Global InformationShared intentionality information
Shared intentionality is a concept in psychology that describes the human capacity to engage with the psychological states of others. According to conventional wisdom in cognitive sciences, shared intentionality supports the development of everything from cooperative interactions and knowledge assimilation to moral identity and cultural evolution that provides building societies, being a pre-requisite of social reality formation.[1]
Knowledge about shared intentionality has been developing since the last century's end. This psychological construct was introduced in the 1980s with a straightforward definition of sharing psychological states among participants without attributing to age when it begins.[2][3][4] The development of knowledge on mother-child interactions has made additional attributes about appearing shared intentionality; it enables one-year-olds to cultural learning.[5] Later, Tomasello et al. specified that, even at birth, infants grasp shared intentionality with caregivers – this ability to share psychological states with others emerges immediately after birth.[6] Tomasello hypothesized gradually increasing social bonds between children and caregivers through the essential motive force of shared intentionality beginning from emotion sharing from birth.[7]
In 2022, Michael Tomasello received the David Rumelhart Prize 2022 in the Cognitive Science Society as an award for his insights into cognition evolution and, specifically, the knowledge development about a contribution of shared intentionality to cognition and social reality formation.[1]
The concept is slightly close to collective intentionality. The philosophical notion of collective intentionality defines the capability of collectives to form co-intentions when individuals become jointly directed at objects, matters of fact, states of affairs, goals, or values. This co-intention occurs when two or more individuals undertake an aware task together. The attribute of the collective intentionality is defined in the object's awareness of a common intention, in the conscious power of minds to be jointly directed at a goal. It is thought that collective intentionality only implies aware intentions–the causal antecedents of action. Therefore, only three or four years old, after years of continuous interaction with other persons, children can develop an ability for collective intentionality, which acts as the comprehension of cultural institutions based on collective beliefs and practices.[8] In contrast, the psychological construct of shared intentionality describes unaware processes during social learning at the onset of life, when organisms in the simple reflexes substage of the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development do not possess abstract thinking.[9] This difference between the two concepts implies the possibility of two different neurophysiological processes underlying their appearance.
In recent years, the psychological construct of shared intentionality is being explored from different perspectives by studying: e.g., the cognitive processes involved in creating and sustaining cooperative group activity,[10] collaborative neuronal activity in inter-brain neuroscience studies,[11][12][13][14][15][16] and group performance in psychophysiological studies.[17][18][19][20][21] However, the nature of the interaction in shared intentionality is unclear, since it occurs even in infants, organisms at the simple reflexes stage of development.[22]
- ^ a b "David E. Rumelhart Prize". CognitiveScienceSociety.org. Cognitive Science Society. 2022. "2022 Recipient – Michael Tomasello" section. Retrieved 10 November 2023.
- ^ Gilbert, M. On Social Facts. London: Routledge; 1989
- ^ Searle, J. R. The Rediscovery of the Mind. London: MIT Press; 1992.
- ^ Tuomela, Raimo. The Importance of Us: A Philosophical Study of Basic Social Notions. Stanford University Press; 1995.
- ^ Tomasello, M.; Rakoczy, H. "What makes human cognition unique? From individual to shared to collective intentionality". Mind & Language, 2003; 18: 121–147.
- ^ Tomasello, M.; Carpenter, M.; Call, J.; Behne, T.; Moll, H. "Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2005; 28: 675–691.
- ^ Tomasello, M. Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; 2019.
- ^ Tomasello, M.; Rakoczy, H. "What Makes Human Cognition Unique? From Individual to Shared to Collective Intentionality". Mind & Language, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2003, pp. 121–147.
- ^ Tomasello, M. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1999.
- ^ Skau, Simon (2022). "Analysis of the cognitive processes involved in creating and sustaining cooperative group activity". Frontiers in Psychology. 13. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1038309. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 9768542. PMID 36571038.
- ^ Fishburn, F. A.; Murty, V. P.; Hlutkowsky, C. O.; MacGillivray, C. E.; Bemis, L. M.; Murphy, M. E.; Huppert, T. J.; Perlman, S. B. "Putting our heads together: Interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 2018 Aug; 13(8):841-9.
- ^ Astolfi; L.; et al.: "Neuroelectrical hyperscanning measures simultaneous brain activity in humans". Brain Topography, 2010; 23:243–256.
- ^ Szymanski, C.; et al. "Teams on the same wavelength perform better: Inter-brain phase synchronization constitutes a neural substrate for social facilitation". Neuroimage, 2017; 15:425–436.
- ^ Hu, Y.; et al. "Inter-brain synchrony and cooperation context in interactive decision making". Biological Psychology, 2018; 133: 54–62, 2018.
- ^ Painter, David R.; Kim, Jeffrey J.; Renton, Angela I.; Mattingley, Jason B. (2021-06-29). "Joint control of visually guided actions involves concordant increases in behavioural and neural coupling". Communications Biology. 4 (1): 816. doi:10.1038/s42003-021-02319-3. ISSN 2399-3642. PMC 8242020. PMID 34188170.
- ^ Liu, Jieqiong; Zhang, Ruqian; Xie, Enhui; Lin, Yixuan; Chen, Danni; Liu, Yang; Li, Keshuang; Chen, Mei; Li, Yangzhuo; Wang, Guanghai; Li, Xianchun (2023-08-10). "Shared intentionality modulates interpersonal neural synchronization at the establishment of communication system". Communications Biology. 6 (1): 832. doi:10.1038/s42003-023-05197-z. ISSN 2399-3642. PMC 10415255. PMID 37563301.
- ^ Atmaca, S.; Sebanz, N.; Prinz, W.; Knoblich, G. "Action co-representation: The joint SNARC effect". Social Neuroscience 2008; 3:3–4, 410–420.
- ^ Shteynberg, G.; Galinsky, A. D. "Implicit coordination: Sharing goals with similar others intensifies goal pursuit". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2011; 47: 1291–1294, ISSN 0022-1031.
- ^ McClung, J. S.; Placì, S.; Bangerter, A.; Clément, F.; Bshary, R. "The language of cooperation: Shared intentionality drives variation in helping as a function of group membership". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences; 2017; 284:20171682. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1682.
- ^ Val Danilov, I.; Mihailova, S.; Perepjolkina, V. (2019). "Unconscious Social Interaction Coherent Intelligence in Learning". ICERI2019 Proceedings. 1: 2217–2222. doi:10.21125/iceri.2019.0606. ISBN 978-84-09-14755-7. ISSN 2340-1095. S2CID 214449703.
- ^ Tang, Ning; Gong, Siyi; Zhao, Minglu; Gu, Chenya; Zhou, Jifan; Shen, Mowei; Gao, Tao (2022). "Exploring an Imagined "We" in Human Collective Hunting: Joint Commitment within Shared Intentionality". Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 44 (44).
- ^ Val Danilov, Igor; Mihailova, Sandra (2022). "A New Perspective on Assessing Cognition in Children through Estimating Shared Intentionality". Journal of Intelligence. 10 (2): 21. doi:10.3390/jintelligence10020021. ISSN 2079-3200. PMC 9036231. PMID 35466234.