We applaud Schilbach et al.'s target article for its critique of the assumptions of contemporary neuroscience. We largely agree with their attack on the “spectator” view inherent in current research and theory. The second-person perspective and its constituent parts, emotional engagement and social interaction, fill many of the gaps in these approaches to the origins of human skills. However, the authors fail to adequately account for the processes in which second-person understanding of others emerges within development, particularly in establishing social understanding in infancy. A crucial issue concerns how infants and children come to be able to overcome the spectatorial gap which is described so well in the paper (sect. 2.1).
The article's developmental perspective (sect. 2.2) assumes repeatedly that within interactions infants experience “minds” that are directed towards them. As a result the authors do not avoid the very problem of foundationalism (Allen & Bickhard Reference Allen and Bickhard2013) that they are attempting to critique. Simply changing the terminology from, for example, “mindreading” to “experience” or “engagement” does not help them avoid falling into one of two traps: merely describing the fact that infants get involved in interactions, on one hand, or assuming that words like “engagement” actually explain how an understanding of such interactions emerges, on the other. The authors appear to suggest that there is a starting point at which infants do not possess sophisticated skills. Yet, without explaining how these skills emerge, this second-person account is incomplete. To compound the problem there is occasional slippage into the very approach (theory theory: e.g., sect. 4.2.1, final paragraph), which they are earlier at pains to distance themselves from.
We suggest that the central importance of interactions in human social neuroscience can only be understood from a relational action-based perspective. Rather than framing interactions in terms of their second-person components, we need to grapple with the means by which understanding is developed by an individual within such interaction. Knowledge of “you” must emerge from somewhere. It cannot simply be attributed to me experiencing your “mind.” As Hurley (Reference Hurley2008) recently argued, a lower level, non-Cartesian developmental model of social neuroscience would initially be based upon first-person plural experience. In our view, human infants become involved in interactions and get into the behavioural flow of shared activities, even though they are largely stage-managed by the adult. As a result, infants become naturally attentive to gestures that are intentional because they are repeated and become predictable. For example, they attend to a purposeful grasp but not a reach with the back of the hand (e.g., Woodward Reference Woodward1999). Such competence, which is evident before the child's first birthday, does not mean that human infants grasp “minds.”
How can we explain the emergence of social skills and knowledge within this first-person plural experience? We feel that Schilbach et al. misinterpret our account (Carpendale & Lewis Reference Carpendale and Lewis2004; Stack & Lewis Reference Stack and Lewis2008) as supporting a second-person approach when really this and related ones (e.g., Barresi & Moore Reference Barresi and Moore1996) stress the infant's perspective on shared experience with others. From this perspective, early forms of awareness are sensorimotor and take place within practical activities like toy manipulation or social second-person interactions. Such actions make the infant able to attend to and then follow simple gestures expressing emotion, gaze, or bodily orientation. According to this approach, infants build gradually upon these actions to construct increasingly complex forms of knowledge. These provide the basis for reflective forms of social understanding and communication. The activity-based approach would never automatically assume that infants read or experience minds, as this is too rich an interpretation of their attention to human actions.
Evidence for our perspective comes from the errors of older children. We agree with the authors that some form of representational redescription may explain the process of transfer from simple to more complex understanding (sect. 4.2.1), but the target article is particularly vague about how this might take place, or what actually gets redescribed, and how. This might simply be an omission due to the ambitious scope of the article. However, such claims and the observation that individuals with autism have difficulties in social interactions (sect. 2.2.1, para. 4), make their second-person perspective yet more under-specified. According to an action-based approach, shared interactions enable the infant to re-present the world, anticipating the outcome of various intentional actions. Development is a protracted process because the inferences that transform actions into representations are dependent on hard won, small-scale achievements. Although infants seem to follow purposeful reaches (Onishi & Baillargeon Reference Onishi and Baillargeon2005), they also make simple perceptual errors in such tasks, with inferences being based on the mere presence of others at set points within an event (Sodian & Thoermer Reference Sodian and Thoermer2008). This lack of an objective appreciation of another's perspective has been demonstrated across the third year (Moll et al. Reference Moll, Carpenter and Tomasello2011; O'Neill Reference O'Neill1996), extending into early childhood (Flavell et al. Reference Flavell, Shipstead and Croft1980; McGuigan & Doherty Reference McGuigan and Doherty2006). Such findings suggest that knowledge of what others have (and have not) experienced continues to be framed in terms of engagement with, and dis-engagement from, others. Even preschoolers do not simply “experience” the mind, as assumed in the target article.
In short, we feel that Schilbach et al.'s claim that we need to make social neuroscience truly social is well placed but the second-person perspective does not specify how humans acquire such skills. It is not sufficient to present simple diagrams showing that interactants' neural processes act in synchrony (Fig. 1D of the target article) or to state that early affective exchanges “pave the way” to later understanding without specifying how the paving is laid. An action-based theory originating within first-person plural interactions provides a more detailed, and more plausible, account of these developmental processes.
