Enkinaesthetic polyphony: the underpinning for first-order languaging

We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co- agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterised by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity

How watching Pinocchio movies changes our subjective experience of extrapersonal space

The way we experience the space around us is highly subjective. It has been shown that motion potentialities that are intrinsic to our body influence our space categorization. Furthermore, we have recently demonstrated that in the extrapersonal space, our categorization also depends on the movement potential of other agents. When we have to categorize the space as "Near" or "Far" between a reference and a target, the space categorized as "Near" is wider if the reference corresponds to a biological agent that has the potential to walk, instead of a biological and non-biological agent that cannot walk. But what exactly drives this "Near space extension"? In the present paper, we tested whether abstract beliefs about the biological nature of an agent determine how we categorize the space between the agent and an object. Participants were asked to first read a Pinocchio story and watch a correspondent video in which Pinocchio acts like a real human, in order to become more transported into the initial story. Then they had to categorize the location ("Near" or "Far") of a target object located at progressively increasing or decreasing distances from a non-biological agent (i.e., a wooden dummy) and from a biological agent (i.e., a human-like avatar). The results indicate that being transported into the Pinocchio story, induces an equal "Near" space threshold with both the avatar and the wooden dummy as reference frames

Toward a second-person neuroscience

LS & BT : equal contributions (shared first-authorship)Peer reviewedPreprin

Towards understanding the child’s experience in the process of parentification: young adults’ reflections on growing up with a depressed parent

This article reports on a qualitative study with 21 young adults who grew up with a depressed parent. We examined how young adults make sense of their childhood experiences of parental depression and how their retrospective reflections help us to understand the experiences of children and the processes of parentification. Participants recounted that their childhood consisted mainly of actions in the service of family well-being. At that time, they reflected on their own experiences only rarely. In adolescence, there was an evolution toward a greater consideration for oneself and a repositioning within the family. In the discussion, we explore the therapeutic implications of this studyand in particularthe meaningfulness of silence in the family process of parentification

Empathy revisited

Empathy is presented as a relation between persons and by analogy between persons and non-human entities in which case it is called quasi-empathy. The characteristics of empathy, the sufficient and necessary conditions for its creation and nurturance, and various types of empathy, both authentic and mistaken, are examined. The role of empathy in various types of knowing especially personal knowing are discussed leading to an attempt to classify interpersonal relations. In the course of this analysis different ways of construing human beings are presented and contrasted with particular interest in the extent to which empathy, quasi-empathy and other relations are involved. A variety of emotional bonds which have some bearing on or similarity to empathy are compared with empathy. The dissertation concludes with a review of a selection from the empathy literature in which contrasts are made with the outline theory of empathy developed in this dissertation

Predictive social perception: Towards a unifying framework from action observation to person knowledge

Action observation is central to human social interaction. It allows people to derive what mental states drive others' behaviour and coordinate (and compete) effectively with them. Although previous accounts have conceptualised this ability in terms of bottom-up (motoric or conceptual) matching processes, more recent evidence suggests that such mechanisms cannot account for the complexity and uncertainty of the sensory input, even in cases where computations should be much simpler (i.e., low-level vision). It has therefore been argued that perception in general, and social perception in particular, is better described as a process of top–down hypothesis testing. In such models, any assumption about others—their goals, attitudes, and beliefs—is translated into predictions of expected sensory input and compared with incoming stimulation. This allows perception and action to be based on these expectations or—in case of a mismatch—for one's prior assumptions to be revised until they are better aligned with the individual's behaviour. This article will give a (selective) review of recent research from experimental psychology and (social) neuroscience that supports such views, discuss the relevant underlying models, and current gaps in research. In particular, it will argue that much headway can be made when current research on predictive social perception is integrated with classic findings from social psychology, which have already shown striking effects of prior knowledge on the processing of other people's behaviour