were framed within structured give-and-take interactions (similar to those described by Reddy, 2008), initiated and led by the teacher. The teacher repeatedly asked for the object using various semiotic mediators, such as "give me" and nodding gestures, verbalizations, smiling, and sometimes gently touching or pulling the object. ...
... It has also been proposed in different studies for ostensive gesture development , and, in this paper, it has been illustrated in Observation 1, where the teacher promotes a communicative interaction through a "give me" gesture and scaffolds the child's imprecise object extension into a give-and-take communicative situation. Here, the child plays an active role, engages both with the teacher and the object, and shows signs of enjoyment (an important factor for further communicative development; see Reddy, 2008). Investigating teachers' strategies to enhance children's communicative attempts is an important area for future research. ...
Research on gesture development has mostly focused on home environments. Little is known about early communicative development in other relevant contexts, such as early-year-schools. These settings, rich in diverse educative situations, objects, and communicative partners, provide a contrast to parent–child interactions, complementing our understanding of gesture development. This study aims to describe the development of the first gestures in the infant classrooms of early-years-schools, focusing on ostensive gestures of showing and giving—their emergence, communicative functions, and relation to the subsequent emergence of pointing. We conducted a longitudinal, observational investigation analyzing the gestures of 21 children (7–13 months). Over 7 months, we observed and registered children’s daily interactions in the classroom, employing a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach to analyze the types and functions of their gestures. We found a significant increase and diversification of gesture types and functions with age. Gestures followed a proximal–distal developmental course. Ostensive gestures were the earliest and most prevalent gestures observed. There was a correlation between the frequency of these gestures, with ostensive gestures fulfilling communicative functions later observed in pointing. Our qualitative analysis revealed the progressive construction of ostensive gestures into spontaneous, complex, and conventional forms of communication. These results highlight the important role of ostensive gestures in early communicative development, paving the way for distal communication through pointing and relating to the origin of intentional communication. More broadly, these findings have significant implications for early educational practices and show the value of conducting research on developmental processes in early education.
Full paper available on: https://rdcu.be/dRJ1A
... Similarly,Yamada (1987) andReddy (2008) propose that humans are born intersubjective and caring for others. The former discusses it in terms of the concepts of empathy and resonance, and the latter with the term "second-person engagement." ...
... Reddy (2008) adopts a "second-person" approach to the puzzle of how human infants feel or know others' minds. Based on the idea that the second-person voice, "You," is "a fundamentally personal engagement going beyond the mere use of the 'You' to something in the psychological regard or openness-and intimacy-of the speaker to the listener" (p. ...
... Analyzing social relationships from the perspective of discrete persons that observe each other is an inherently partial and incomplete description of gestalt social phenomena. Indeed, when people engage in social behavior they do not observe and read each other by contemplating mental contents; rather they (trans)act. 1 Moreover, we rarely find ourselves in a situation where we can observe other people's intentions without responding to them (Reddy, 2008). Therefore, any observation that occurs is concerned observation, and any reading that takes place is participatory reading . ...
... These theories view intersubjectivity as a mental connection that two separated individuals eventually establish. Although contemporary perspectives, such as the second person perspective (Gomila & Pérez, 2018;Hoehl & Markova, 2018;Reddy, 2008;Zahavi, 2019), have challenged the disembodied nature of traditional theories by concentrating on the dynamics of inter-corporeal, dyadic processes, few authors have tackled the role of material culture in mindreading (Fenici & Garofoli, 2017;Quintanilla, 2017). ...
This paper aims to place the general thesis for a species-unique “shared” or “we” intentionality, against the theoretical background of the material engagement approach. We will argue that the human ability to enact and share intentions rests upon a relational and participatory foundation of situated activity where intentional transactions between humans as well as between humans and things (in the broadest sense of material environment) are inseparable from the situational affordances of their engagement. Based on that, the paper advocates for an ecological-enactive account of shared intentionality which understands material engagement as central to the evolution and development of human social cognition.
... The first crucial step is taken by infants at about 2 months of age, when newborns smile, coo, and look at others in episodes of so-called primary intersubjectivity (Reddy 2008). By engaging in such "protoconversations," young infants affectively connect with others and, together with these persons, prepare the forging of attachment bonds with their caregivers. ...
... At around 2 months of age, infants maintain eye contact while smiling, cooing, and moving rhythmically during episodes of primary intersubjectivity (Trevarthen and Aitken 2001). Among the first scholars to have drawn attention to the unique quality of these early human-human exchanges were Trevarthen (1979), Stern (1985), Reddy (2008), and Bråten (1988), who all remarked on infants' efforts to enter into a dialogue with other humans and "converse" with them at a prelinguistic level. Tronick et al.'s (1978) famous still-face experiments drastically demonstrate that infants expect and desire reciprocal social engagement. ...
We argue that the main difference between humans and other animals lies in humans’ unique form of sociality: their shared intentionality. Instead of conceiving of shared intentionality as a special skill humans have in addition to the skills they share with nonhuman animals (the additive account), we propose to think of shared intentionality as transforming human cognition in its entirety (the transformative account, as in the thesis of Kern and Moll). We discuss the relevance of the evolution of the human face for shared intentionality, and we argue that the development of shared intentionality proceeds in the following three steps: 1) newborns’ tendency to engage in preverbal, face-to-face dialogue, 2) 1-year-olds’ drive to jointly attend to the world with others as plural subjects, and 3) preschoolers’ appreciation of individuals’ different perspectives. The shared intentionality thesis defended here can be viewed as an extension of Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural account of human development.
... 13 "Interpersonal knowledge. . . is not strictly speaking knowledge, and its proper study is not epistemology, but the study of social, personal and emotional relationships" (Farkas 2023, 115). 14 Especially Reddy 2008, Eilan 2014, Lauer 2014, Heal 2014, Talbert 2015, Benton 2017, Salje 2017, and Zahavi 2023 (philosophical antecedents include Husserl, Buber, and Levinas, among others). ...
... Much work in interpersonal neurobiology suggests that proper cognitive development depends on such interactions (see e.g. Reddy 2008, Green 2012, Siegel 2020). ...
