Tomasello et al (2005) Understanding and sharing intentions

Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675-735. 

Abstract:

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

Simply understanding intentionality cannot be the whole story. Some nonhuman primates (and also kids with autism) understand more about intentional actions and perceptions than previously believed. But they do not engage socially and culturally with others in the ways that most human children do. Thus, understanding the intentional actions and perceptions of others is not sufficient to produce humanlike social and cultural activities. The something extra needed is shared intentionality. 

Intentional action

Three components to a machine or organisms that acts intelligently: 

1. A goal toward which the system acts

2. The ability to act in order to change the environment

3. The ability to perceive the environment to determine its state. 

An intention is a plan of action that an organism chooses and commits itself to in pursuit of a goal. It is both the means (action plan) AND a goal. Thus, the same action may be considered different things intentionally. 

Understanding intentional action

In the first year of life, children develop 3 levels of understanding others' actions. 

1. Acting animately - perceiving that the actor has self-produce the motion. 
2. Pursuing goals - perceives and understands that the actor has a goal, and recognizes success or failure. Implies knowing that the actor sees things. 
3. Choosing plans - perceiving and understanding that the actor considers actions plans and chooses among them, as well as chooses which entities to attend to. Involves understanding reasons for actions. 

This kind of understanding enables cultural learning, especially imitative learning. 

Shared intentionality

Joint cooperative activities have 3 essential characteristics that distinguish them from social interaction in general

1. the interactants are mutually response to one another
2. there is a shared goal in the sense that each participant has the goal that we (in mutual knowledge) to X together
3. the participants coordinate their plans of actions and intentions some way down the hierarchy.

-The cognitive representation of the goal contains both the self and other - e.g., not only the self's box be open, but also the self's goal that this be accomplished with the partner. 

-The cognitive representation of the intention contains both self and other - a joint intention. Both collaborators must choose their own action plan in the activity in light of (and coordinated with) the other's action plan. This requires representing both roles of the collaboration in a single representational formal. 

The ontogenetic pathway for human social engagement as a joint product of the understanding of intentional action and the motivation to share things with others psychologically.