Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.     

Western and East Asian sociocultural learning models: Evidence from cross‐cultural and immigrant research

We review Li's research and theory of cultural learning models in light of Chirkov's (2019) theory of sociocultural models that draw on previous theories and research across social sciences. We recast Li's models as sociocultural learning models (SCLMs) by incorporating Chirkov's three emphases: (a) the inseparability between the social and the cultural, (b) the public versus individuals’ internalization of SCLMs and their mutual enforcement, and (c) collective intentionality and intersubjectivity as embedded in the enactment of SCLMs. As an initial attempt to document how public SCLMs become internalized, we further examine the role of joint intentionality and intersubjectivity at the person‐to‐person level. We use discourse analysis to look at two mother–child conversations about learning from our current European American and Chinese immigrant research data. We show evidence that both joint intentionality and intersubjectivity are prevalently and deeply present in the process of parental socialization (transmitting SCLMs to their young). We conclude that intentionality and intersubjectivity are indispensable to enable SCLMs to exist and to continue by enabling the public to become internalized. The internalization is then enacted and repeated by members across the culture, who in turn function to uphold and renew SCLMs.     

The Ways of ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’ Human

We argue that developing integrative models of psychological phenomenon require dealing simultaneously with information-theoretic and meaning making processes at the individual and group levels. Attempts to fuse these across levels based on intentionality become difficult because phenomena at the lower level organisms are conceptualized employing concrete systems language, while in case of human and social systems both concrete and abstracted systems concepts are used. Intentionality also needs to be looked at as arising out of the processes of both being and becoming. Fusing of psycho-and socio-logics necessarily requires taking into consideration psychological processes and notions of intentionality and future within cultural contexts in a more holistic manner. It is also argued that both at personal and collective levels, human intentionality operate as bounded intentionality alternating between states of being and becoming.     

Implicit coordination: Sharing goals with similar others intensifies goal pursuit

The current research explored whether sharing intentionality leads to implicit coordination, a situation in which isolated individuals independently adopt a similar standard of behavior. We propose that knowing that a given goal is experienced in common with other in-group members or similar others intensifies goal pursuit. Two experiments examined whether simply being aware that one's own individual goal was also being separately pursued by similar others results in more goal-congruent behavior. When a promotion goal was shared with similar others, participants produced greater promotion behaviors than when the same goal was shared with different others. Similarly, sharing a prevention goal with similar others led to greater prevention behavior than conditions where a) similar others had a different goal and b) different others shared the same goal. Overall, shared goals served as an intensifier of individual goal pursuit. We discuss shared goals as a foundation for the emergence of social synchrony in groups.     

How to Create Shared Symbols

Human cognition and behavior are dominated by symbol use. This paper examines the social learning strategies that give rise to symbolic communication. Experiment 1 contrasts an individual‐level account, based on observational learning and cognitive bias, with an inter‐individual account, based on social coordinative learning. Participants played a referential communication game in which they tried to communicate a range of recurring meanings to a partner by drawing, but without using their conventional language. Individual‐level learning, via observation and cognitive bias, was sufficient to produce signs that became increasingly effective, efficient, and shared over games. However, breaking a referential precedent eliminated these benefits. The most effective, most efficient, and most shared signs arose when participants could directly interact with their partner, indicating that social coordinative learning is important to the creation of shared symbols. Experiment 2 investigated the contribution of two distinct aspects of social interaction: behavior alignment and concurrent partner feedback. Each played a complementary role in the creation of shared symbols: Behavior alignment primarily drove communication effectiveness, and partner feedback primarily drove the efficiency of the evolved signs. In conclusion, inter‐individual social coordinative learning is important to the evolution of effective, efficient, and shared symbols.     

Fairness considerations: Increasing understanding of intentionality during adolescence

The development of fairness considerations in decision making is not well understood. Here we tested the hypothesis that increased understanding of intentionality during adolescence underlies increased fairness considerations in social decision making. We conducted three experiments using an adapted version of the Ultimatum Game with participants during four stages of adolescence: 9, 12, 15, and 18 years of age. Participants made or evaluated monetary offers, and we manipulated the intentionality context of offers. Results show that strategic thinking is already present at 9 years of age. There was no age difference in fairness of offers when the responder could not reject an offer (Experiment 1), but when they could reject an offer there was an age-related increase in taking into account the perspective and intentionality of other players when making offers (Experiment 2) and evaluating offers (Experiment 3). Taken together, the results demonstrate a linear developmental transition in fairness considerations that may have important implications for our understanding of social interactions during adolescence.     