What is it to know someone? Epistemologists rarely take up this question, though recent developments make such inquiry possible and desirable. This paper advances an account of how such interpersonal knowledge goes beyond mere propositional and qualitative knowledge about someone, giving a central place to second‐personal treatment. It examines what such knowledge requires, and what makes it distinctive within epistemology as well as socially. It assesses its theoretic value for several issues in moral psychology, epistemic injustice, and philosophy of mind. And it offers an account of the complex content in play if interpersonal knowledge is to be understood in terms of its mental states and their functions.
... While the playful teasing of human infants is certainly not as cognitively complex as adult forms of joking, it seems likely that the social and conceptual building blocks of joking (understanding others' expectations and deriving enjoyment from violating them) are already present in infants' teasing. Vasu Reddy and colleagues found that by 12 months, human infants produce three types of playful teasing behaviours [2,[6][7][8][9][10]. These are offer and withdrawal of objects (offering an object and quickly pulling it back), provocative non-compliance (attempting to perform a prohibited action or refusing to perform an expected behaviour) and disrupting others' activities (e.g. ...
... This echoes findings in human infants as young as 7 months old [50]. Since teasing walks a fine line between aggression and play, facial cues might be important to predict the target's responses, allowing the teaser to adjust accordingly [10]. Given that targets reacted only very rarely with aggression, it is likely that the teasers used appropriate signals or otherwise adapted their behaviour to avoid misinterpretation and escalation into serious aggression. ...
Joking draws on complex cognitive abilities: understanding social norms, theory of mind, anticipating others' responses and appreciating the violation of others’ expectations. Playful teasing, which is present in preverbal infants, shares many of these cognitive features. There is some evidence that great apes can tease in structurally similar ways, but no systematic study exists. We developed a coding system to identify playful teasing and applied it to video of zoo-housed great apes. All four species engaged in intentionally provocative behaviour, frequently accompanied by characteristics of play. We found playful teasing to be characterized by attention-getting, one-sidedness, response looking, repetition and elaboration/escalation. It takes place mainly in relaxed contexts, has a wide variety of forms, and differs from play in several ways (e.g. asymmetry, low rates of play signals like the playface and absence of movement-final ‘holds’ characteristic of intentional gestures). As playful teasing is present in all extant great ape genera, it is likely that the cognitive prerequisites for joking evolved in the hominoid lineage at least 13 million years ago.
... The 'I-you' or 'second-personal' form of relationship is one in which I am oriented towards another person such that I can intelligibly address them with the secondperson pronoun 'you', and they reciprocally are able to address me with a 'you'. 4 This form of interaction has been analysed by multiple philosophers and developmental psychologists (Darwall, 2006;Reddy, 2008;Stawarska, 2008;Honneth, 2012;Zahavi, 2014;Eilan, 2014). While aspects of their accounts vary, some key features, shared by all of these accounts, can be identified. ...
... The most fundamental form of this is joint attention, identified by developmental psychologists as 'secondary intersubjectivity' (Trevarthen, 1979) as, developmentally speaking, it emerges once mutual attention between subjects is established. In joint attention infants start to follow the gaze of their caregiver and to demonstrate that they are looking at something with their caregiver (Bruner, 1977;Hobson, 1989;Eilan et al, 2005;Reddy, 2008;Tomasello, 2009). ...
Loneliness is not simply characterised by a lack of other people in one’s environment or lifeworld, but by a lack of specific forms of relationship, connection or belonging. In this paper I connect the conversation about different types of loneliness with debates happening in the philosophy of intersubjectivity, specifically the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Philosophers of intersubjectivity tend to characterise experiences of direct encounter as having a second-personal ‘I-thou’ quality. By contrast, experiences of belonging tend to be characterised by first-person plural ‘we’ structures.
In this paper I will compare and contrast some of the different phenomenological qualities that come with the absence or poverty of these two types of intersubjective structure respectively. These different types of loneliness are characterised by different phenomenological properties, but also by (the absence of) specific interpersonal and social structures. I argue that the absence of these different interpersonal structures respectively gives rise to loneliness as the experience of being unseen and loneliness as the experience of not-being-at-home . This is significant for loneliness studies, as understanding and combating loneliness is consequently likely to take variegated rather than homogeneous forms. This is particularly significant for a psychosocial approach to loneliness which seeks to understand, hold together and integrate both the structural features of loneliness (in this case the relevant interpersonal and social structures) and the lived experience of individuals and groups (in this case the phenomenology of loneliness).
... Infant joint attentional engagements present dimensions of variation analogous to those of their adult counterparts. As Reddy (2008) convincingly argues, there are several forms of infant joint attention which do not consist in aligning 7 Demonstrations do not feature joint attentional engagements as a matter of conceptual necessity. One can record a demonstration, and somebody else can learn from it. ...
... In their auto-biographical writings, some autistic people have emphasized that establishing eye-contact is often, for them as adults, an emotionally overwhelming experience. A plausible conjecture (made by Reddy 2008) is that the same may be true also for autistic people who never come to acquire a language to describe their experiences. The tendency to avoid eye-contact may originate, at least in part, in a motivational or emotional asymmetry rather than in a cognitive or perceptual deficit. ...
Joint attention is typically conceptualized as a robust psychological phenomenon. In philosophy, this apparently innocuous assumption leads to the problem of accounting for the “openness” of joint attention. In psychology, it leads to the problem of justifying alternative operationalizations of joint attention, since there does not seem to be much which is psychologically uniform across different joint attentional engagements. Contrary to the received wisdom, I argue that joint attention is a social relationship which normatively regulates the attentional states of two or more individuals. This social account of joint attention leans on Bart Geurts’ view of communication as commitment sharing. Its promises are: (i) to explain the role of joint attention in wider joint activities, including communicative interactions; (ii) to account for how playing this role requires individuals to deploy different psychological resources on different occasions; and (iii) to identify the rationale behind alternative operationalizations of joint attention.
