Extending cognition: a vegetal rejoinder to extensionless thought and to extended cognition

In this paper, we propose a crucial supplement to the framework of plant cognition, namely extending cognition. We argue that plants and other organisms with an open-ended body plan actively extend their cognition when growing tissues or organs. Their cognition expands with their body expansion. After considering the defining features of extending cognition, we present a model where growth, along with aspects of plant physiology (e.g. biochemical exudates), as well as the "negative extension" of growing away from obstacles or stressful environments, are the building blocks for a more refined understanding of plant cognition. We conclude by outlining the general implications of the theory of extending cognition and indicating directions for future research.

On the Highway to Hell: Slippery Slope Perceptions in Judgments of Moral Character

Across four studies, we test the hypothesis that people exhibit "slippery slope" thinking in their judgments of moral character-that is, do observers judge that a person who behaves immorally will become increasingly immoral over time? In Study 1, we find that a person who commits an immoral act is judged as more likely to behave immorally and as having a worse character in the future than in the past. In Study 2, we find that it is the commission of an immoral act specifically-rather than merely attempting an immoral act-that drives this slippery slope effect. In Study 3, we demonstrate that observers judge the moral agent as more likely to commit acts of greater severity further in time after the initial immoral act. In Study 4, we find that this effect is driven by an anticipated corrupting of moral character, related to perceptions of the agent's guilt.

Distributing Blame Among Multiple Entities When Autonomous Technologies Cause Harm

As autonomous technology emerges, new variations in old questions arise. When autonomous technologies cause harm, who is to blame? The current studies compare reactions toward harms caused by human-controlled vehicles (HCVs) or human soldiers (HSs) to identical harms by autonomous vehicles (AVs) or autonomous robot soldiers. Drivers of HCVs, or HSs, were blamed more than mere users of AVs or HSs who outsourced their duties to ARSs. However, as human drivers/soldiers became less involved in (or were unaware of the preprogramming that led to) the harm, blame was redirected toward other entities (i.e., manufacturers and the tech company's executives), showing the opposite pattern as human drivers/soldiers. Results were robust to how blame was measured (i.e., degrees of blame versus apportionment of total blame). Overall, this research furthers the blame literature, raising questions about why, how (much), and to whom blame is assigned when multiple agents are potentially culpable.

Bodies at play: the role of intercorporeality and bodily affordances in coordinating social play in chimpanzees in the wild

The comparative approach is a crucial method to gain a better understanding of the behavior of living human and nonhuman animals to then draw informed inferences about the behavior of extinct ancestors. One focus has been on disentangling the puzzle of language evolution. Traditionally, studies have predominantly focused on intentionally produced signals in communicative interactions. However, in collaborative and highly dynamic interactions such as play, underlying intentionality is difficult to assess and often interactions are negotiated via body movements rather than signals. This "lack" of signals has led to this dynamic context being widely ignored in comparative studies. The aim of this paper is threefold: First, we will show how comparative research into communication can benefit from taking the intentionality-agnostic standpoint used in conversation analysis. Second, we will introduce the concepts of 'intercorporeality' and 'bodily affordance', and show how they can be applied to the analysis of communicative interactions of nonhuman animals. Third, we will use these concepts to investigate how chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) initiate, end, and maintain 'contact social play'. Our results showed that bodily affordances are able to capture elements of interactions that more traditional approaches failed to describe. Participants made use of bodily affordances to achieve coordinated engagement in contact social play. Additionally, these interactions could display a sequential organization by which one 'move' by a chimpanzee was responded to with an aligning 'move', which allowed for the co-construction of the activity underway. Overall, the present approach innovates on three fronts: First, it allows for the analysis of interactions that are often ignored because they do not fulfil criteria of intentionality, and/or consist of purely body movements. Second, adopting concepts from research on human interaction enables a better comparison of communicative interactions in other animal species without a too narrow focus on intentional signaling only. Third, adopting a stance from interaction research that highlights how practical action can also be communicative, our results show that chimpanzees can communicate through their embodied actions as well as through signaling. With this first step, we hope to inspire new research into dynamic day-to-day interactions involving both "traditional" signals and embodied actions, which, in turn, can provide insights into evolutionary precursors of human language.

Modeling intentionality in the human brain

This paper is focusing on a rather neglected issue that concerns both aspects of philosophy and neurobiology in relation to the concept of intentionality. Intentionality is concerned with the 'directedness' or 'aboutness' of mental phenomena towards an object. Despite the fact that in philosophy both concepts of aboutness and directedness are conceptually identical with intentionality, a careful neuroscientific approach can demonstrate that these two phenomena represent two distinct conceptual and neurobiological aspects of intentionality with complementary functions. We described the interaction between a series of intentionality and pathogenetic psychobiological factors, the corresponding brain topography, and the resulting clinical manifestation and psychopathology. A permanent failure of intentionality dominates in psychosis, which includes an inappropriateness of the intentional object or connection, from the outset, or even from the prodromal phase of the disorder. Affective disorders may result from imprecise interoceptive prediction error signals, due to a confused identification of the intentional object. In suicidal patients there is an emotional intentionality failure, characterized by an absence of intentional object or a loss of conscious access to normal intentional objects. We may model an 'intentional system' as a higher order system, with a monitoring and regulatory role attributed to the brain and behavior. Also, we may consider mental disorders as the result of a radical disruption of intentionality, due to an inappropriateness or lack of the intentional object or due to an inappropriate connection in some points of the suggested brain pathways of intentionality.