We applaud Schilbach et al.'s target article for its critique of the assumptions of contemporary neuroscience. We largely agree with their attack on the “spectator” view inherent in current research and theory. The second-person perspective and its constituent parts, emotional engagement and social interaction, fill many of the gaps in these approaches to the origins of human skills. However, the authors fail to adequately account for the processes in which second-person understanding of others emerges within development, particularly in establishing social understanding in infancy. A crucial issue concerns how infants and children come to be able to overcome the spectatorial gap which is described so well in the paper (sect. 2.1).
The article's developmental perspective (sect. 2.2) assumes repeatedly that within interactions infants experience “minds” that are directed towards them. As a result the authors do not avoid the very problem of foundationalism (Allen & Bickhard Reference Allen and Bickhard2013) that they are attempting to critique. Simply changing the terminology from, for example, “mindreading” to “experience” or “engagement” does not help them avoid falling into one of two traps: merely describing the fact that infants get involved in interactions, on one hand, or assuming that words like “engagement” actually explain how an understanding of such interactions emerges, on the other. The authors appear to suggest that there is a starting point at which infants do not possess sophisticated skills. Yet, without explaining how these skills emerge, this second-person account is incomplete. To compound the problem there is occasional slippage into the very approach (theory theory: e.g., sect. 4.2.1, final paragraph), which they are earlier at pains to distance themselves from.
We suggest that the central importance of interactions in human social neuroscience can only be understood from a relational action-based perspective. Rather than framing interactions in terms of their second-person components, we need to grapple with the means by which understanding is developed by an individual within such interaction. Knowledge of “you” must emerge from somewhere. It cannot simply be attributed to me experiencing your “mind.” As Hurley (Reference Hurley2008) recently argued, a lower level, non-Cartesian developmental model of social neuroscience would initially be based upon first-person plural experience. In our view, human infants become involved in interactions and get into the behavioural flow of shared activities, even though they are largely stage-managed by the adult. As a result, infants become naturally attentive to gestures that are intentional because they are repeated and become predictable. For example, they attend to a purposeful grasp but not a reach with the back of the hand (e.g., Woodward Reference Woodward1999). Such competence, which is evident before the child's first birthday, does not mean that human infants grasp “minds.”
How can we explain the emergence of social skills and knowledge within this first-person plural experience? We feel that Schilbach et al. misinterpret our account (Carpendale & Lewis Reference Carpendale and Lewis2004; Stack & Lewis Reference Stack and Lewis2008) as supporting a second-person approach when really this and related ones (e.g., Barresi & Moore Reference Barresi and Moore1996) stress the infant's perspective on shared experience with others. From this perspective, early forms of awareness are sensorimotor and take place within practical activities like toy manipulation or social second-person interactions. Such actions make the infant able to attend to and then follow simple gestures expressing emotion, gaze, or bodily orientation. According to this approach, infants build gradually upon these actions to construct increasingly complex forms of knowledge. These provide the basis for reflective forms of social understanding and communication. The activity-based approach would never automatically assume that infants read or experience minds, as this is too rich an interpretation of their attention to human actions.
Evidence for our perspective comes from the errors of older children. We agree with the authors that some form of representational redescription may explain the process of transfer from simple to more complex understanding (sect. 4.2.1), but the target article is particularly vague about how this might take place, or what actually gets redescribed, and how. This might simply be an omission due to the ambitious scope of the article. However, such claims and the observation that individuals with autism have difficulties in social interactions (sect. 2.2.1, para. 4), make their second-person perspective yet more under-specified. According to an action-based approach, shared interactions enable the infant to re-present the world, anticipating the outcome of various intentional actions. Development is a protracted process because the inferences that transform actions into representations are dependent on hard won, small-scale achievements. Although infants seem to follow purposeful reaches (Onishi & Baillargeon Reference Onishi and Baillargeon2005), they also make simple perceptual errors in such tasks, with inferences being based on the mere presence of others at set points within an event (Sodian & Thoermer Reference Sodian and Thoermer2008). This lack of an objective appreciation of another's perspective has been demonstrated across the third year (Moll et al. Reference Moll, Carpenter and Tomasello2011; O'Neill Reference O'Neill1996), extending into early childhood (Flavell et al. Reference Flavell, Shipstead and Croft1980; McGuigan & Doherty Reference McGuigan and Doherty2006). Such findings suggest that knowledge of what others have (and have not) experienced continues to be framed in terms of engagement with, and dis-engagement from, others. Even preschoolers do not simply “experience” the mind, as assumed in the target article.
In short, we feel that Schilbach et al.'s claim that we need to make social neuroscience truly social is well placed but the second-person perspective does not specify how humans acquire such skills. It is not sufficient to present simple diagrams showing that interactants' neural processes act in synchrony (Fig. 1D of the target article) or to state that early affective exchanges “pave the way” to later understanding without specifying how the paving is laid. An action-based theory originating within first-person plural interactions provides a more detailed, and more plausible, account of these developmental processes.