... La investigación sobre cómo se desarrolla la motivación para la comunicación en el niño con el "sentido humano" (Donaldson, 1978) muestra el escaso desenvolvimiento de la ciencia sobre el conocimiento compartido (Bruner, 1968;Bullowa, 1979;Reddy, 2008;Stern, 1985Stern, /2000Trevarthen, 1993Trevarthen, , 1998Trevarthen, , 2001bTrevarthen, , 2004cTrevarthen, Kokkinaki, & Fiamenghi, 1999). Una teoría general sobre el aprendizaje animal, con su modelo reduccionista del condicionamiento mediante premio y castigo en relación con estados corporales ("reforzamientos" positivo y negativo), rechazando las teorías sobre los estados mentales intrínsecos, han fracasado a la hora de explicar el aprendizaje cultural. ...
... El estudio de los cambios relacionados con la edad en los esfuerzos del niño por compartir el conocimiento y las habilidades, por explorar los mutuos intereses y acciones, por dotarlos de un valor especial y de un nombre, también demuestra las contribuciones del niño a la enseñanza y al aprendizaje mediante las que se trasmiten las creaciones y convenciones culturales (Halliday, 1979;Hubley & Trevarthen, 1979;Trevarthen, 2004bTrevarthen, , 2005aTrevarthen & Hubley, 1978). Los juegos se practican con sentido cuando los padres, hermanos y otros comparten la curiosidad y el entusiasmo del niño, generando la alegría de la amistad y el descubrimiento y elaborando rituales burlones de participación en el "trabajo" del compañerismo (Reddy, 2008;Vygotsky, 1976). ...
... Based on the argument presented by Fuchs and De Jaegher (2009), social understanding and social cognition are rooted in the embodied interactions we engage in from the earliest age. They argue it is the interaction process that gives rise to intersubjectivity: through the reciprocity, musicality, affective attunement, vocal expression, and movement of an interaction, social cognition emerges, and meaning is created and transformed in what is described as participatory sensemaking (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007, 2008De Jaegher, 2009). Looking at neonatal imitation through an intersubjective lens (where the temporal organisation of the interaction plays a fundamental role in the successful communicative creation of imitative acts of meaning) could allow for a deeper understanding not only of the function of neonatal imitation in human and non-human primates but also a reappraisal of the current debate and the mixed findings that continue to fuel disagreement within the field. ...
... From the implicit experience of this co-created meaning arises the foundation for social understanding and intersubjectivity (Fuchs & De Jaegher, 2009). Reddy (2008) argues this is what makes imitation relevant for the infant, as it allows a bi-directional interplay in which the two engaged parties influence one another in a shared affective resonance within an interactional framework. We extend this argument, proposing the specific underlying framework is narrative in form. ...
Since the publication of Meltzoff and Moore’s seminal paper, neonatal imitation has been discussed, debated, and scrutinised at considerable length. Despite this, the temporal structure within which the interaction sits, has received limited attention. We hypothesise that underlying successful examples of neonatal imitation exists a narrative temporal structure, expressed and perceived not only through vocalisations but also (if not primarily) through movement. We contextualise neonatal imitation through a communicative lens, viewing the phenomenon as an early dialogue between adult and infant, underpinned by the same narrative structure as other “proto-conversations” in infancy. From this perspective, several of the leading and traditional theories that have been proposed to explain neonatal imitation are considered. Ultimately, we argue neonatal imitation is an innately dialogical phenomenon that forms one of the first examples of primary intersubjectivity, exemplifying the importance of the neonatal period in human psychological and social development. On this basis we propose further study is required into the temporal structure underlying neonatal imitation.
... Accordingly, most of the criticism of the TT approach has focused on the theory construct. Either in terms of the fact that TT assumes developmental primacy of a 3rd-person perspective over 2nd-person interaction (De Jaegher et al., 2010;Gallagher, 2001;Nelson, 1996;Reddy, 2008) and/or in terms of the different frame problems that arise (Heal, 1996;Mirski & Bickhard, 2021). The emergence problem 8 As a type of constructivism, hypothesis-testing is always happening in the context of what the child already knows (i.e., prior theories/concepts). ...
Much ongoing debate concerns the development of social understanding from infancy through preschool. In developmental cognitive science, this has played out most recently in terms of the nature of, and the relationship between, so-called implicit versus explicit Theory of Mind (ToM). However, notions of implicit, explicit, and their relationship, involve underlying assumptions about the nature of representation, knowing, and learning. These assumptions tend to preclude emergence and, thus, do not allow for an adequate notion of implicitness in the first place. A critical survey of different perspectives from developmental cognitive science will be used to illustrate the rich plurality of explanations. The outcome of this survey will be to argue that only action-based approaches can explain the emergence of new forms of knowing and, in so doing, provide the best ontology in town for understanding implicit versus explicit representation. While there are a variety of action-based approaches in the literature, interactivism is the specific action-based approach used for this argument. After presenting the models of interactive knowing, epistemic reflection, and situation convention, the notions of implicit and explicit ToM will be reinterpreted within the interactivist framework. This reinterpretation will then be used to consider some of the replication problems for early-development ToM studies as well as how to rethink the role of folk psychology for (culturally constituted) ToM development.
... As a result, it is difficult to assign musicality to protoconversational communication that does not necessarily involve we-intentions. Early infant-caregiver interaction is based instead on inter-individual behavior leading to social interaction, without any shared intentionality (Reddy, 2008;Feldman et al., 2009;Fantasia et al., 2014;León, 2021; for a more detailed discussion see Kim et al., 2019, p. 7) This kind of behavior consists of each interactant's own activity in a causal relation to a shared social context that affords or constrains each interactant's selection of their behavior, as well as the perception of their own and others' behavior. Behavior that emerges in the course of reciprocation is not considered to be derived from shared intentionality (Kim et al., 2019;Moll et al., 2021). ...
