Henrike Moll

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 childrens 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 childrens ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.

Cooperation and human cognition: the Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis

Nicholas Humphreys social intelligence hypothesis proposed that the major engine of primate cognitive evolution was social competition. Lev Vygotsky also emphasized the social dimension of intelligence, but he focused on human primates and cultural things such as collaboration, communication and teaching. A reasonable proposal is that primate cognition in general was driven mainly by social competition, but beyond that the unique aspects of human cognition were driven by, or even constituted by, social cooperation. In the present paper, we provide evidence for this Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis by comparing the social-cognitive skills of great apes with those of young human children in several domains of activity involving cooperation and communication with others. We argue, finally, that regular participation in cooperative, cultural interactions during ontogeny leads children to construct uniquely powerful forms of perspectival cognitive representation.

Level 1 perspective-taking at 24 months of age

The current study sought to determine the age at which children first engage in Level 1 visual perspective-taking, in which they understand that the content of what another person sees in a situation may sometimes differ from what they see. An adult entered the room searching for an object. One candidate object was out in the open, whereas another was visible for the child but behind an occluder from the adults perspective. When asked to help the adult find the sought-for object, 24-month-old children, but not 18-month-old children, handed him the occluded object (whereas in a control condition they showed no preference for the occluded toy). We argue that the performance of the 24-month-olds requires Level 1 visual perspective-taking skills and that this is the youngest age at which these skills have been demonstrated.

How 14- and 18-month-olds know what others have experienced.

Fourteen- and 18-month-old infants observed an adult experiencing each of 2 objects (experienced objects) and then leaving the room; the infant then played with a 3rd object while the adult was gone (unexperienced object). The adult interacted with the 2 experienced objects in 1 of 3 ways: by (a) sharing them with the infant in an episode of joint engagement, (b) actively manipulating and inspecting them on his or her own as the infant watched (individual engagement), or (c) looking at them from a distance as the infant played with them (onlooking). As evidenced in a selection task, infants of both ages knew which objects had been experienced by the adult in the joint engagement condition, only the 18-month-olds knew this in the individual engagement condition, and infants at neither age knew this in the onlooking condition. These results suggest that infants are 1st able to determine what adults know (have experienced) on the basis of their direct, triadic engagements with them.

Infants determine others' focus of attention by pragmatics and exclusion

This article addresses a question that was a topic of debate in the middle decades of the 20th century but was then abandoned as interest in childrens learning declined. The question is, does learning develop? In other words, does the learning process itself undergo age-related change, or does it remain invariant ontogenetically and phylogenetically, as early learning theories claimed? We suggest that new conceptions of learning make the question worth revisiting. A study is presented of 11- to 12-year-old children and young adults engaged in an identical learning task. Results support the proposal that learning comes to operate under increasing executive control in the years between middle childhood and early adulthood.

Fourteen-Month-Olds Know What “We” Have Shared in a Special Way

People often express excitement to each other when encountering an object that they have shared together previously in some special way. This study investigated whether 14-month-old infants know precisely what they have and have not shared in a special way (and with whom). In the experimental condition an adult and infant shared an object (the target) excitedly because it unexpectedly reappeared in several places. They then shared 2 other objects (the distractors) in a more normal fashion. Later, the adult reacted excitedly to a tray containing all 3 objects and then made an ambiguous request for the infant to hand “it” to her. There were 2 control conditions. In 1 of them, a different adult, who knew none of the 3 objects, made the ambiguous request. In the other control condition, the adult who made the request had previously experienced the objects only alone, while the infant looked on unengaged. Infants in the experimental condition chose the target object more often than the distractors and more oft...

The Gap is Social: Human Shared Intentionality and Culture

Human beings share many cognitive skills with their nearest primate relatives, especially those for dealing with the physical world of objects (and categories and quantities of objects) in space and their causal interrelations. But humans are, in addition, biologically adapted for cultural life in ways that other primates are not. Specifically, humans have evolved unique motivations and cognitive skills for understanding other persons as cooperative agents with whom one can share emotions, experience, and collaborative actions (shared intentionality). These motivations and skills first emerge in human ontogeny at around one year of age, as infants begin to participate with other persons in various kinds of collaborative and joint attentional activities. Participation in such activities leads humans to construct during ontogeny, perspectival and dialogical cognitive representations.

Cultural learning and cultural creation

U. Muller, J. Carpendale, N. Budwig, B. Sokol, Developmental Relations Between Forms of Social Interaction and Forms of Thought: An Introduction. M. Bickhard, Are You Social? The Ontological and Developmental Emergence of the Person. J. Martin, Perspectives and Persons: Ontological, Constitutive Possibilities. T. Behne, M. Carpenter, M. Grafenhain, K. Liebal, U. Liszkowski, H. Moll, H.Rakoczy, M. Tomasello, F. Warneken, E. Wyman, Cultural Learning and Cultural Creation. P. Hobson, J. Meyer, In the Beginning is Relation and Then What? V. Reddy, Experiencing the Social. M. B. Bibok, J.I.M. Carpendale, C. Lewis, Social Knowledge as Social Skill: An Action Based View of Social Understanding. J. Dunn, Relationships and Childrens Discovery of Mind. G. Duveen, C. Psaltis, The Constructive Role of Asymmetry in Social Interaction. M. Bamberg, Selves and Identities in the Making: The Study of Microgenetic Processes in Interactive Practices. C. R. Hallpike, The Anthropology of Moral Development. E. Turiel, Individuals and Social Change.

On the transformative character of collective intentionality and the uniqueness of the human

Abstract Current debates on collective intentionality focus on the cognitive capacities, attitudes, and mental states that enable individuals to take part in joint actions. It is typically assumed that collective intentionality is a capacity which is added to other, pre-existing, capacities of an individual and is exercised in cooperative activities like carrying a table or painting a house together. We call this the additive account because it portrays collective intentionality as a capacity that an individual possesses in addition to her capacity for individual intentionality. We offer an alternative view according to which the primary entity to which collective intentionality has to be ascribed is not the human individual, but a “form of life.” As a feature of a form of life, collective intentionality is something more than the specific capacity exercised by an individual when she cooperates with others. Collective intentionality transforms all the capacities of the bearers of this specific form of life. We thus call our proposal the transformative account of collective intentionality.

“Not See, Not Hear, Not Speak”: Preschoolers Think They Cannot Perceive or Address Others Without Reciprocity

A curious phenomenon in early social-cognitive development has been identified: Preschoolers deny that they can see others who cannot also see them (Russell, Gee, & Bullard, 2012). The exclusive focus on vision has suggested that this effect is limited to gaze, but children’s negations might reflect a broader phenomenon that extends to vocal communication. In Experiment 1 (N = 24), 3- to 4-year-olds were asked if they could see an agent whose eyes were covered, hear an agent whose ears were covered, and speak to an agent whose mouth was covered. In all cases, negative responses were more frequent than in a control condition in which the facial area was unoccluded. Experiment 2 (N = 24) provided evidence that children’s negations did not result from a misunderstanding of the questions. The findings suggest that young children apply a principle of reciprocal relatedness that is not limited to gaze.