Understanding Social Robots: Attribution of Intentional Agency to Artificial and Biological Bodies

Much research in robotic artificial intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life has focused on autonomous agents as an embodied and situated approach to AI. Such systems are commonly viewed as overcoming many of the philosophical problems associated with traditional computationalist AI and cognitive science, such as the grounding problem (Harnad) or the lack of intentionality (Searle), because they have the physical and sensorimotor grounding that traditional AI was argued to lack. Robot lawn mowers and self-driving cars, for example, more or less reliably avoid obstacles, approach charging stations, and so on-and therefore might be considered to have some form of artificial intentionality or intentional directedness. It should be noted, though, that the fact that robots share physical environments with people does not necessarily mean that they are situated in the same perceptual and social world as humans. For people encountering socially interactive systems, such as social robots or automated vehicles, this poses the nontrivial challenge to interpret them as intentional agents to understand and anticipate their behavior but also to keep in mind that the intentionality of artificial bodies is fundamentally different from their natural counterparts. This requires, on one hand, a "suspension of disbelief " but, on the other hand, also a capacity for the "suspension of belief." This dual nature of (attributed) artificial intentionality has been addressed only rather superficially in embodied AI and social robotics research. It is therefore argued that Bourgine and Varela's notion of Artificial Life as the practice of autonomous systems needs to be complemented with a practice of socially interactive autonomous systems, guided by a better understanding of the differences between artificial and biological bodies and their implications in the context of social interactions between people and technology.

How is Patient Adherence Possible? A Novel Mechanistic Model of Adherence Based on Humanities

Patient non-adherence is a major contemporary medical issue because of its consequences in terms of frequency, morbidity and mortality, and health care costs. This article aims to propose a mechanistic model of adherence based on the tenet that non-adherence is the default option, as long-term adherence in chronic diseases requires sustained effort. The real question becomes, how is patient adherence possible? By focusing on adherent patients, the paper explains the mental mechanisms of adherence using concepts largely drawn from humanities, philosophy of mind, and behavioral economics and presents the findings of empirical studies supporting these hypotheses. The analysis first demonstrates the relationship between patient adherence and temporality and the influence of character traits. Further, it points out the importance of habit, which allows adherence to become non-intentional, thereby sparing patients' cognitive efforts. Finally, it points out the importance of the quality of the interaction between the person with a chronic disease and the health professional. These features explain why adherence is a syndrome (the healthy adherer phenotype), separating people into those who are safe and those who are at risk of non-adherence, non-control of diabetes, and complications. The concepts presented in this article summarize 20 years of personal clinical and philosophical reflection on patient adherence. They are mainly illustrated by examples from diabetes care but can be applied to all chronic diseases. This novel model of adherence has major practical and ethical implications, explaining the importance of patient education and shared medical decision-making in chronic disease management.

Perceiving animacy from kinematics: visual specification of life-likeness in simple geometric patterns

Since the seminal work of Heider and Simmel, and Michotte's research, many studies have shown that, under appropriate conditions, displays of simple geometric shapes elicit rich and vivid impressions of animacy and intentionality. The main purpose of this review is to emphasize the close relationship between kinematics and perceived animacy by showing which specific motion cues and spatiotemporal patterns automatically trigger visual perceptions of animacy and intentionality. The animacy phenomenon has been demonstrated to be rather fast, automatic, irresistible, and highly stimulus-driven. Moreover, there is growing evidence that animacy attributions, although usually associated with higher-level cognition and long-term memory, may reflect highly specialized visual processes that have evolved to support adaptive behaviors critical for survival. The hypothesis of a life-detector hardwired in the perceptual system is also supported by recent studies in early development and animal cognition, as well as by the issue of the "irresistibility" criterion, i.e., the persistence of animacy perception in adulthood even in the face of conflicting background knowledge. Finally, further support for the hypothesis that animacy is processed in the earliest stages of vision comes from recent experimental evidence on the interaction of animacy with other visual processes, such as visuomotor performance, visual memory, and speed estimation. Summarizing, the ability to detect animacy in all its nuances may be related to the visual system's sensitivity to those changes in kinematics - considered as a multifactorial relational system - that are associated with the presence of living beings, as opposed to the natural, inert behavior of physically constrained, form-invariant objects, or even mutually independent moving agents. This broad predisposition would allow the observer not only to identify the presence of animates and to distinguish them from inanimate, but also to quickly grasp their psychological, emotional, and social characteristics.

Couple relational ethics: From theory to lived practice

Distressed couples often become polarized and caught up in power struggles, with competing claims and perspectives. When escalated, partners may become reactive and unkind. The competitive-individualistic worldview of the Euro-American culture feeds polarization between partners. This article explores relational views of the self and relational ethics developed in philosophy, psychology, feminist theory, neurobiology, and couple and family therapy that counter this individualistic view. A major focus is on the ways in which partners impact each other's identity and well-being for better or worse, and the ethical responsibility this entails. The discussion addresses couple relational ethics within the larger sociocultural context that privileges power and competition. The paper offers applications to couple relationships and couple therapy, with interventions to promote mutual responsibility, fairness, dialogue, and care-helping partners to identify their higher values and interact with greater intentionality. A case example is offered to illustrate therapeutic techniques to enhance relational ethics in couples.

Catalyst for Change: Future of DEI in Academia

In this paper, we propose ways to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) challenges and outline steps and methodologies for creating allies and empowering leaders to support DEI efforts in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) for underrepresented minorities (URMs).

Research misconduct and questionable research practices form a continuum

Research data mismanagement (RDMM) is a serious threat to accountability, reproducibility, and re-use of data. In a recent article in this journal, it was argued that RDMM can take two forms: intentional research misconduct or unintentional questionable research practice (QRP). I disagree because the scale for severity of consequences of research misbehavior is not bimodal. Furthermore, intentionality is difficult to prove beyond doubt and is only one of many criteria that should be taken into account when deciding on the severity of a breach of research integrity and whether a sanction is justified. Making a distinction between RDMM that is research misconduct and RDMM which not puts too much emphasis on intentionality and sanctioning. The focus should rather be on improving data management practices by preventive actions, in which research institutions should take a leading role.

Slow motion bias: Exploring the relation between time overestimation and increased perceived intentionality

Recent research on time perception has revealed that actions which are replayed in slow motion are perceived to take longer and rated to be more intentional (e.g., foul plays). Interestingly, the bias on duration estimations seems to disappear when information on the slow motion factor (i.e., the degree the video was slowed down) was provided. Here, we scrutinize the question whether also the intentionality bias disappears when explicit information about the slow motion factor is provided. To this end, two groups watched the same video clips, all displaying foul situations in a basketball match, in different video speeds. While the uninformed group saw the videos without further information, the informed group received additional information about the current slow motion factor. This study replicated the overestimation of original duration with increasing slow motion and indicated that this effect might be reduced when information about the slow motion factor is provided. However, despite generally lower intentionality ratings in the informed group, video speed information was not able to reduce the rise in intentionality ratings with increasing slow motion. Potential reasons and open questions regarding the nature and mechanisms behind these perceptual temporal biases (e.g., different time processing systems) are discussed.