Drawing on recent interdisciplinary music research—biologically or developmental psychologically oriented—which conceptualizes music as a communicative toolkit primarily serving affiliative communicative interaction, this paper investigates the question of whether and to what extent music is capable of fostering prosocial behavior within the framework of teleofunctionalism—a philosophical theory of mind. A teleofunctionalist perspective allows us to specify this question as follows: To what extent might a function of establishing affiliative socio-interactional relationships be considered a proper function of music, a concept suggested by philosopher Ruth Millikan? From an ontogenetic perspective, musical activities are considered to be rooted in protoconversational communication in early infancy, characterized as interpersonal coordination without involving propositional understanding. These activities develop into coordinated, non-representational forms of vitality, involving basic empathy, shared intentionality, and forms of understanding allowing for shared experiences. This effect of musical activities—establishing shared experiences—can be considered a proper function of music. A teleofunctional explanation of why musical practices that foster cooperation and prosocial behavior are reproduced is provided by the participants’ positive evaluation of shared experiences structured by musical activities. By discussing a proper function of a musical activity, the author refines her own considerations concerning the minimal necessary conditions of music and musicality that can be conceived in a broader sense.
... Contrary to common assumptions that the primary purpose of communicative action is to exchange information, much of adult human languaging is about coordinating, directing, or "grooming" the behavior of others (Noë, 2009;Millikan, 2005;Dunbar, (2025) 205:46 1998). 1 We are receptive to others' communicative acts (they have effects on us) because of how our body-selves are socialized and sensitized into an enlanguaged environment (Cuffari et al., 2015). Studies of primary intersubjectivity (Reddy, 2008;Trevarthen, 1979) make clear that infants and caregivers begin the activity of this sensitization-socialization naturally and immediately (see also Tomasello, 2020). Recent work in philosophical anthropology suggests that early hominin lifeways, evolving out of primate cognitive and communicative capacities, likely went through a gradual co-development of managing increasingly complex social tensions and stresses on the one hand and increasingly complex languaging ability (syntax, compositionality, embedding etc.) on the other (Planer & Sterelny, 2021). ...
The search for origins of human linguistic behavior is a consuming project in many fields. Philosophers drawing on studies of animal behavior are working to revise some of the standard cognitive requirements in hopes of linking the origins of human language to non-human animal communication. This work depends on updates to Grice’s theory of communicative intention and Millikan’s teleosemantics. Yet the classic idea of speaker meaning on which these new projects rest presupposes coherent, stable, individual, internal, and prior intention as a cognitive or mental state, which is also the framework presupposed in theory of mind. This framework neglects the co-authored nature of communicative intentions and is thereby at odds with enactivist views of cognition. In this paper we draw on the idea of participatory sense-making alongside research on non-human animal communication to identify utterances—co-authored meaningful acts—as the token of communicative activity cross-species. Utterances by our definition are expressive, relational, and work without mindreading. In closing we propose the possibility of dialogical subjectivity, and engage with animal studies to show that some species exhibit its traits.
... So, if one supposes that the need-states are experientially undifferentiated despite behavioral discernibility, then it must be the case that either the infant does not have any sort of awareness of their need-specific body feelings, postures and movements, or the infant has a need-specific bodily self-awareness, but the differentiated proprioceptive senses of the body are not constitutive of their undifferentiated need-experiences. In the following, I will adopt a view, according to which young infants' experiences are embodied in the sense of involving pre-reflective kinesthetic and postural bodily selfawareness (e.g., Rochat, 2001;Zahavi, 2004;Gallagher, 2015;Taipale, 2014;Reddy, 2008). Accordingly, I will not discuss the first option, according to which the young infants in need would lack bodily self-awareness altogether. ...
The article argues that young infants’ felt needs are articulated and discernible experiences. So, instead of undifferentiated feelings, young infants have some sort of variety of need-experiences. In the article, infantile needs are specified as feelings of dissatisfaction. The article argues against the view that instances of dissatisfying feelings would be initially experienced by the infants as undifferentiated feelings of discomfort despite corresponding to a variety of observable behaviors and postures (related to, for instance, hunger, thirst, restlessness, or seeking attachment). Two arguments are brought forth in the article. The embodiment argument claims that feelings of dissatisfaction must be thought as embodied experiences. The experiential sense of these feelings involves as a constituent part a proprioceptive sense of one’s body. As embodied experiences, then, these feelings are specific and varying. The ontogenetic argument suggests that the development of the feelings of dissatisfaction issued by care-interventions can be better understood, if these feelings entail a sort of rudimentary experiential organization from the start. Thus, the article suggests that there is no “single general-purpose model” of the infant’s need-experiences, as some emotion theorists suggest with respect to emotions. This has implications with respect to developmental theories which account for young infants’ experiences of needs and their satisfaction, such as that of Donald Winnicott.
... Behavioral/action-related processes Our actions and habitual behaviors which contribute significantly to our self-identity and character (Dewey, 1922;Verplanken & Sui, 2019). Social/intersubjective processes Ranging from a basic capacity for attuning to others (de Waal, 2003;Reddy, 2008;Rochat, 2011;Trevarthen, 1979) to a more developed consciousness of self as distinct from others (Mead, 1913;Sartre, 1969;Taylor, 1989). ...
Mindfulness meditation is a form of mental training rooted in ancient wisdom traditions and is focused on cultivating a non-judgmental stance toward present-moment awareness. Here, we synthesize cognitive-behavioral effects in long-term meditators (LTMs) resulting from diverse and prolonged meditation practices. Preliminary evidence suggests that LTMs exhibit increased cognitive-sensory integration and decoupling of affective processes, as demonstrated in enhanced interoceptive awareness, reduced negative affective pain perception, and more rational decision-making. Additionally, LTMs may experience more emotional neutrality, self-boundary dissolution, and less normative self-awareness. Neuroimaging findings include increased bottom-up activation, particularly within the salience network (interoception, pain, affect), and reduced connectivity between the executive (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and salience (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) networks (reduced pain). Research also displayed reduced amygdala activation to fear (reduced negative affect), increased temporoparietal junction activation (pre-reflective experiential processes, empathy), and altered midline default-mode network activation, which is associated with emotional neutrality and pre-reflective experiential processes, such as non-ordinary states of consciousness. Methodological limitations, specifically heterogeneous predictor variables, restrict the interpretation of trait effects, temporal dynamics in cognitive processing, and the unique influences of meditative activities. These limitations indicate the need for a unified research framework and a systematic neurophenomenological investigation of advanced meditation—through the study of unfolding states, stages, and endpoints in meditative development. In summary, LTMs display a distinct neurophenomenological gestalt of mindfulness, wherein meditative expertise is reflected in altered general brain processing, potentially enhanced cognitive integration, increased cognitive flexibility and self-regulation, and heightened non-dual awareness—signifying a potentially important form of embodied cognition.
