Shared Intentionality Research Articles

The Origin of Social Skills: Manipulating Shared Intentionality in Bioengineering Systems for Empathy Training

This pilot study (<em>N</em><em> </em>= 28) aims to develop universal computer-aided empathy training. The experiment tests a research design of manipulating behavior in subjects toward non-affective cues in a bioengineering system. The study implements the Mother-Fetus Neurocognitive Model to involve subjects in subliminal cognitive collaboration with confederates, which enables subjects to associate the meaning of empathy with the picture only seen by confederates. The outcome shows the feasibility of the chosen research design with the efficiency of the 7-minute training: 50% of subjects confidentially attribute an empathic attitude to the neutral stimuli, and the probability of such an outcome, in a case if achieved by chance, is only <em>p</em><em> </em>= 0.004. Since subliminal collaboration in adults benefits from the innate quality of shared intentionality, the paper also discusses the genesis of basic emotions and social skills through neuronal coordinated activity in the mother-child dyad beginning from the pregnancy period.

'United we stand, divided we fall': intertwining as evidence of joint actions in pea plants.

In life, it is common for almost every kind of organism to interact with one another. In the human realm, such interactions are at the basis of joint actions, when two or more agents syntonize their actions to achieve a common goal. Shared intentionality is the theoretical construct referring to the suite of abilities that enable such coordinated and collaborative interactions. While shared intentionality has become an important concept in research on social cognition, there is controversy surrounding its evolutionary origins. An aspect still unexplored but promising to bring new insights into this open debate is the study of aneural organisms. To fill this gap, here we investigate whether climbing plants can act jointly to achieve a common goal, i.e. reaching the light. We examined Pisum Sativum plants growing intertwined when there is a need to climb but a potential support is not present in the environment. Three-dimensional kinematic analysis of their movement revealed a coordinated and complementary behaviour. They tend to coordinate their movement in time and space to achieve a joint climbing. By deliberately extending the context in which a joint action takes place, we pay tribute to the complex nature of this social phenomenon. The next challenge for the field of joint action is to generate a perspective that links coordination mechanisms to an evolutionary framework across taxa.

Low-Frequency Oscillations for Nonlocal Neuronal Coupling in Shared Intentionality Before and After Birth: Toward the Origin of Perception

The theoretical study observes literature to understand whether or not low-frequency oscillations can simultaneously alter the excitability of neurons from peripheral nervous subsystems in different individuals to provide Shared Intentionality in recipients (e.g., fetuses and newborns) and what are the attributes of ecological context for Shared Intentionality. To grasp the perception of objects during environmental learning at the onset of cognition, a fetus needs exogenous factors that could stimulate her nervous system to choose the relevant sensory stimulus. Low-frequency brain oscillations can cause the nonlocal coupling of neurons in peripheral and central nervous subsystems that provide subliminal perception. An external low-frequency oscillator and the proximity of individuals can stimulate the coordination of their heart rates and modulate neuronal excitability. External low-frequency oscillations can increase the cognitive performance of the subjects. The characteristics of this pulsed low-frequency field are oscillations with 400 and 700 nm wavelengths alternately with the pulsed frequency ranging from 1 to 1.6 Hz. This theoretical work contributes to knowledge about nonlocal neuronal coupling in different organisms that can appear due to low-frequency oscillations. The significance of the article is that it explains the neurophysiological processes occurring during Shared Intentionality - one of the central issues in understanding the cognitive development of young children, as the conventional view in cognitive sciences argues. The article's impact is a proposal of the universal mechanism of nonlocal neuronal coupling in shaping the embryonal nervous system in animals of all species, which opens new directions for research on the origin of perception of objects.

A Shared Intentionality Account of Uniquely Human Social Bonding.

Many mechanisms of social bonding are common to all primates, but humans seemingly have developed some that are unique to the species. These involve various kinds of interactive experiences-from taking a walk together to having a conversation-whose common feature is the triadic sharing of experience. Current theories of social bonding have no explanation for why humans should have these unique bonding mechanisms. Here we propose a shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Humans evolved to participate with others in unique forms of cooperative and communicative activities that both depend on and create shared experience. Sharing experience in these activities causes partners to feel closer because it allows them to assess their partner's cooperative competence and motivation toward them and because the shared representations created during such interactions make subsequent cooperative interactions easier and more effective.

Empirical challenges from the comparative and developmental literature to the Shared Intentionality Theory - a review of alternative data on recursive mind reading, prosociality, imitation and cumulative culture.

