On understanding intentions in action and interaction

Cristina Becchio

http://bsb-lab.org/people/cristina-becchio/

Starting from Descartes, philosophers, psychologists, and more recently neuroscientists, have often emphasized the idea that intentions are not things that can be seen. They are mental states and perception cannot be smart enough to reach the mental states that are hidden away (imperceptible) in the other person’s mind. Based on this assumption, standard theories of social cognition have mainly focused the contribution of higher-level cognition to intention understanding. Only recently, it has been recognized that intentions are deeply rooted in the actions of interacting agents. In this talk, I present findings from a new line of research showing that intentions translate into differential kinematic patterns. Observers are especially attuned to kinematic information and can use early differences in visual kinematics to anticipate what another person will do next.  This ability is crucial not only for interpreting the actions of individual agents, but also to predict how, in the context of a social interaction between two agents, the actions of one agent relate to the actions of a second agent.