... 41 Non-reductionist approaches that focus on the embeddedness of agency explainable by mixing mechanistic frameworks and autonomy approaches can also be based on (false) analogies and do not account for the normative and logical interdependencies of necessary conditions for moral agency and its terminology. 42 Some of the prevalently discussed main abilities in the philosophical literature are: perceptual experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, reciprocity, joint attention, and situated embodiment, see, e.g., Stake [88], Zahavi [107], Reddy [74], Przyrembel [72], Trevarthen [100], Metcalfe and Terrace [60], Seeman [82]. 43 For an encompassing account of that, see Herman [45]. ...
The meanings of the concepts of moral agency in application to AI technologies differ vastly from the ones we use for human agents. Minimal definitions of AI moral agency are often connected with other normative agency-related concepts, such as rationality or intelligence, autonomy, or responsibility. This paper discusses the problematic application of minimal concepts of moral agency to AI. I explore why any comprehensive account of AI moral agency has to consider the interconnections to other normative agency-related concepts and beware of four basic detrimental mistakes in the current debate. The results of the analysis are: (1) speaking about AI agency may lead to serious demarcation problems and confusing assumptions about the abilities and prospects of AI technologies; (2) the talk of AI moral agency is based on confusing assumptions and turns out to be senseless in the current prevalent versions. As one possible solution, I propose to replace the concept of AI agency with the concept of AI automated performance (AIAP).
... In human social life, cooperation and cultural learning of beliefs, practices, and skills is made possible by special expressive movements that signal aesthetic and moral emotions of pride and shame to build a community with a growing record of its history of understandings (Reddy 2008;Damasio 2018). Children are born wanting to move their complex human body with their own agency and under their own power to create experiences of contact with a world that they can enjoy, remember, and share by running and dancing about, and by carefully making and using objects Delafield-Butt 2015, 2017). ...
... The concept of participatory sense-making (and other related concepts forming part of the 'interactive' turn in social cognition research, e.g., Reddy 2008;Gallagher and Hutto 2008; see also recent calls for abandoning methodological individualism in cognitive science, Dingemanse et al. 2023) opens up a gamut of research possibilities from the formulation and testing of novel hypotheses concerning brain function (Di Paolo and De Jaegher 2012;Hirsch et al. 2018) to the investigation of the role of interaction dynamics in cognitive and developmental phenomena (De Jaegher et al. 2010) as well as applications in psychiatry and therapeutic 7 A similar comparison can be made about pragmatist influences on the enactive approach, for instance, the work of Dewey and Mead (particularly as regards the dynamic and historically structured character of perception, Di Paolo et al. 2017). Here, again, one might argue that most of these influences remain in the 'areas of overlap' between pragmatism and Marxism (e.g., the rejection of passive intellectualism, the primacy of activity, etc.) though this does not mean these areas are devoid of tension (Goff 1980;Novack 1975). ...
There is a growing interest in Evald Ilyenkov’s work and its significance for contemporary debates. This interest spans several disciplines. One key thread in Ilyenkov’s ideas concerns a perspective on the relation between biology and psychology. In rejecting crude reductionism and individualism, Ilyenkov put forward a view of mind and personhood as emerging from activity and social practice. In his rejection of brain-bound notions of the mind, Ilyenkov’s ideas bear interesting resonances with current work in 4E cognition. One particularly interesting resonance that has occasionally been noticed are the connections with the enactive approach to life and mind. However, beyond some hints at interesting convergences, there is to date no detailed comparison between the two views. The present article attempts to address this gap, examining both complementarities and possible tensions between the two approaches. Rejecting cognitive views detached from environmental and social processes, the enactive approach, as exemplified by De Jaegher and Di Paolo’s concept of participatory sense-making, emphasises the dynamic constitution of cognition through embodied and situated activities. The article draws parallels between Ilyenkov’s emphasis on historically and culturally situated activity, notably labour, and the enactive understanding of human bodies as dynamically constituted in human activity. The article explores the Ilyenkovian and enactive perspectives on the dialectics of ideality, challenging traditional dualistic views and proposing that the ideal emerges as metastable patterns in the ongoing interactions between world, practices, norms, and bodies. The article concludes by suggesting future research directions for the enactive approach, particularly in areas emphasised by Ilyenkov, such as labour and the mediation of material/cultural artefacts.
... Existen diversos tratamientos (tanto desde la filosofía como desde la psicología) que han intentado dar con el núcleo de lo que pueda identificarse como una perspectiva de segunda persona (Gomila, 2002(Gomila, , 2015Reddy, 2008;De Bruin et al., 2012;Pauen, 2012;Gomila y Pérez, 2017;Pérez y Gomila, 2018, 2022Anton Mlinar, 2020;entre otros). Gomila y Pérez (2017, 277) enuncian los siguientes rasgos en común: 1. una interacción directa, 2. Significatividad -no interpretación-de los aspectos expresivos del cuerpo, 3. reciprocidad en la atribución mental, 4. ejemplo paradigmático de las emociones, 5. no supone un objetivo o actividad "meta", 6. involucra una acción corporal pública, 7. no es indispensable la existencia de un mundo compartido, 8. no requiere del lenguaje. ...
Los enfoques fenomenológicos de la intersubjetividad permiten reconocer que los individuos resultan tanto “constituyentes” como “constituidos” por su reconocimiento mutuo como agentes intencionales, dando lugar a la capacidad de integrar una intencionalidad colectiva. Revisiones del aporte husserliano en el marco de estudios contemporáneos de ontología social han puesto de manifiesto la contribución novedosa de su descripción multicapa de la comunalización para explicar la integración social de los individuos. Partiendo de esta dinámica, el presente artículo se propone, por un lado, mostrar la perspectiva de segunda persona como posibilitadora de una autoconciencia interpersonal que da origen a un cuerpo extendido, a partir del cual puede comprenderse el sentido de la peculiar perspectividad de una intencionalidad colectiva. Por otro lado, se propone indagar, consecuentemente, si es posible reconocer un sentido de propiedad y de agencia colectivo.
