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"This book contains research into the cognitive phenomenon of 'joint attention'. Philosophical and psychological perspectives on the nature and significance of this phenomenon are examined"--Provided by publisher.
An international team of psychologists and philosophers present research into the cognitive phenomenon of 'joint attention'. Philosophical and psychological perspectives on the nature and significance of this phenomenon are examined.
Interdisciplinary perspectives on definitional concerns, underlying mechanisms, and the functional significance of joint attention. Academic interest in the phenomenon of joint attention—the capacity to attend to an object together with another creature—has increased rapidly over the past two decades. Yet it isn't easy to spell out in detail what joint attention is, how it ought to be characterized, and what exactly its significance consists in. The writers for this volume address these and related questions by drawing on a variety of disciplines, including developmental and comparative psychology, philosophy of mind, and social neuroscience. The volume organizes their contributions along three main themes: definitional concerns, such as the question of whether or not joint attention should be understood as an irreducibly basic state of mind; processes and mechanisms obtaining on both the neural and behavioral levels; and the functional significance of joint attention, in particular the role it plays in comprehending spatial perspectives and understanding other minds. The collected papers present new work by leading researchers on one of the key issues in social cognition. They demonstrate that an adequate theory of joint attention is indispensable for a comprehensive account of mind.
"This book contains research into the cognitive phenomenon of 'joint attention'. Philosophical and psychological perspectives on the nature and significance of this phenomenon are examined"--Provided by publisher.
It is perhaps no exaggeration to suggest that all of what is intrinsically human experience is grounded in its shared nature. Joint attention to objects and events in the world provides the initial means whereby infants can start to share experiences with others and negotiate shared meanings. It provides a context for the development of both knowledge about the world and about others as experiencers. It plays a central role in the development of the young child's understanding of both the social and nonsocial worlds and in the development of the communicative interplay between child and adult. The first devoted to this important topic, this volume explores how joint attention first arises, its developmental course, its role in communication and social understanding, and the ways in which disruptions in joint attention may be implicated in a variety of forms of abnormal development including autism.
The cognitive and language sciences are increasingly oriented towards the social dimension of human cognition and communication. The hitherto dominant approach in modern cognitive science has viewed social cognition through the prism of the traditional philosophical puzzle of how individuals solve the problem of understanding Other Minds. "The Shared Mind" challenges the conventional theory of mind approach, proposing that the human mind is fundamentally based on "intersubjectivity" the sharing of affective, conative, intentional and cognitive states and processes between a plurality of subjects. The socially shared, intersubjective foundation of the human mind is manifest in the structure of early interaction and communication, imitation, gestural communication and the normative and argumentative nature of language. In this path breaking volume, leading researchers from psychology, linguistics, philosophy and primatology offer complementary perspectives on the role of intersubjectivity in the context of human development, comparative cognition and evolution, and language and linguistic theory.
What does a child’s ability to look where another is looking tell us about his or her early cognitive development? What does this ability—or lack thereof—tell us about a child’s language development, understanding of other’s intentions, and the emergence of autism? This volume assembles several years of research on the processing of gaze information and its relationship to early social-cognitive development in infants spanning many age groups. Gaze-Following examines how humans and non-human primates use another individual’s direction of gaze to learn about the world around them. The chapters throughout this volume address development in areas including joint attention, early non-verbal social interactions, language development, and theory of mind understanding. Offering novel insights regarding the significance of gaze-following, the editors present research from a neurological and a behavioral perspective, and compare children with and without pervasive developmental disorders. Scholars in the areas of cognitive development specifically, and developmental science more broadly, as well as clinical psychologists will be interested in the intriguing research presented in this volume.
From a preeminent researcher, this book looks at the key role of joint attention in both typical and atypical development. Peter C. Mundy shows that no other symptom dimension is more strongly linked to early identification and treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). He synthesizes a wealth of knowledge on how joint attention develops, its neurocognitive underpinnings, and how it helps to explain the learning, language, and social-cognitive features of ASD across the lifespan. Clinical implications are explored, including reviews of cutting-edge diagnostic methods and targeted treatment approaches.
The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality provides a wide-ranging survey of topics in a rapidly expanding area of interdisciplinary research. It consists of 36 chapters, written exclusively for this volume, by an international team of experts. What is distinctive about the study of collective intentionality within the broader study of social interactions and structures is its focus on the conceptual and psychological features of joint or shared actions and attitudes, and their implications for the nature of social groups and their functioning. This Handbook fully captures this distinctive nature of the field and how it subsumes the study of collective action, responsibility, reasoning, thought, intention, emotion, phenomenology, decision-making, knowledge, trust, rationality, cooperation, competition, and related issues, as well as how these underpin social practices, organizations, conventions, institutions and social ontology. Like the field, the Handbook is interdisciplinary, drawing on research in philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, legal theory, anthropology, sociology, computer science, psychology, economics, and political science. Finally, the Handbook promotes several specific goals: (1) it provides an important resource for students and researchers interested in collective intentionality; (2) it integrates work across disciplines and areas of research as it helps to define the shape and scope of an emerging area of research; (3) it advances the study of collective intentionality.