Analysis of Meditation vs. Sensory Engaged Brain States Using Shannon Entropy and Pearson's First Skewness Coefficient Extracted from EEG Data

It has been proposed that meditative states show different brain dynamics than other more engaged states. It is known that when people sit with closed eyes instead of open eyes, they have different brain dynamics, which may be associated with a combination of deprived sensory input and more relaxed inner psychophysiological and cognitive states. Here, we study such states based on a previously established experimental methodology, with the aid of an electro-encephalography (EEG) array with 128 electrodes. We derived the Shannon Entropy (H) and Pearson's 1st Skewness Coefficient (PSk) from the power spectrum for the modalities of meditation and video watching, including 20 participants, 11 meditators and 9 non-meditators. The discriminating performance of the indices H and PSk was evaluated using Student's t-test. The results demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the mean H and PSk values during meditation and video watch modes. We show that the H index is useful to discriminate between Meditator and Non-Meditator participants during meditation over both the prefrontal and occipital areas, while the PSk index is useful to discriminate Meditators from Non-Meditators based on the prefrontal areas for both meditation and video modes. Moreover, we observe episodes of anti-correlation between the prefrontal and occipital areas during meditation, while there is no evidence for such anticorrelation periods during video watching. We outline directions of future studies incorporating further statistical indices for the characterization of brain states.

Philosophical underpinnings of intersubjectivity and its significance to phenomenological research: A discussion paper

Intersubjectivity is the proposition that human experience occurs in a world of shared and embodied understandings, mediated by culture and language. Nursing is fundamentally relational, and nursing research stems from an exchange between participants and researchers and indeed around the transaction of the patient and the nurse in the intersubjective space of clinical settings. Through the philosophical standpoints of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Gadamer we examine these differing philosophical constructs of intersubjectivity and the contribution of these positions to phenomenological nursing inquiry. Particular framings of intersubjectivity should influence the way researchers interact with their participants and data so that the chosen philosophy sits coherently within a research plan and methodology. This exploration of philosophical standpoints is extended through examples of, and reflections upon, the authors' experiences of intersubjectivity in our published phenomenological nursing studies and through dynamic interactions that characterise interpretive activities within a research team.

Language as a tool for social bonding: evidence from wild chimpanzee gestural, vocal and bimodal signals

The evolution of language has fascinated anthropologists, psychologists and biologists for centuries, seeking to infer language origins from the communication of primates, our closest living relatives. Capacity for intentional signalling is a key feature of transition to language in our hominin ancestors, facilitating complex social dynamics in complex social groups. However whether vocal, gestural and bimodal signals are differentiated according to intentional use and hence complex sociality has not been studied, making unclear the modality of language evolution. We addressed this question in wild chimpanzees. We found that larger social network size was associated with a larger network of gestural but not vocal or bimodal signals. Response waiting was more common in association with gestures than vocalizations, but elaborations were more common in vocal than gestural or bimodal signals. Overall, chimpanzees were more likely to manage weak social bonds through vocalizations, whereas strong social bonds were managed through gestures and bimodal signals. However, when social bonds were weak, gestures accompanied by response waiting were more likely to elicit approaches than vocalizations accompanied by elaboration, which elicited avoidance. This suggests that gestures were the primary modality of language evolution and that the use of more sophisticated gestural signalling led to evolution of complex social groups of hominin ancestors. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.

Infants use emotion to infer intentionality from non-random sampling events

Infants use statistical information in their environment, as well as others' emotional communication, to understand the intentions of social partners. However, rarely do researchers consider these two sources of social information in tandem. This study assessed 2-year-olds' attributions of intentionality from non-random sampling events and subsequent discrete emotion reactions. Infants observed an experimenter remove five objects from either the non-random minority (18%) or random majority (82%) of a sample and express either joy, disgust, or sadness after each selection. Two-year-olds inferred the experimenter's intentionality by giving her the object that she had previously selected when she expressed joy or disgust after non-random sampling events, but not when she expressed sadness or sampled at random. These findings demonstrate that infants use both statistical regularities and discrete emotion communication to infer an agent's intentions. In particular, the present findings show that 2-year-olds infer that an agent can intentionally select a preferred or an undesired object from a sample as a function of the discrete emotion. Implications for the development of inferring intentionality from statistical sampling events and discrete emotion communication are discussed.

The mystery of emotional mimicry: multiple functions and processing levels in expression imitation

Mimicry of appearance or of facial, vocal, or gestural expressions emerges frequently among members of different species. When such mimicry directly relates to affective aspects of an interaction, researchers talk about "emotional mimicry". Emotional mimicry has been amply documented but its functionality is still debated. Why and when do people mimic the expressions of others, who benefits, the mimicker or the mimicked, and how do they benefit? Which processes underlie emotional mimicry? Is it completely automatic and unconscious or can it be deliberate and conscious? The current Theory Section addresses these questions from different theoretical perspectives. The invited article by Hess and Fischer focused on the role of mimicry in social regulation and social bonding. The invited comment by Krets and Akyüz highlights information gathering and prediction in social interaction. The invited comment by Bernhold and Giles emphasizes vocal communication and its role in interpersonal accommodation. In this editorial, I propose the different theoretical perspectives may be integrated by assuming a multilevel appraisal and response generation mechanism. I also suggest that emotional mimicry research may be broadened by including social learning, vocal imitation, interspecies comparisons, and affective computing approaches.

Reversible-figure perception: Why is voluntary control limited?

Observers can voluntarily avoid reversals of an ambiguous, reversible figure, extending the duration of an intended percept. This is usually attributed to high-level, top-down attentional processes. However, voluntary control is limited. Reversals occur despite attempts to avoid them. In two experiments, observers demonstrated significant, but limited, voluntary control over Necker cube perception. Cube size and cube completeness, variables associated with stimulus-driven processes involving neural adaptation, influenced the frequency of reversals regardless of observers' intentions. Results are consistent with the hybrid hypothesis that both top-down and bottom-up processes contribute to Necker-cube perception and support the hypothesis that the contribution of bottom-up processes is responsible for the limitation on voluntary control.

