Infants evolved to elicit parental attribution of intentionality

Evidence

Hendriks-Jansen (1996) extended this analysis and applied it to other instances where the infant’s rhythms, reflexes, and emerging attention are exquisitely attuned to evoking the parent’s simulation of the future infant mind. Many other animals show abilities for highly structured turn-taking as in mating or display behavior, but these are highly fixed and cue bound. Human turn-taking requires enormous flexibility over a range of circumstances. Not only language, but music, dance, and nonverbal expression (overt and subtle) are involved in the coordination of meaning and action. As a result of natural selection, the infant scaffolds the parent’s attribution of the baby’s own future intentionality. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 415

Categorization

• XREF: Deeply resonant with the ‘mind reading’ discussion — the idea that infant behavior is selected to evoke parental mind-attribution connects to developmental work on false-belief tasks and to enactivism’s claim that minds are assembled in interaction. Could connect to the reader’s interest in how social cognition is scaffolded. — connects to: Selfhood is formed socially through others from earliest infancy — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 737; Mentalizing abilities emerge by eight months and sharpen in toddlers — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 189; Cultural learning instincts emerge in infants and operate automatically and unconsciously — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 141