Agnosticism gone awry: Why developmental robotics must commit to an understanding of embodiment and shared intentionality

We argue that developmental robotics, in its integration of developmental psychology and robotics, has the potential to encounter unexpected and unexamined conceptual difficulties. In particular, the various uses of embodiment and shared intentionality single out certain robots and behaviors as more or less relevant for the modeling of social cognition. As these terms have relatively orthogonal histories, there is no account for how their use will interact to shape methodology. We provide a brief discussion of how they may do so. Moreover, theorists often avoid explicit endorsement of some use or another. Although this agnosticism is understandable, we use the model of Dominey and Warneken (2011) as an illustrative example of why it is potentially dangerous. While Dominey and Warneken have succeeded in encouraging theorists to adopt clearer formulations of shared intentionality, their model suffers from important difficulties in interpretation, which, we argue, are a consequence of their uses of embodiment and shared intentionality respectively.     

Judging mens rea: the tension between folk concepts and legal concepts of intentionality

Concepts such as intention, motive, or forethought have generated a great deal of doubt, dispute, and confusion in legal decision making. Here we argue for an empirically based strategy of defining and using such mens rea concepts. Instead of the standard approach of settling these concepts by theoretical argument and the debaters' own intuitions, we rely on social psychological research to determine the meaning and significance of folk concepts concerning mens rea. We demonstrate the reliable and systematic use of people's concept of intentionality, contrast it with the bewildering variety of related legal concepts, and apply the folk model of intentionality to debated distinctions between intention and intentionality, desire and intention, and belief and intention. This folk-conceptual approach promises clarity of mens rea concepts and a reconciliation of the legal and layperson's view of human behavior.     

Social Cognition: Exchanging and Sharing Information on the Run

In this essay I consider various aspects of the rapidly growing field of cognitive ethology, concentrating mainly on evolutionary and comparative discussion of the notion of intentionality. I am not concerned with consciousness, per se, for a concentration on consciousness deflects attention from other, and in many cases more interesting, problems in the study of animal cognition. I consider how, when, where, and (attempt to discuss) why individuals from different taxa exchange social information concerning their beliefs, desires, and goals. My main examples come from studies of social play in mammals and antipredator behavior in birds. Basically, I argue that although not all individuals always display behavior patterns that are best explained by appeals to intentionality, it is misleading to argue that such explanations have no place in the study of animal cognition. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Sensorimotor intentionality: The origins of intentionality in prospective agent action

Efficient prospective motor control, evident in human activity from birth, reveals an adaptive intentionality of a primary, pre-reflective, and pre-conceptual nature that we identify here as sensorimotor intentionality. We identify a structural continuity between the emergence of this earliest form of prospective movement and the structure of mental states as intentional or content-directed in more advanced forms. We base our proposal on motor control studies, from foetal observations through infancy. These studies reveal movements are guided by anticipations of future effects, even from before birth. This implies that these movements, even if they are simple and discrete, are the actions of an intentional agent. We develop this notion to present a theory of the developing organisation of a core feature of cognition as embodied agent action, from early single actions with proximal prospectivity to the complex serial ordering of actions into projects to reach distal goals. We claim the prospective structural continuity from early and simple actions to later complex projects of serially-ordered actions confirms the existence of an ontogenetically primary form of content–directedness that is a driver for learning and development. Its implications for understanding autism are discussed.     

The persistence of dichotomies in the study of behavioral development

The inadequacies of dichotomous views of behavioral development that oppose learned and innate behavior, or genetic and environmental determinants of behavior, have long been recognized. However, they continue to exert a powerful influence on current thinking about development, often by way of metaphors that simply recast these old ideas in a more modern technical vocabulary. The idea that the information for behavior can be attributed to either genetic or environmental sources was originated by Lorenz and provides the basis for many current dichotomous accounts of behavioral development. Lorenz's “sources of information” metaphor for development is fundamentally flawed, however, as are those more recent accounts that are based on it. The alternative interactionist account of development, most clearly articulated by Lehrman, is a far more powerful and coherent theoretical framework for development, but it has not been broadly assimilated into psychology and continues to be widely misunderstood. In particular, the interactionist account does not involve a radical environmentalism, does not attribute all behavior to the effects of learning, and does not interpret development as a gene-environment interaction. The attractive simplicity of dichotomous thinking encourages its continued application to the study of development despite the fact that it is clearly inadequate to the complexities of developmental analysis.     

Responsabilidad social universitaria: influencia de valores y empatía en la autoatribución de comportamientos socialmente responsables

Training socially responsible professionals at university level has become a UNESCO-recognized mission. This paper reviews the study of Academic Social Responsibility from the Psychology standpoint, and develops a novel analysis approach for assessing the impact of higher education in acquiring social responsibility behaviors, based on a MIMIC analysis. Three scales were administered, based on an accidental non-probabilistic sampling and a transversal survey research: human values, multidimensional empathy and self-attribution of socially responsible behaviors. The sample included 860 students from Ibero-American Universities. The results show that university students display a high frequency of socially responsible behaviors but not a more prosocial intentionality in these behaviors. As regards frequency scale of socially responsible behavior, influence is evident of value dimensions, such as conservation and openness to change with the subscales of empathy perspective taking and personal distress. Regarding the intentionality scale, the variables that contribute to the self-attribution of socially responsible behavior are value dimensions: conservation and self-transcendence, along with the subscales of empathy appertaining to fantasy. Conclusion This research provides information on the psychological variables that have implications for humans to be socially responsible, which will allow the University to respond to the impact of training qualified professionals with great respect to their duty in the society.     

