I analyze the conceptual foundations of Tomasello and colleagues’ influential theory of the origins of pointing gestures in an attempt to clarify its aims and limit its scope. After some preliminary remarks, I consider the postulated cognitive mechanisms that are claimed to be the developmental… read more
Focussing on the capacity for joint attention and communication, we review research that demonstrates the important and often overlooked role that emotion and motion may play in intersubjectivity and consciousness of self and others. We discuss the source of the continuing belief that such skills… read more
In this chapter we analyse ‘intersubjectivity’ and related psychological concepts. We focus on distinguishing between causal and definitional issues in early social development, between categorical explanations of what an organism is doing and causal explanations of how or why it is doing it. We… read more
The ability to take others’ perspectives on the self has important psychological implications. Yet the logically and developmentally prior question is how children develop the capacity to take others’ perspectives. We discuss the development of joint attention in infancy as a rudimentary form of… read more