Phenomenological approaches to intersubjectivity show that individuals are both "constituent" and "constituted" by their mutual recognition as intentional agents, giving rise to the ability to integrate a collective intentionality. Reviews of the Husserlian contribution in the context of contemporary studies of social ontology have revealed the newfangled input of his multi-layered description of communalization to explain the social integration of individuals. Starting from this dynamic, this article aims, on the one hand, to show the second-person perspective as enabling an interpersonal self-awareness that gives rise to an extended body, from which the sense of the peculiar perspectivity of a collective intentionality can be understood. On the other hand, it aims to investigate, consequently, if it is possible to recognize a collective sense of ownership and agency.
... Similarly, linguistic meaning is grasped in shared situations and contexts of language use /1992, p. 209, 2001cf. Engelland, 2014, Reddy, 2008and Trevarthen, 2011. In bilingual families, embeddedness can be experienced concretely, as when my toddler son referred to "how Mummy speaks" and "how Daddy speaks" instead of saying "Swedish" and "Finnish". ...
This book operationalises the new field—EmLearning—that integrates embodiment and grounded cognition perspectives with education using the 4E approach as a guiding principle, which suggests that cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted, or extended.
Chapters highlight empirical data, providing readers with research-based insight into the theoretical foundations of embodied cognition in learning, illustrated by practical examples. Ultimately, the volume contributes a radical understanding of embodied cognition, demonstrating the importance of the field to the educational system more broadly and suggesting a fundamental change to the way learning, education, and curriculum design are viewed and considered. Based on contemporary scientific findings, the book addresses the educational area with a focus on opening the embodied approach to a wider audience that will circulate the new knowledge and support their educational practices.
Written with the purpose of contributing to a broad spectrum of academic educational fields, this book will be of use to postgraduates, researchers, and academics in the fields of higher education, educational psychology, teacher education, and teaching methodology and practice. Teachers and school politicians should also benefit from this volume more broadly.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
... Similarly, linguistic meaning is grasped in shared situations and contexts of language use (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1992, p. 209, 2001cf. Engelland, 2014, Reddy, 2008and Trevarthen, 2011. In bilingual families, embeddedness can be experienced concretely, as when my toddler son referred to "how Mummy speaks" and "how Daddy speaks" instead of saying "Swedish" and "Finnish". ...
... See, for example,Trevarthen (1998),Reddy (2008),Bråten (2009), andStern (2010). ...
The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious.
... During tickling play with the caregiver, children seem to appreciate the reciprocal social interaction rather than the physical sensation of tickling [26]. In healthy adults [27], the phase preceding tickling is characterised by an increased activity of the anterior insula, hypothalamus, nucleus accumbens, and ventral tegmental area. ...
... A general question that is increasingly asked, both in the psychological and philosophical literature, is how the capacity to know and understand oneself and others is related to various forms of human sociality (e.g. Heal 2003;Reddy 2008;Schilbach et al. 2013;Lavin 2014;Avramides 2015;Satne and Roepstorff 2015;Satne 2021). A common theme in some recent work on knowledge of other minds is that understanding the nature of such knowledge may require discarding the traditional view that our perspective on the mental lives of others is fundamentally spectatorialgrounded on, in Reid's (1764Reid's ( /1997 terms, 'solitary operations of the mind', such as inferring the causes of observed behavior or direct observation. ...
... Through the tonic dialogue (27-28) between mother and child, the child will develop the skills. Emotional involvement in the dyad is also crucial for the repetition of those simple gestures, such as tongue protrusion, that were previously seen only through an intra-individual perspective (29). However, this "dance for two," as other studies on prenatal life point out, is nothing more than the continuation of a rhythm already established during pregnancy. ...
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) belong to the category of neurodevelopmental disorders. ASD emerges in early childhood and involves deficits in communication, language, behavioural inflexibility and fixity, and sensorial neurodivergent perception. ASDs have a biological pathogenesis related to genetic and epigenetic factors. Additionally, research has shown that starting from childhood, autistic persons could find emotional regulation challenging during communication with caregivers. The importance of emotional co-regulation has always been under-lined in psychology, starting with Freud who introduced the concept of the Compassionate Other. Emotional difficulties are grasped immediately and almost instinctively by parents, who try to modulate their approach to the child's needs from the very beginning. This paper seeks to highlight the importance of emotional co-regulation as a wake-up call-in developmental trajectories that present peculiarities or anomalies. It also emphasizes the significance of emotional co-regulation as a useful tool for intervening in the dysfun-ctionality of such trajectories. This intervention aims to directly involve parents in treatment, as seen in Cooperative parent-mediated therapy. This approach is crucial for facilitating the evolution of the cognitive framework while utilizing this target. This article aims to review the most recent literature on co-regulation after explaining the theoretical framework that gave rise to this concept. It's now well established the importance of adopting a develop-mental approach that starts from the bodily dimension as the basis for the relationship with caregivers, pairs, and unfamiliar people. It is from this basis that starts the affective, emotional, and cognitive construction of the internal and external world of the child. This scoping review takes into account the most recent evidence on co-regulation and autism, emphasizing the importance of this process in diagnostic and therapeutic settings.
... In human social life, cooperation and cultural learning of beliefs, practices, and skills is made possible by special expressive movements that signal aesthetic and moral emotions of pride and shame to build a community with a growing record of its history of understandings (Reddy 2008;Damasio 2018). Children are born wanting to move their complex human body with their own agency and under their own power to create experiences of contact with a world that they can enjoy, remember, and share by running and dancing about, and by carefully making and using objects Delafield-Butt 2015, 2017). ...
... Furthermore, Sievers et al. (2012) reassured that motion and music share a dynamic approach on stimulating emotional expression on a universal level. Additionally, Reddy (2008) reminded that moving others through actions or thoughts, which could be choreography, rhythm, or moving lights in a concert, is evidence of engagement. ...