Humans have an irresistible inclination to coordinate actions with others, leading to species-unique forms of cooperation. According to the highly influential Shared Intentionality Theory (SITh), human cooperation is made possible by shared intentionality (SI), typically defined as a suite of socio-cognitive and motivational traits for sharing psychological states with others, thereby enabling individuals to engage in joint action in the mutually aware pursuit of shared goals. SITh theorises that SI evolved as late as 400,000 years ago, when our ancestors (in particular, Homo heidelbergensis) turned to a kind of food procurement that obligatorily required joint coordinated action. SI is, thus, hypothesized to be absent in other extant species, including our closest genetic relatives, the nonhuman great apes ("apes"). According to SITh, ape psychology is exclusively driven by individualistic motivations, as opposed to human psychology which is uniquely driven by altruistic motivations. The evolutionary scenario proposed by SITh builds on a series of findings from socio-cognitive research with apes and human children, and on the assumption that abilities expressed early in human development are human universals, unlikely to have been shaped by socio-cultural influences. Drawing on the primatological and developmental literature, we provide a systematic - albeit selective - review of SITh-inconsistent findings concerning psychological and behavioural traits theorised to be constitutive of SI. The findings we review pertain to all three thematic clusters typically addressed in SITh: (i) recursive mind reading; (ii) prosociality; (iii) imitation and cumulative culture. We conclude that such alternative data undermine two core SITh claims: the late evolutionary emergence of SI and the radical divide between ape and human psychology. We also discuss several conceptual and methodological limitations that currently hamper reliable comparative research on SI, in particular those engendered by Western-centric biases in the social sciences, where an overreliance on Western samples has promoted the formulation of Western-centric conceptualisations, operationalisations and methodologies.

Shared Intentionality Modulation at the Cell Level: Low-Frequency Oscillations for Temporal Coordination in Bioengineering Systems

The theoretical article aims to develop knowledge about the modulation of shared intentionality at the cellular level. A hypothesis about the neurobiological processes during shared intentionality argues that this pre-perceptual communication occurs through nonlocal neuronal coupling in an ecosystem that can be described as the mother-fetus communication model. The current theoretical study analyses literature to discuss recent findings on the effect of oscillations on neuronal temporal coordination to verify whether external low-frequency oscillations can only synchronize specific local neuronal networks from peripheral and central nervous subsystems for modulating shared intentionality. The review discusses 4 findings. First, gamma oscillations are associated with the temporal coordination of local ensembles of cells. Second, there is a relationship between low-frequency brain oscillations and the temporal coordination of peripheral and central nervous subsystems. Third, delta oscillations influence neuronal activity by modulating gamma activity. Fourth, external delta and gamma oscillations increase cortical excitability. The article concludes that delta oscillations can modulate gamma oscillations in the different subsystems of the nervous system, providing temporal network coordination. An external low-frequency oscillator can coordinate only relevant local neuronal networks in various subsystems already exhibiting gamma activity.

Shared intentionality and divine persons: explorations in empirical psychology and ramified natural theology

Shared intentionality and divine persons: explorations in empirical psychology and ramified natural theology

Shared intentionality modulates interpersonal neural synchronization at the establishment of communication system

Whether and how shared intentionality (SI) influences the establishment of a novel interpersonal communication system is poorly understood. To investigate this issue, we designed a coordinating symbolic communication game (CSCG) and applied behavioral, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning, and hyper-transcranial alternating current stimulation (hyper-tACS) methods. Here we show that SI is a strong contributor to communicative accuracy. Moreover, SI, communicative accuracy, and interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in the right superior temporal gyrus (rSTG) are higher when dyads successfully establish a novel communication system. Furthermore, the SI influences communicative accuracy by increasing INS. Additionally, using time series and long short-term memory neural network analyses, we find that the INS can predict communicative accuracy at the early formation stage of the communication system. Importantly, the INS partially mediates the relationship between the SI and the communicative accuracy only at the formation stage of the communication system. In contrast, when the communication system is established, SI and INS no longer contribute to communicative accuracy. Finally, the hyper-tACS experiment confirms that INS has a causal effect on communicative accuracy. These findings suggest a behavioral and neural mechanism, subserved by the SI and INS, that underlies the establishment of a novel interpersonal communication system.

Zhuangzi and collaboration in animals: a critical conceptual analysis of shared intentionality.

