Joint attention in joint action

In this paper, we investigate the role of intention and joint attention in joint actions. Depending on the shared intentions the agents have, we distinguish between joint path-goal actions and joint final-goal actions. We propose an instrumental account of basic joint action analogous to a concept of basic action and argue that intentional joint attention is a basic joint action. Furthermore, we discuss the functional role of intentional joint attention for successful cooperation in complex joint actions

Various ways to understand other minds : towards a pluralistic approach to the explanation of social understanding

In this article, we propose a pluralistic approach to the explanation of social understanding that integrates literature from social psychology with the theory of mind debate. Social understanding in everyday life is achieved in various ways. As a rule of thumb we propose that individuals make use of whatever procedure is cognitively least demanding to them in a given context. Aside from theory and simulation, associations of behaviors with familiar agents play a crucial role in social understanding. This role has been neglected so far. We illustrate the roles of fluency and associations in social understanding in false belief tasks.24 page(s

Joint attention in joint action

In this paper, we investigate the role of intention and joint attention in joint actions. Depending on the shared intentions the agents have, we distinguish between joint path-goal actions and joint final-goal actions. We propose an instrumental account of basic joint action analogous to a concept of basic action and argue that intentional joint attention is a basic joint action. Furthermore, we discuss the functional role of intentional joint attention for successful cooperation in complex joint actions. Anika Fiebich is PhD student in Philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Shaun Gallagher is Lilian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, USA. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Pluralism, interaction, and the ontogeny of social cognition

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the development of a variety of socio-cognitive processes and procedures1 throughout ontogeny. For many years the received view of social cognition took it for granted that it was based, wholly or primarily, in mindreading abilities - the ability to attribute contentful mental states to others by means of deploying folk psychological theories or by running simulation routines on one’s own mental states. From the late 1970s through the 1990s it would be fair to say that the received view was that everyday social cognition was always based in mental state attribution achieved by theorizing about other minds, simulating other minds, or some combination of the two