Children's Navigation of Contextual Cues in Peer Transgressions: The Role of Aggression Form, Transgressor Gender, and Transgressor Intention

When faced with transgressions in their peer groups, children must navigate a series of situational cues (e.g., type of transgression, transgressor gender, transgressor intentionality) to evaluate the moral status of transgressions and to inform their subsequent behavior toward the transgressors. There is little research on which cues children prioritize when presented together, how reliance on these cues may be affected by certain biases (e.g., gender norms), or how the prioritization of these cues may change with age. To explore these questions, 138 5- to 7-year-olds (younger children) and 8- to 10-year-olds (older children) evaluated a series of boy and girl characters who partook in physical or relational aggression with ambiguous or purposeful intent. Children were asked to provide sociomoral evaluations (i.e., acceptability, punishment, and intention attribution judgments) and social preferences. Transgressor gender only impacted children’s social preferences. Conversely, aggression form and transgressor intent shifted children’s sociomoral judgments: they were harsher toward physical transgressors with purposeful intent over those with ambiguous intent but made similar evaluations for relational transgressors regardless of intentionality. The present results suggest that gender is perhaps not uniformly relevant to children across all contexts, as other cues were prioritized for children’s sociomoral judgments. Since children likely have less familiarity with relational aggression compared to physical aggression, it follows that intent would only shift judgments about physical transgressors. This research provides insight about how children simultaneously navigate multiple cues in aggression contexts, which is likely reflective of their real-world experiences.

An Audience Effect in Sooty Mangabey Alarm Calling

How does intentional communication evolve? Comparative studies can shed light on the evolutionary history of this relevant feature of human language and its distribution before modern humans. The current animal literature on intentional signaling consists mostly of ape gestural studies with evidence of subjects persisting and elaborating with sometimes arbitrary signals toward a desired outcome. Although vocalizations can also have such imperative qualities, they are typically produced in a functionally fixed manner, as if evolved for a specific purpose. Yet, intentionality can sometimes transpire even in functionally fixed calls, for example, if production is adapted to audience composition. In this study, we carried out field experiments to test whether free-ranging sooty mangabeys adjusted snake alarm call production to their audiences. We found a positive relation between alarm call production and naïve individuals arriving, suggesting that callers attempted to influence their behaviors relative to the snake. Subjects called more with smaller audiences, if they had not heard other calls before, and if socially important individuals were in the area. We concluded that sooty mangabeys alarm call production can be explained as an active attempt to refer to an external event, rather than a mere readout of an internal state.

Inferential Communication: Bridging the Gap Between Intentional and Ostensive Communication in Non-human Primates

Communication, when defined as an act intended to affect the psychological state of another individual, demands the use of inference. Either the signaler, the recipient, or both must make leaps of understanding which surpass the semantic information available and draw from pragmatic clues to fully imbue and interpret meaning. While research into human communication and the evolution of language has long been comfortable with mentalistic interpretations of communicative exchanges, including rich attributions of mental state, research into animal communication has balked at theoretical models which describe mentalized cognitive mechanisms. We submit a new theoretical perspective on animal communication: the model of inferential communication. For use when existing proximate models of animal communication are not sufficient to fully explain the complex, flexible, and intentional communication documented in certain species, specifically non-human primates, we present our model as a bridge between shallower, less cognitive descriptions of communicative behavior and the perhaps otherwise inaccessible mentalistic interpretations of communication found in theoretical considerations of human language. Inferential communication is a framework that builds on existing evidence of referentiality, intentionality, and social inference in primates. It allows that they might be capable of applying social inferences to a communicative setting, which could explain some of the cognitive processes that enable the complexity and flexibility of primate communication systems. While historical models of animal communication focus on the means-ends process of behavior and apparent cognitive outcomes, inferential communication invites consideration of the mentalistic processes that must underlie those outcomes. We propose a mentalized approach to questions, investigations, and interpretations of non-human primate communication. We include an overview of both ultimate and proximate models of animal communication, which contextualize the role and utility of our inferential communication model, and provide a detailed breakdown of the possible levels of cognitive complexity which could be investigated using this framework. Finally, we present some possible applications of inferential communication in the field of non-human primate communication and highlight the role it could play in advancing progress toward an increasingly precise understanding of the cognitive capabilities of our closest living relatives.

Neural substrates of shared visual experiences: a hyperscanning fMRI study

Sharing experience is a fundamental human social cognition. Since visual experience is a mental state directed toward the world, we hypothesized that sharing visual experience is mediated by joint attention (JA) for sharing directedness and mentalizing for mental state inferences. We conducted a hyperscanning functional magnetic resonance imaging with 44 healthy adult volunteers to test this hypothesis. We employed spoken-language-cued spatial and feature-based JA tasks. The initiator attracts the partner's attention by a verbal command to a spatial location or an object feature to which the responder directs their attention. Pair-specific inter-individual neural synchronization of task-specific activities was found in the right anterior insular cortex (AIC)-inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) complex, the core node of JA and salience network, and the right posterior superior temporal sulcus, which represents the shared categories of the target. The right AIC-IFG also showed inter-individual synchronization of the residual time-series data, along with the right temporoparietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex-the core components for mentalization and the default mode network (DMN). This background synchronization represents sharing the belief of sharing the situation. Thus, shared visual experiences are represented by coherent coordination between the DMN and salience network linked through the right AIC-IFG.