Shared intentionality is a specific form of shared agency where a group can be understood to have an intention. It has been conjectured that humans are better equipped for collaboration than other animals because humans but not other great apes share intentions. However, exporting shared intentionality from a debate about the ontology of mental state attributions like intentions to groups does not seamlessly lend itself to evolutionary science. To explore and de-center the implicit assumptions of Western conceptions of cooperation, I look at Zhuangzi's philosophy of (in)action. This philosophy treats the actions of individuals as always a form of co-action alongside other agencies to whom one must adapt. Thinking of collaboration as a product of skillful co-action, not shared intention, sidesteps asking about cooperation in "kinds" or levels. Instead, it directs attention to the know-how and behavioral flexibility needed to make our constant coordination adaptive.

Cooperative Breeding and the Evolutionary Origins of Shared Intentionality

It has seemed to many theorists that our nature as a cooperatively breeding species is crucial to understanding how we became fully human. This article examines a particular strand within this thinking, according to which cooperative breeding drove the evolution of human skills and motivations for sharing intentionality. More specifically, I consider a model of the evolution of these skills and motivations offered by Tomasello and González-Cabrera (2017). Their model is “composite” in that it also recognizes an important role for collaborative foraging in the evolution of shared intentionality. I argue that their model (or more precisely: a natural construal of it) faces at least two problems—what I call the “reflexive metacognition problem” and the “bonding problem.” These two problems (as their names would suggest) concern the cognitive and emotional-motivational dimensions of the evolution of shared intentionality, respectively. I sketch an alternative evolutionary scenario which also posits a dual role for collaborative foraging and cooperative breeding. However, there are some crucial differences between the two models. In particular, the Tomasello and González-Cabrera model appeals to cooperative breeding in explaining the initial appearance of basic skills and motivations for sharing intentionality. In contrast, I argue that cooperative breeding, at least initially, instead served to drive down the age of development of preexisting skills and motivations for sharing intentionality that originally evolved to support collaborative foraging in adult life. This alternative model avoids the reflexive cognition and bonding problem, and has other advantages which I highlight.

Thought and language: association of groupmindedness with young English-speaking children’s production of pronouns

Shared intentionality theory posits that at age 3, children expand their conception of plural agency to include 3- or more-person groups. We sought to determine whether this conceptual shift is detectable in children’s pronoun use. We report the results of a series of Bayesian hierarchical generative models fitted to 479 English-speaking children’s first-person plural, first-person singular, second-person, third-person plural, and third-person singular pronouns. As a proportion of pronouns, children used more first-person plural pronouns, only, after 3;0 compared to before. Additionally, children used more 1pp. pronouns when their mothers used more 1pp. pronouns. As a proportion of total utterances, all pronoun classes were used more often as children aged. These findings suggest that a shift in children’s social conceptualizations at age 3 is reflected in their use of 1pp. pronouns.

Empirical Evidence of Shared Intentionality: Towards Bioengineering Systems Development

This expanded conference paper reports the results of a psychophysiological research study on shared intentionality conducted in 24 online experiments with 405 subjects (208 recipients and 197 contributor-confederates). In this research, we created a bioengineering system for assessing shared intentionality in human groups by modeling mother-neonate dyad properties in subjects during solving unintelligible multiple-choice puzzles. In this model, only the mother (contributor-confederate) knows the correct stimulus and shares this knowledge with the neonate (participant-recipient). The bioengineering system induced interpersonal dynamics in the subjects by stimulating their interactional synchrony, emotional contagion and neuronal coherence. The system collected data by confronting recipients' performance in "primed" and "unprimed" conditions of confederates. These informed contributors knew correct responses only in the "primed" condition and confidently responded on "primed" items. Specifically, in 13 online experiments in mother-child dyads, evidence showed a recipients' performance increase of 48-394%, P-value < 0.001 (62 recipients and 54 confederates) in the “primed” condition of confederates; and in 7 experiments in primary group adults, it showed a performance increase of 143-300%, P-value < 0.002. In experiments in the secondary group, evidence showed a recipients' performance increase only with the UL3 items (a translation of an unfamiliar language, 20 recipients from 41 subjects in experiment No.12). In 3 experiments in 207 secondary group subjects, non-semantic tasks–SL3 (synthetic language) and US3 (two-color unintelligible symbols)–did not stimulate the effect. We also analyzed data confronting the outcome of recipients' performance in the "primed" condition and random value (possible recipients' responses by chance). Comparing the outcomes of these two data-collecting methods and the sample size of the experiments allow for discussing the research method's validity and reliability. The article also shows four factors' domains that contribute to shared intentionality magnitude.