... 8. For a nice exploration of the earliest forms of social cognition and interpersonal agency, see Reddy (2008). 9. How to interpret the finding is not entirely straightforward. ...
Establishing the distribution of belief in something, especially something that spans cultures and times, requires close attention to empirical evidence and to certain inadequacies in our concept of belief. Arguments from divine hiddenness have quickly become one of the most important argument types in the philosophy of religion. These arguments and responses to them typically rely on robust but relatively undefended empirical commitments as to the distribution of belief in God. This article synthesizes results from psychology, anthropology, and the cognitive science of religion to show that the distribution of belief in God is much more messy and much more philosophically interesting than is currently appreciated. I then derive some implications for how one might reconceive the hiddenness debate in light of these findings.
... However, more recent work questions whether the emergence of infants' first triadic experiences is limited to the end of the first year (Rodríguez, 2006). Some authors have characterised this process as a continuous and gradual development, mediated by the adult from birth (Reddy, 2010). In this sense, early communication would develop from the beginning of life according to interactional dynamic processes (Fogel and Thelen, 1987;Fogel, 1993;Thelen and Smith, 1994) in which what is shared is not transmitted unidirectionally, from one mind to another, but is jointly created between adult and child (Fogel, 1993;Trevarthen and Reddy, 2017) or within the family dynamics with more than one primary caregiver (Fivaz-Depeursinge and Corboz-Warnery, 1999;León and Olhaberry, 2020). ...
Infants’ early interactions with adults and everyday objects are key to socio-communicative development, but their emergence and development are still under debate. Aiming at describing the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches on triadicity during the first year of life, we conducted a systematic and qualitative review of recent literature. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we explored the scientific production of recent decades on triadic interactions up to 12 months of age. We initially screened 1943 items from which we obtained a final sample of 51 publications. Studies are usually conducted in laboratory settings, while ecological research is becoming increasingly common, especially in home settings. According to a thematic analysis of the data, we discussed the different perspectives on the origin and conceptualization of triadic interactions, and how they contribute to structuring and facilitating other developmental phenomena, such as the children’s communicative gestures and uses of objects. Prior to the origin of intentional communication, adults facilitate early forms of triadicity based on fostering opportunities for infants’ communication and engagement with both adults and materiality. However, there is a need for further research that explore the potential of early triadic interactions for parenting and early childhood education practises.
There are theoretical debates about the definition of joint attention, and empirical debates about when it emerges in development. Here we addressed both debates by investigating the emergence of infants' communicative joint attention bids: looks to their partner's face, accompanied by communicative facial expressions and/or vocalizations, to attempt to initiate joint attention to a referent. We tested 25 infants monthly, longitudinally, between 6 and 10 months using both novel joint attention elicitation tests and free play observations. Even when using a conservative definition of joint attention involving communication, results indicated that a substantial percentage of infants (44%) had already begun to produce joint attention bids by 6 months, with the vast majority (92%) having done so before 9 months. Joint attention bids emerged gradually, with increasing consistency, and were seen earlier in the novel elicitation tests than in free play, suggesting that previous work focusing on free play might have underestimated infants' joint attention. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of joint attention and communication.
Is there a qualitative difference between apes’ and humans ‘ability to estimate others’ mental states’, a.k.a. ‘Theory-of-Mind’? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to ‘vicarious expectations’—very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one’s (full) contents are distinguished without needing meta-representation. Then, I propose: First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes’ Theory-of-Mind (including ‘spontaneous altruism’). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of the human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in the human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to ‘social order’ and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others’ mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.
Keywords: human lifestyle; language evolution; mentalese; self-conscious emotions; Theory-of-Mind; vicarious expectations
Systematising advances of modern cognitive science I put forward a hypothesis that language functioning (in a situation of communication, ontogenesis and phylogenesis) is made possible due to intersubjective perceiving-feeling-understanding cross- and multimodal bodily experience which is a product of interiorising primarily iconic and indexical communicative interactions about different objects of perception in diverse situational contexts. The object of analysis is the nature of interrelation between the form, meaning and referent of a linguistic structure and its objective is explanation of this interrelation by different approaches of cognitive linguistics. On the grounds of the analysis of image-schemas as prospective experiential basis of language embodiment, I conclude that image-schemas are an instrument of individual cognition since they are covertly enacted representations and cannot be intersubjectively shared. I suggest that image-schemas are formed on the basis of overtly enacted mimetic schemas, which insures interiorisation of intersubjectively accessible bodily experience and creates the junction-point between the imitative (iconic) and the representational (symbolic). I claim that language can only be understood in the context of communication where the verbal action is an integral part of the communicative action enacted by multimodal means of exteriorising inner semantic-pragmatic structures – auditory (speech, intonation) and visual (facial expressions, articulation gestures, hand gestures, bodily movements) that function as intersubjectively accessible iconic and indexical scaffolding of meaning-making.
Is there a qualitative difference between apes’ and human Theory-of-Mind (or ability to estimate others’ mental states)? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to ‘vicarious expectations’ –very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one’s own (full) contents are distinguished without need of meta-representation. Then, three proposals are made. First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes’ Theory-of-Mind (including ‘spontaneous altruism’). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to ‘social order’ and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible the human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others’ mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me.
We are agents and our agency is often best characterized in terms of embodied cognition. However, this is not to deny that there are cognitively significant ways of agentive engagement with the world that may be described without referring to our embodiment. In this paper we shall focus on the interplay between embodied agency and non-embodied agency or agency that may not be straightforwardly described in terms of embodied cognition in the context of interaction with digital technologies. In recent years a lot of our daily lives are coupled to the world via digital technologies. Yet how to understand the nature and evolution of our agency in the context of interacting with daily digital technologies is an open question. We propose to address this question by focusing on whether the steady development of digital technologies in our daily lives challenges the view that embodied agency is the de facto way of robustly engaging with the world and if embodied cognition is challenged then what is taking its place in scenarios where it was once dominant.