Increased alpha suppression with age during involuntary memory retrieval

Recent work suggests that while voluntary episodic memory declines with age, involuntary episodic memory, which comes to mind spontaneously without intention, remains relatively intact. However, the neurophysiology underlying these differences has yet to be established. The current study used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate voluntary and involuntary retrieval in older and younger adults. Participants first encoded sounds, half of which were paired with pictures, the other half unpaired. EEG was then recorded as they listened to the sounds, with participants in the involuntary group performing a sound localization cover task, and those in the voluntary group additionally attempting to recall the associated pictures. Participants later reported which sounds brought the paired picture to mind during the localization task. Reaction times on the localization task were slower for voluntary than involuntary retrieval and for paired than unpaired sounds, possibly reflecting increased attentional demands of voluntary retrieval and interference from reactivation of the associated pictures respectively. For the EEG analyses, young adults showed greater alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD) during voluntary than involuntary retrieval at frontal and occipital sites, while older adults showed pronounced alpha ERD regardless of intention. Additionally, older adults showed greater ERD for paired than unpaired sounds at occipital sites, likely reflecting visual reactivation of the associated pictures. Young adults did not show this alpha ERD memory effect. Taken together, these data suggest that involuntary memory is largely preserved with age, but this may be due to older adults' greater recruitment of top-down control even when demand for such control is limited.

Reasons Things Happen for a Reason: An Integrative Theory of Teleology

Humans default to functions and purposes when asked to explain the existence of mysterious phenomena. Our penchant for teleological reasoning is associated with good outcomes, such as finding meaning in misfortune, but also with bad outcomes, such as dangerous conspiracy theories and misunderstood scientific ideas, both of which pose important social and health problems. Psychological research into the teleological default has long alluded to Daniel Dennett's intentional-systems theory but has not fully engaged with the three intellectual stances at its core (intentional, design, physical). This article distinguishes the intentional stance from the design stance, which untangles some of the present knots in theories of teleology, accounts for diverse forms of teleology, and enhances predictions of when teleological reasoning is more likely to occur. This article examines the evidence for a teleological default considering Dennett's intentional-systems theory, proposes a process model, and clarifies current theoretical debates. It argues that people rationally and often thoughtfully use teleological reasoning in relation to both cognitive and social psychological factors. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.

Wonder, delusions and meaning

SUMMARY

Strands of thought in the philosophy of mind offer another way of looking at the nature of mental illness and how it arises from intense emotional states. Analysing the phenomenon of wonder is suggested as a novel approach to explaining delusions and variations in insight.

The Radically Embodied Conscious Cybernetic Bayesian Brain: From Free Energy to Free Will and Back Again

Drawing from both enactivist and cognitivist perspectives on mind, I propose that explaining teleological phenomena may require reappraising both "Cartesian theaters" and mental homunculi in terms of embodied self-models (ESMs), understood as body maps with agentic properties, functioning as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. Quasi-homuncular ESMs are suggested to constitute a major organizing principle for neural architectures due to their initial and ongoing significance for solutions to inference problems in cognitive (and affective) development. Embodied experiences provide foundational lessons in learning curriculums in which agents explore increasingly challenging problem spaces, so answering an unresolved question in Bayesian cognitive science: what are biologically plausible mechanisms for equipping learners with sufficiently powerful inductive biases to adequately constrain inference spaces? Drawing on models from neurophysiology, psychology, and developmental robotics, I describe how embodiment provides fundamental sources of empirical priors (as reliably learnable posterior expectations). If ESMs play this kind of foundational role in cognitive development, then bidirectional linkages will be found between all sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies, so infusing all senses with somatic-motoric properties, thereby structuring all perception by relevant affordances, so solving frame problems for embodied agents. Drawing upon the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference framework, I describe a particular mechanism for intentional action selection via consciously imagined (and explicitly represented) goal realization, where contrasts between desired and present states influence ongoing policy selection via predictive coding mechanisms and backward-chained imaginings (as self-realizing predictions). This embodied developmental legacy suggests a mechanism by which imaginings can be intentionally shaped by (internalized) partially-expressed motor acts, so providing means of agentic control for attention, working memory, imagination, and behavior. I further describe the nature(s) of mental causation and self-control, and also provide an account of readiness potentials in Libet paradigms wherein conscious intentions shape causal streams leading to enaction. Finally, I provide neurophenomenological handlings of prototypical qualia including pleasure, pain, and desire in terms of self-annihilating free energy gradients via quasi-synesthetic interoceptive active inference. In brief, this manuscript is intended to illustrate how radically embodied minds may create foundations for intelligence (as capacity for learning and inference), consciousness (as somatically-grounded self-world modeling), and will (as deployment of predictive models for enacting valued goals).

Intentional communication: solving methodological issues to assigning first-order intentional signalling

Intentional signalling plays a fundamental role in human communication. Mapping the taxonomic distribution of comparable capacities may thus shed light on the selective pressures that enabled the evolution of human communication. Nonetheless, severe methodological issues undermine comparisons among studies, species and communicative modalities. Here, we discuss three main obstacles that hinder comparative research of 'first-order' intentional signalling (i.e. voluntary signalling in pursuit of a cognitively represented goal): (i) inconsistency in how behavioural hallmarks are defined and operationalised, (ii) testing of behavioural hallmarks without statistical comparison to control conditions, and (iii) bias against the publication of negative results. To address these obstacles, we present a four-step scheme with 20 statistical operational criteria to distinguish between non-intentional and first-order intentional signalling. Our unified scheme applies to visual and audible signals, thereby validating comparison across communicative modalities and species. This, in turn, promotes the generation and testing of hypotheses about the evolution of intentional communication.

Gaze deflection reveals how gaze cueing is tuned to extract the mind behind the eyes

Suppose you are surreptitiously looking at someone, and then when they catch you staring at them, you immediately turn away. This is a social phenomenon that almost everyone experiences occasionally. In such experiences-which we will call gaze deflection-the "deflected" gaze is not directed at anything in particular but simply away from the other person. As such, this is a rare instance where we may turn to look in a direction without intending to look there specifically. Here we show that gaze cues are markedly less effective at orienting an observer's attention when they are seen as deflected in this way-even controlling for low-level visual properties. We conclude that gaze cueing is a sophisticated mental phenomenon: It is not merely driven by perceived eye or head motions but is rather well tuned to extract the "mind" behind the eyes.