Individualism versus interactionism about social understanding

In the debate about the nature of social cognition we see a shift towards theories that explain social understanding through interaction. This paper discusses autopoietic enactivism and the we-mode approach in the light of such developments. We argue that a problem seems to arise for these theories: an interactionist account of social cognition makes the capacity of shared intentionality a presupposition of social understanding, while the capacity of engaging in scenes of shared intentionality in turn presupposes exactly the kind of social understanding that it is intended to explain. The social capacity in question that is presupposed by these accounts is then analyzed in the second section via a discussion and further development of Searle’s ‘sense of us’ and ‘sense of the other’ as a precondition for social cognition and joint action. After a critical discussion of Schmid’s recent proposal to analyze this in terms of plural pre-reflective selfawareness, we develop an alternative account. Starting from the idea that infants distinguish in perception between physical objects and other agents we distinguish between affordances and social affordances and cash out the notion of a social affordance in terms of “interaction-oriented representations”, parallel to the analysis of object affordances in terms of “action-oriented representations”. By characterizing their respective features we demonstrate how this approach can solve the problem formulated in the first part.     

Infant intentionality as object directedness: A method for observation*

It is argued that a definition of intentionality in terms of object directedness is more adequate than the traditional definition in terms of goal directedness. Inconsistencies in the use of “intentionality” among infant researchers are pointed out. A method of observation is explored, based on the definition in terms of behavioral object directedness, that takes into account precursors to fully-fledged intentional actions by approaching intentionality as a matter of degree rather than as an all or none issue. The method, when used on longitudinal video recordings of parent-infant interaction, produced results that substantiated Tre-varthen's observations of infant intentionality before the age of six months. Furthermore, the results suggest that the parent's attribution of intentions to the infant is based on the perception of the infant's intentionality, whether in social interaction or in interaction with “physical” objects.     

Animal Beliefs and Their Contents

This paper investigates whether, or not, the behavior of animals without speech can manifest beliefs and desires. Criteria for the attribution of such beliefs and desires are worked out with reference to Jonathan Bennett's theory of cognitive teleology: A particular ability for learning justifies attributing such beliefs and desires. The conceptual analysis is illustrated by examinations of cognitive ethology and considers higher-order intentionality. It is argued that the behavioral evidence only supports the attribution of first order beliefs and that languageless animals therefore could not possess higher-order intentionality. They are only capable of forming simple, i.e., first-order beliefs about their environment. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Is speech learning ‘gated’ by the social brain?

I advance the hypothesis that the earliest phases of language acquisition -- the developmental transition from an initial universal state of language processing to one that is language-specific -- requires social interaction. Relating human language learning to a broader set of neurobiological cases of communicative development, I argue that the social brain 'gates' the computational mechanisms involved in human language learning.     

Thirty years of research on online learning

This paper presents a personal account of developments in research on online learning over the past 30 years. Research on how to design online instruction represents an example of applying the science of learning to education. It contributes to the science of learning (as exemplified by developments in cognitive load theory, the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, and incorporating metacognitive, motivational, and affective aspects of learning), the science of instruction (as exemplified by the continuing development of research‐based principles of instructional design), and the science of assessment (as exemplified by supplementing self‐report surveys and retention tests with multilevel transfer tests, log file data during learning, and cognitive neuroscience measures of cognitive processing during learning). Some recurring themes are that learning is caused by instructional methods rather than instructional media, so research should focus on features that are uniquely afforded by digital learning environments; instructional practice should be grounded in rigorous and systematic research, including value‐added experiments aimed at pinpointing the active ingredients in online instruction; research in online learning should identify boundary conditions under which instructional techniques are most effective; and research in online learning should test and contribute to learning theory.     

Even simple forms of social learning rely on intention attribution in marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus)

Intention attribution guides the cognitively most demanding forms of social learning, such as imitation, thereby scaffolding cumulative cultural evolution. However, it is not thought to be necessary for more basic forms of social learning. Here we present evidence that in marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus) even most basic forms of social learning such as enhancement depend on intention attribution. Marmosets perceived the behavior of a conspecific and a conspecific-like robot, but not that of a moving black box, as goal directed. Their subsequent choice behavior was shaped by social facilitation and stimulus enhancement, that is, by very simple forms of social learning, but only when exposed to the conspecific and robot, which they previously had perceived as intentional agents. We discuss the implications of this finding for contemporary debates about social learning, including emulation learning and ghost control studies, the necessity of goal-directed copying for cumulative cultural evolution, and the limits of current classification systems of social learning for the evolution of social and asocial learning.