For many centuries, scholars and philosophers from wisdom traditions in different cultures have reported and discussed non-self states of consciousness. These states can be both short-term (state, transitory) and long-term (trait, lasting) conditions. However, in psychology, the importance of a healthy self is usually emphasized, and some theorists have dismissed the idea of “selfless” modes of functioning. This disagreement hinders further empirical progress in the study of self and the way it might be affected by meditation. This paper addresses this issue by providing an interdisciplinary conceptual discussion, grounded in the pattern theory of self (PTS). According to PTS, what we call “self” is a complex pattern of dynamically related constituent processes, which include embodied, experiential (prereflective), affective, psychological/cognitive, reflective, narrative, intersubjective, ecological, and normative processes. We propose that Buddhist and secular meditative practices induce a reorganization of the self-pattern, allowing individuals to experience a “selfless” state, both temporarily and persistently. We then put forward a heuristic model, the pattern theory of selflessness (PTSL), possibly experienced through meditation practices. The proposed PTSL model consists of six transformations that contribute to self-pattern reorganization in a nonlinear and iterative manner: consolidating and integrating the self-pattern; cultivating concentration and present-moment awareness; cultivating mindful awareness; self-deconstruction (non-self) states; self-flexibility; and self-liberation as a trait. This conceptual analysis and integrative view contributes to the growing field of consciousness and contemplative research by advancing the contemporary understanding of non-self experience and its relation to Buddhist and secular meditation. The proposed model serves as a basis for interdisciplinary efforts to guide empirical research in this area.
While 4E approaches to cognition are increasingly introduced in educational contexts, little has been said about how 4E commitments can inform pedagogy aimed at fostering ethical competencies. Here, we evaluate a 4E-inspired ethics exercise that we developed at a technical university to enliven the moral imagination of engineering students. Our students participated in an interactive tinkering workshop, during which they materially redesigned a healthcare artifact. The aim of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, we wanted students to experience how material choices at the levels of design and functionality can enable morally significant reimaginings of the affordances commonly associated with existing artifacts. We term this type of reimagining world-directed moral imagination. Secondly, through the design process, we wanted students to robustly place themselves in the lived embodied perspectives of (potential) users of their selected artifacts. We term this person-directed moral imagination. While student testimonies about the exercise indicate that both their world-directed and person-directed moral imagination were enlivened, we note that the fostering of robust person-directed moral imagination proved challenging. Using 4E insights, we diagnose this challenge and ask how it might be overcome. To this end, we engage extensively with a recent 4E-informed critique of person-directed moral imagination, raised by Clavel Vázquez and Clavel-Vázquez (2023). They argue that person-directed moral imagination is profoundly limited, if not fundamentally misguided, particularly when exercised in contexts marked by emphatic embodied situated difference between the imaginer and the imagined. Building upon insights from both the 4E field and testimonies from critical disability studies, we argue that, while their critique is valuable, it ultimately goes too far. We conclude that a 4E approach can take on board recent 4E warnings regarding the limits of person-directed moral imagination while contributing positively to the development of moral imagination in engineering ethics education.
This paper explores how phenomenological notions of rhythm might accommodate a richer description of preverbal infant-caregiver dialogue. Developmental psychologists have theorized a crucial link between rhythm and intercorporeality in the emergence of intersubjectivity and self. Drawing on the descriptions of rhythm in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Erwin Straus, Henri Maldiney and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, the paper emphasizes the role of art and aesthetic processes proposing that they not only be considered as metaphorical or representational aspects of rhythm but as primary resources that can enrich and deepen our understanding of self-emergence and intercorporeality in preverbal infant-caregiver dialogue.
Our book is free to download at the URL below or via the OUP website (search for title; tap on open padlock icon; tap ‘PDF’). It sets out from our research showing babies enjoy participating in groups and group dynamics well before they have formed their first infant-adult attachment. We show how this finding can enrich daycare experiences for both infants and educators, while supplying a new set of assumptions for psychotherapy and the foundations of human psychology.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/babies-in-groups-9780192859518?q=babies%20in%20groups&lang=en&cc=au
When one is intentionally doing something, one represents that thing as a goal to be accomplished. One represents it practically. How should we characterize this practical representation further? In this paper, I argue that when one is intentionally doing something, one's representation of it as a goal to be accomplished must also be knowledge that one is intentionally doing that thing. And I argue that this knowledge must itself be one's intentionally doing that thing. I aim to show, then, that insofar as representing practically just is knowing practically, it is equally acting intentionally.
This paper has a twofold aim. The first is to report a qualitative study exploring the construction of collaborative interactions between typically developing children and children with intellectual disabilities in early childhood education, shifting from a cognitivist toward an embodied account of social cognition. The study combined microanalysis of embodied engagements and a phenomenological method of systematic introspective analysis of experience (PRISMA) to investigate the emergence and maintenance of collaborative interactions. The second aim is to showcase the complementarity of the methods and their potential use as a tool for understanding intersubjectivity in children’s social interactions. Participants were twenty-four children aged 3–4: six with intellectual disabilities and eighteen typically developing children. Data consisted of eighteen video recordings of collaborative interactions in a semi-natural context in daycare centres. The results show how typically developing children start the interaction and lead it toward task completion through a scaffolding process of non-verbal regulations facilitated by abbreviations of communication and a combination of sequential actions. This process created bodily invitations for the peer’s engagement, notably stronger amongst preferable peers, corroborating previous research on the relevance of such relationships in this age group. The introspective analysis provided insights into how the desire to work together surpasses the need to complete the task—collaboration can emerge outside the pre-determined task and relies on joint actions rather than understanding tasks’ goals. Peer relations built during the interactions guided children’s behaviours and changed their engagement in the task. This result brings a new perspective to pedagogical planning in early childhood education, indicating the need for teachers to understand children’s intersubjective processes as well as elaborate on task instructions and organisation of space and materials. Results also suggest that previous individual embodied experiences can influence such collaborative efforts, which, although may be expected intuitively, is an underexplored perspective in education sciences. This insight underscores the importance of considering students’ backgrounds and relationships when designing pedagogical approaches. Understanding how prior experiences and peer dynamics affect collaboration can inform more effective teaching strategies in inclusive early childhood education and guide professional training in the field. The findings are critically discussed concerning the implications for professional education and training in inclusive early childhood education.
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