Gazing Without Eyes: A "Stare-in-the-Crowd" Effect Induced by Simple Geometric Shapes

Of the many effects that eye contact has, perhaps the most powerful is the stare-in-the-crowd effect, wherein faces are detected more readily when they look directly toward you. This is commonly attributed to others' eyes being especially salient visual stimuli, but here we ask whether stares-in-the-crowd might arise instead from a deeper property that the eyes (but not only the eyes) signify: the direction of others' attention and intentions. In fact, even simple geometric shapes can be seen as intentional, as when numerous randomly scattered cones are all consistently pointing at you. Accordingly, we show here that cones directed at the observer are detected faster (in fields of averted cones) than are cones averted away from the observer (in fields of directed cones). These results suggest that perceived intentionality itself captures attention-and that even in the absence of eyes, others' directed attention stands out in a crowd.

Understanding Side-Effect Intentionality Asymmetries: Meaning, Morality, or Attitudes and Defaults?

People frequently label harmful (but not helpful) side effects as intentional. One proposed explanation for this asymmetry is that moral considerations fundamentally affect how people think about and apply the concept of intentional action. We propose something else: People interpret the meaning of questions about intentionally harming versus helping in fundamentally different ways. Four experiments substantially support this hypothesis. When presented with helpful (but not harmful) side effects, people interpret questions concerning intentional helping as literally asking whether helping is the agents' intentional action or believe questions are asking about why agents acted. Presented with harmful (but not helpful) side effects, people interpret the question as asking whether agents intentionally acted, knowing this would lead to harm. Differences in participants' definitions consistently helped to explain intentionality responses. These findings cast doubt on whether side-effect intentionality asymmetries are informative regarding people's core understanding and application of the concept of intentional action.

Dynamic Touch as Common Ground for Enactivism and Ecological Psychology

The main purpose of this article is to show that enactivism and ecological psychology share more aspects than is often recognized. Rather than debating about differences, commonalities between the approaches are illustrated with the example of dynamic touch. Dynamic touch is a form of touch that implies muscles and tendons and that allows the perception of hand-held objects that are wielded but not seen. Given that perceivers perform the wielding movements with effort, dynamic touch necessarily implies active exploration. The strength of dynamic touch as an example lies in the fact that it has been formalized and analyzed in detail at the level of the laws that govern the organism-environment system. The example provides empirically supported instantiations of sensorimotor contingencies, in enactivist terms, and of intentional exploration and information detection, in ecological terms. Moreover, dynamic touch is a practical example of the enactivist concepts of bringing-forth the world and sense-making. As a second purpose, we use the example of dynamic touch to clarify key concepts of the ecological approach. Specifically, we analyze the concepts of invariance and affordance, indicating the crucial difference between perceiving and actualizing affordances, and highlighting the importance of these concepts for the dialogue between enactivism and ecological psychology.

Did you mean to do that? Infants use emotional communication to infer and re-enact others' intended actions

Infants readily re-enact others' intended actions during the second year of life. However, the role of emotion in appreciating others' intentions and how this understanding develops in infancy remains unstudied. In the present study, 15- and 18-month-old infants observed an experimenter repeatedly attempt but fail to produce a target action on an object and express either frustration or neutral affect after each attempt. Analyses of infants' responses revealed that 18-month-old infants, but not 15-month-olds, produced more target actions in the frustration condition than the neutral condition. These results suggest that infants use emotional communication to disambiguate and re-enact others' intended actions and that this ability develops in the second year of life.

The Moral Valence of Intentionality and the Modern Reproductive Subject

Critical appraisals of adolescent pregnancy invoke the neoliberal valuation of rational action as moral obligation. Adolescents are portrayed as autonomous modern subjects and expected to demonstrate the virtue of responsibility through the use of biomedical contraceptives. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork focusing on adolescent pregnancy in a small, semirural community outside of Tijuana, Baja California Norte, Mexico, I elucidate the moral landscape within which assertions of intentionality might acquire meaning in the context of adolescent pregnancy. I argue that the stakes involved in normative evaluations of female sexuality and reproduction at my fieldsite are shaped by past and contemporary experiences of EuroAmerican imperialism and are superimposed upon moral scaffolds laid by EuroAmerican colonialism.

Theory: Intentionality the Matrix of Healing: A Theory Revised With Nonnurse Care Providers

Purpose: To explore and conceptualize the nature of intentionality in the context of healing through the descriptive experiences of nonnurse professional care providers and natural healers and to determine if the previously developed theory (intentionality: the matrix of healing [IMH]) was supported or needed revision. Method: Ten care providers and two natural healers were interviewed. Data were analyzed using a modified grounded theory-constant comparative method. Coding, memos, diagraming, and concept development were used to compare these results with the previous two cohorts. The study had institutional review board approval. Results: The theory of IMH was supported. All cohorts agreed that intentionality is essential for healing and similar to, but different from and greater than, intention. The core process of nonlinear expanding personal development, viewed as both an attribute and the core process, is now called dynamic differentiation. The theory IMH describes intentionality as a dynamically evolving process that creates the energy, shape, and structure, or matrix, for intention, actions, and healing.

Understanding violence when the perpetrator has an intellectual disability: The perceptions of professionals

AIM

The research sought to enhance professional understanding of the violence perpetrated by some people with an intellectual disability.

BACKGROUND

The violent behaviour exhibited by some people with intellectual disabilities remains poorly understood, particularly with regard to a clear and informative definition.

DESIGN

A qualitative study investigated the views and perceptions of professionals working directly with people with an intellectual disability in different settings.

METHODS

Twenty-two semi-structured interviews were undertaken with professionals from a variety of backgrounds, and four themes were generated through data analysis.

FINDINGS

Themes produced comprised the degree of intellectual disability, impulsivity, intentionality and unpredictability. Findings indicated tension between understanding violence as purposeful and explaining it in relation to the intellectual disability and/or additional conditions.

CONCLUSION

Intellectual disability is central to understanding the impact of the other three themes, though there is a professional reluctance to use such knowledge as evidence to inform practice.

Blessing: A Practice of Presence, Intentionality, and Appreciation

The art and practice of blessing is explored through various cultural, religious, and experiential lenses. The "Blessing of the Hands" ritual offers an example of a practice offered by, and experienced by, holistic nurses and others in both clinical and educational settings. Consistent with holistic nursing values, the state evoked by a ritual of blessing can offer nurses a framework for heightened intentionality and presence, as well as appreciation for the sacredness of one's work. It can also serve to enhance a sense of safety, protection, and belonging in patients or clients.