Great ape enculturation studies: a neglected resource in cognitive development research

Disagreement remains about whether particular human socio-cognitive traits arose primarily as a result of biological adaptations, or because of changing cultural practices. Heyes argues that uniquely human traits, including imitation and theory of mind, are the product of cultural learning. In contrast, Tomasello argues that they are, in key respects, part of a suite of adaptations for ‘shared intentionality’. We consider how such disagreements might be resolved. We show that the kinds of consideration often used to adjudicate questions about trait origins are insufficient to settle origin questions. Furthermore, humankind’s immersion in culture undermines the prospect that cross-cultural and developmental studies could resolve origin questions. Nonetheless we argue that, when cautiously interpreted, currently neglected studies of enculturated great apes (i.e. apes raised in human environments) can shed new light on trait origins, and inform mechanistic accounts of cognitive development. While acknowledging the shortcomings of enculturation research, we argue that it deserves renewed attention.

Theoretical Grounds of Shared Intentionality for Neuroscience in Devel-oping Bioengineering Systems

The article discusses a definition of shared intentionality that reflects recent discoveries for inspiring further translational research in developing bioengineering systems based on human-computer interaction. The child's cognition begins through shared intentionality that occurs in child-caregiver interaction when communication via sensory cues is impossible. There needs to be more knowledge on how it appears. This article argues that shared intentionality is collaborative interactions in which participants share the essential sensory stimulus of the actual cognitive problem. This social bond enables ecological training of the immature organism, starting at the reflexes stage of development, for processing the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in developing perception. In nature, shared intentionality appears in mother-child dyads in increasing interpersonal dynamics due to mechanisms of cell coupling that provide an ecological developmental template. Knowledge about neurophysiological processes occurring during pre-perceptual communication can contribute to advances in bioengineering systems.

Diagnostics of Cognitive Development in Children by Assessing Shared Intentionality in a Biotechnical System

Introduction. Recent research shows that up to 17 % of children are diagnosed with cognitive developmental disorders. Early identification of developmental delay in children allows an earlier onset of treatment with greater efficiency. However, the modern diagnostic approach has limitations associated with the problem of correctly assessing behavioral markers of children. This classical assessing approach depends on specialists’ professionalism of and parents' competence in reporting the issue timely and informatively.Aim. Developing a computerized methodology and algorithm for estimating shared intentionality in mother-child dyads; designing a biotechnical system for the early diagnosis of a lag in children's cognitive development.Materials and methods. We analyze our own previous research, in which: 1) the goal was to measure the intellectual activity of a group while stimulating their shared intentionality; 2) the independent variable was the intellectual task; 3) the stimuli of shared intentionality were described. The method employs the mathematical apparatus of measurement theory, systems theory, and statistical methods of analysis.Results. The developed biotechnical system uses specific software for diagnosing cognitive delay in children during a 15-minute test. Two factors of the biotechnical system impact the object of assessment: an electromagnetic field for stimulating shared intentionality and an intellectual test. The system's software instantly provides the assessment results to the user (specialist or parents) in the form of recommendations understandable even to a non-specialist – it saves this database in a convenient form for further storage and processing.Conclusion. The advantage of the method is its unbiased computerized assessment, which can also diagnose subjects online, conversely to the classical approach based on behavioral markers. Another advantage of the assessment method is the possibility of diagnosing a lag in children's cognitive development at an earlier age, which does not yet imply verbal communication.

Computerized Assessment of Cognitive Development in Neurotypical and Neurodivergent Children

This study aims to observe the differences in the shared intentionality magnitude in mother-child dyads with neurotypical (NT) children and neurodivergent (ND) children aged 3-6 years. The quality of shared intentionality in infancy is associated with cognitive development. Our results showed that ND children scored six times higher (on average) in quiz-test than NT children. Children with difficulties in interaction (ND children) are more likely to use shared intentionality in conversation than NT children. We believe that this knowledge can contribute to developing computerized assessment methods which can diagnose developmental disabilities in such children.

The Single-Minded Animal: Shared Intentionality, Normativity, and the Foundations of Discursive Cognition

Preston Stovall's book is rich in details and covers in broad strokes some very important themes within philosophy of language and intentionality. I will in this review discuss what I think are three main theses that Stovall wishes to establish and one methodological premise that Stovall adopts to go about his business. The methodological premise that is at the heart of Stovall's project is what he calls psychological nominalism. Psychological nominalism is the Sellarsian idea that our awareness of things or facts (or any epistemic stance for that matter) is a linguistic affair. In other words, to explain how humans are rational and norm-governed beings, Stovall says that we need to construct a model where discursive cognition of humans is understood in terms of language-use. The three main theses of Stovall's book, as I see them, are these: (1) Intentional-Deontic Continuity; (2) Normativity of Cognition; and (3) The Ontological Priority of the Collective. The first thesis, I call a ‘continuity’ thesis because Stovall wants to show that there is a continuous line of cognitive development that can be traced from the pre-linguistic to the proto-linguistic to fully sapient behaviour. That is, Stovall makes the claim that we can posit a continuous evolutionary line from sentient existence, which is intentional action of the non-rational animal kingdom, to full-bodied sapient human existence which involves the use of language and the ability to self-reflect on rules of linguistic engagement.