The ConDialInt Model: Condensation, Dialogality, and Intentionality Dimensions of Inner Speech Within a Hierarchical Predictive Control Framework

Inner speech has been shown to vary in form along several dimensions. Along condensation, condensed inner speech forms have been described, that are supposed to be deprived of acoustic, phonological and even syntactic qualities. Expanded forms, on the other extreme, display articulatory and auditory properties. Along dialogality, inner speech can be monologal, when we engage in internal soliloquy, or dialogal, when we recall past conversations or imagine future dialogs involving our own voice as well as that of others addressing us. Along intentionality, it can be intentional (when we deliberately rehearse material in short-term memory) or it can arise unintentionally (during mind wandering). We introduce the ConDialInt model, a neurocognitive predictive control model of inner speech that accounts for its varieties along these three dimensions. ConDialInt spells out the condensation dimension by including inhibitory control at the conceptualization, formulation or articulatory planning stage. It accounts for dialogality, by assuming internal model adaptations and by speculating on neural processes underlying perspective switching. It explains the differences between intentional and spontaneous varieties in terms of monitoring. We present an fMRI study in which we probed varieties of inner speech along dialogality and intentionality, to examine the validity of the neuroanatomical correlates posited in ConDialInt. Condensation was also informally tackled. Our data support the hypothesis that expanded inner speech recruits speech production processes down to articulatory planning, resulting in a predicted signal, the inner voice, with auditory qualities. Along dialogality, covertly using an avatar's voice resulted in the activation of right hemisphere homologs of the regions involved in internal own-voice soliloquy and in reduced cerebellar activation, consistent with internal model adaptation. Switching from first-person to third-person perspective resulted in activations in precuneus and parietal lobules. Along intentionality, compared with intentional inner speech, mind wandering with inner speech episodes was associated with greater bilateral inferior frontal activation and decreased activation in left temporal regions. This is consistent with the reported subjective evanescence and presumably reflects condensation processes. Our results provide neuroanatomical evidence compatible with predictive control and in favor of the assumptions made in the ConDialInt model.

The role of severity and intentionality in the intensity of Schadenfreude attribution: A developmental study of Danish children

Understanding envy and schadenfreude requires complex interpersonal social cognitive abilities, such as social comparison and evaluating the Self, but also understanding agency and intentionality. Previous studies of children's development of envy/schadenfreude addressed whether children understand and experience schadenfreude as opposed to compassion/sympathy or whether children's attribution of schadenfreude is a consequence of envy provoked by a disadvantageous social comparison. In this study, we take a step further and investigate the roles that agency and severity of the damage play in mediating children's attribution of schadenfreude. The participants were 144 Danish children aged 3–9 years divided into two age groups. Children were presented with eight stories supported by pictures showing intentional versus accidental and irreparable versus reparable damage to envied objects. The results show that the intensity of envy/schadenfreude, as well as the happy victimizer phenomenon, varies depending on the severity of damage, agency and intentionality. When damage is accidental, schadenfreude is expressed with less intensity compared to when damage is intentional (led by an agent). When damage is irreparable, children attribute less intense feelings of schadenfreude compared to when it is reparable. In addition, only the older children expressed reparable damage carrying more intense schadenfreude and only in the accidental condition. In general, children consider intentional and reparable damage more intense than accidental and irreparable damage, and this is mediated by age. The results are important for understanding the developmental trajectory of children's complex emotions and for educational programmes directed towards supporting this development.

Means-end problem solving in infancy: Development, emergence of intentionality, and transfer of knowledge

Behaviors and performance of 23 typically developing infants were assessed longitudinally at 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months in two means-end tasks: pulling a towel or rotating a turntable to obtain a supported object. With age, infants performed more goal-directed behaviors, leading to increased problem-solving success. Intentionality emerged earlier in the towel task than in the turntable task (6.9 vs. 10.8 months). Potential knowledge transfer between the tasks was first observed at 9 months. This study provides insight into the development of means-end learning, the emergence of intentionality, and potential transfer of knowledge in tasks involving a similar concept (support) but requiring different modes of action for success (pulling vs. rotating).

A Predictive Processing Model of Perception and Action for Self-Other Distinction

During interaction with others, we perceive and produce social actions in close temporal distance or even simultaneously. It has been argued that the motor system is involved in perception and action, playing a fundamental role in the handling of actions produced by oneself and by others. But how does it distinguish in this processing between self and other, thus contributing to self-other distinction? In this paper we propose a hierarchical model of sensorimotor coordination based on principles of perception-action coupling and predictive processing in which self-other distinction arises during action and perception. For this we draw on mechanisms assumed for the integration of cues for a sense of agency, i.e., the sense that an action is self-generated. We report results from simulations of different scenarios, showing that the model is not only able to minimize free energy during perception and action, but also showing that the model can correctly attribute sense of agency to own actions.

Knowledge transfer without knowledge? The case of agentive metaphors in biology

Are scientific metaphors dispensable shortcuts that encapsulate knowledge but can always be translated back? Or do they constitute cases of knowledge transfer, even if seemingly based on scientifically underdeveloped domains? This paper defends the latter view. By drawing on the linguistic theories of metaphors, we assess a variety of agentive metaphors that pervade biology. Intentional metaphors are found unsatisfying because their use is either rigid or too widely flexible. By contrast, rational agent metaphors constitute good scientific metaphors, displaying flexible use and heuristic fruitfulness. Their range of application constantly evolves because they provide guidelines that permit the exploration of the applicability of source domain in a target domain. Their unique heuristic value makes them akin to research programs and allows for knowledge transfer, because they are based on a proper scientific source domain rather than on a folk or underdeveloped one.

On the Very-Long-Term Effect of Managing One's Own Memory: The Intention to Forget Improves Recognition After a Year's Delay

While such factors as demand characteristics, encoding, and retrieval inhibition were shown to be significant in producing the directed forgetting effect, no attention was paid to whether the intention to manage one's own memory, per se, matters. In the present article, we addressed this important gap in the literature. To control the quality of encoding we ensured that both the to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items were genuinely learned before the manipulation. We used extremely long delays between the memory instructions and testing to release inhibition associated with the content of instructions. 98 participants demonstrated flawless recall of 12 Russian - made up language word pairs. They then viewed each Russian word from a pair once, with randomized instructions "Forget", "Remember", "Repeat", or a short cognitive task. Self-reports on the mnemonic strategies were collected. Free recall and recognition tests were administered three times - 45 minutes, a month and a year (N = 58) later. Despite a strong incentive to recall all word pairs, fewer TBF pairs were recalled in comparison with TBR pairs, both after 45 minutes and after one month's delay. Recognition among all conditions was equally high. A year later free recall was close to zero. In contrast, the TBR and TBF pairs were recognized equally better than pairs presented in "Repeat" and "Task" conditions. Thus, our results show that the intention to manage one's own memory enhances the accessibility of memories at a very long time delay, no matter what type of instruction is issued.

Prospective organization of neonatal arm movements: A motor foundation of embodied agency, disrupted in premature birth

Prospective motor control moves the body into the future, from where one is to where one wants to be. It is a hallmark of intentionality. But its origin in development is uncertain. In this study, we tested whether or not the arm movements of newborn infants were prospectively controlled. We measured the spatiotemporal organization of 480 full-term neonatal arm movements and 384 arm movements of prematurely born infants at-risk for neurodevelopmental disorder. We found 75% of healthy term-birth neonatal movements and 68% of prematurely born infant movements conformed to the τG -coupling model of prospective sensorimotor control. Prospective coupling values were significantly reduced in the latter (p = .010, r = .087). In both cases prospectively controlled movements were tightly organized by fixed-duration units with a base duration of 218 ms and additional temporal units of 145 ms. Yet distances remained constant. Thus, we demonstrate for the first time a precise prospective spatiotemporal organization of neonatal arm movements and demonstrate that at-risk infants exhibit reduced sensorimotor control. Prospective motor control is a hallmark of primary sensorimotor intentionality and gives a strong embodied foundation to conscious motor agency.

Attribution of intentions and context processing in psychometric schizotypy

INTRODUCTION

Impairment in Theory of mind (TOM) has frequently been associated with schizophrenia and with schizotypy. Studies have found that a tendency to over-attribute intentions and special meaning to events and to people is related to positive psychotic symptoms. Further, it has been suggested that this intentionality bias may be due to a broader deficit in context processing (CP). The aim of the present study was thus to investigate the relationship between positive schizotypy and both over-attribution of intentions and contextual processing.

METHODS

One-hundred and nineteen healthy individuals completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire and were assessed with tasks measuring contextual treatment and ToM.

RESULTS

Results revealed that positive schizotypy was significantly related to an over-attribution of intentions on the ToM task and with a faster processing of implicit context. Partial correlational analyses indicated that the association between the attribution of intentions and positive schizotypy was not explained by a deficit of CP. In contrast, stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that both an over-attribution of intentions and a faster processing of implicit context significantly predicted positive schizotypy.

CONCLUSIONS

These results show that an over-attribution of intention is independent from a broader deficit in context information processing and that they both possibly contribute to the development and maintenance of positive psychotic symptoms.

Seeing Some One

This paper outlines a light approach to heavy issues of consciousness. The basic claim is that human minds are very much tailored to the requirements of action perception, that is, to what people see when they watch other people acting. I argue that the third-person perspective entailed in action perception offers an easy and more direct access to such enigmatic things as selfhood, intentionality, and agency than the first-person perspective does. In a sense, we get these things for free when we study action perception. I do not claim that the study of action perception can solve (or even dissolve) the enigmata entailed in consciousness. I do claim, however, that it sheds new light on relationships between one’s own mind and other minds.

The ontogeny of intent-based normative judgments

When evaluating norm transgressions, children begin to show some sensitivity to the agent's intentionality around preschool age. However, the specific developmental trajectories of different forms of such intent-based judgments and their cognitive underpinnings are still largely unclear. The current studies, therefore, systematically investigated the development of intent-based normative judgments as a function of two crucial factors: (a) the type of the agent's mental state underlying a normative transgression, and (b) the type of norm transgressed (moral versus conventional). In Study 1, 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults were presented with vignettes in which an agent transgressed either a moral or a conventional norm. Crucially, she did so either intentionally, accidentally (not intentionally at all) or unknowingly (intentionally, yet based on a false belief regarding the outcome). The results revealed two asymmetries in children's intent-based judgments. First, all age groups showed greater sensitivity to mental state information for moral compared to conventional transgressions. Second, children's (but not adults') normative judgments were more sensitive to the agent's intention than to her belief. Two subsequent studies investigated this asymmetry in children more closely and found evidence that it is based on performance factors: children are able in principle to take into account an agent's false belief in much the same way as her intentions, yet do not make belief-based judgments in many existing tasks (like that of Study 1) due to their inferential complexity. Taken together, these findings contribute to a more systematic understanding of the development of intent-based normative judgment.

How to Analyze (Intentional) Consciousness in Terms of Meta-Belief and Temporal Awareness

The paper presents and defends a metadoxastic view on (intentional) consciousness that is novel in four respects: (1) It is motivated both by Husserl’s dynamic approach, which looks upon mental acts as momentary components of certain cognitive structures – “dynamic intentional structures” – in which one and the same object is intended throughout a period of time (during which the subject’s cognitive perspective upon that object is constantly changing) and by his conception of consciousness in terms of internal time-consciousness (temporal awareness). (2) It combines a dispositionalist higher-order judgment theory about the structure of (intentional) consciousness with the claim that the contents of these judgments are such that they can be expressed by essentially indexical sentences containing the temporal indexical “now,” thus accommodating the basic role of internal time-consciousness. (3) It is immune against the “objection from lack of mental concepts” raised, e.g., by Dretske against any higher-order representation theory, as it employs counterfactuals in the framework of a disjunctive account of (intentional) consciousness. (4) It explains the unity of consciousness at a time as well as across time.