Dual EEG alignment between participants during shared intentionality experiments

Electroencephalograph (EEG) analysis from human subjects have demonstrated that beta oscillations carried perceptual information across the cortex featuring amplitude and phase modulation occurrences when subjects are engaged in task-oriented activities. A hypothesis was tested that synchronized patterns could be found in the scalp EEG of two human subjects engaged in similar intentional activity. Signals were recorded from scalp electrodes and band-pass filtered. The Hilbert transform decomposes the EEG signals into the analytic phase and amplitude. With these components of the EEG signal, a systematic search of the alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and theta spectrum is executed to locate temporal patterns. The amplitude and phase modulation were classified with respect to task intervals. Temporal patterns were found in the alpha-beta range (15–30 Hz). Our results suggest that the scalp EEG can yield information about the timing of episodically synchronized brain activity in higher cognitive function between two individuals engaged in similar task-oriented activities.

The paradox of social interaction: Shared intentionality, we-reasoning, and virtual bargaining.

Social interaction is both ubiquitous and central to understanding human behavior. Such interactions depend, we argue, on shared intentionality: the parties must form a common understanding of an ambiguous interaction (e.g., one person giving a present to another requires that both parties appreciate that a voluntary transfer of ownership is intended). Yet how can shared intentionality arise? Many well-known accounts of social cognition, including those involving “mind-reading,” typically fall into circularity and/or regress. For example, A’s beliefs and behavior may depend on her prediction of B’s beliefs and behavior, but B’s beliefs and behavior depend in turn on her prediction of A’s beliefs and behavior. One possibility is to embrace circularity and take shared intentionality as imposing consistency conditions on beliefs and behavior, but typically there are many possible solutions and no clear criteria for choosing between them. We argue that addressing these challenges requires some form of we-reasoning, but that this raises the puzzle of how the collective agent (the “we”) arises from the individual agents. This puzzle can be solved by proposing that the will of the collective agent arises from a simulated process of bargaining: agents must infer what they would agree, were they able to communicate. This model explains how, and which, shared intentions are formed. We also propose that such “virtual bargaining” may be fundamental to understanding social interactions.

A New Perspective on Assessing Cognition in Children through Estimating Shared Intentionality.

This theoretical article aims to create a conceptual framework for future research on digital methods for assessing cognition in children through estimating shared intentionality, different from assessing through behavioral markers. It shows the new assessing paradigm based directly on the evaluation of parent-child interaction exchanges (protoconversation), allowing early monitoring of children’s developmental trajectories. This literature analysis attempts to understand how cognition is related to emotions in interpersonal dynamics and whether assessing these dynamics shows cognitive abilities in children. The first part discusses infants’ unexpected achievements, observing the literature about children’s development. The analysis supposes that due to the caregiver’s help under emotional arousal, newborns’ intentionality could appear even before it is possible for children’s intention to occur. The emotional bond evokes intentionality in neonates. Therefore, they can manifest unexpected achievements while performing them with caregivers. This outcome shows an appearance of protoconversation in adult-children dyads through shared intentionality. The article presents experimental data of other studies that extend our knowledge about human cognition by showing an increase of coordinated neuronal activities and the acquisition of new knowledge by subjects in the absence of sensory cues. This highlights the contribution of interpersonal interaction to gain cognition, discussed already by Vygotsky. The current theoretical study hypothesizes that if shared intentionality promotes cognition from the onset, this interaction modality can also facilitate cognition in older children. Therefore in the second step, the current article analyzes empirical data of recent studies that reported meaningful interaction in mother-infant dyads without sensory cues. It discusses whether an unbiased digital assessment of the interaction ability of children is possible before the age when the typical developmental trajectory implies verbal communication. The article develops knowledge for a digital assessment that can measure the extent of children’s ability to acquire knowledge through protoconversation. This specific assessment can signalize the lack of communication ability in children even when the typical trajectory of peers’ development does not imply verbal communication.