From Joint Attention to Common Knowledge

Journal of Pragmatics, 2007

We demonstrate that ''joint attention'', usually conceived of in the psychological sciences as indicative of such minded processes as the capacity for understanding the intentional, goal-directed behavior of others, is fundamentally an interactional process, one that cannot be extricated from the ongoing flow of social activity. We examine very young children's actions of showing objects to others, and explicate the practical procedures by which they draw and sustain another's attention to an object, and convey ''what for''-that is, what another should do in response. At issue is how children in a natural social setting (here, a daycare center) track the activities of others for felicitous moments to present objects, and design and position their actions by reference to the ongoing preoccupations, commitments, and distractions of others. Further, drawing another's attention poses sequential implications for children's actions which structure opportunities for parties (child and other) to display, and modify, their understandings of what sort of social exchange is transpiring between them. #

Synthese

Joint attention customarily refers to the coordinated focus of attention between two or more individuals on a common object or event, where it is mutually "open'' to all attenders that they are so engaged. We identify two broad approaches to analyse joint attention, one in terms of cognitive notions like common knowledge and common awareness, and one according to which joint attention is fundamentally a primitive phenomenon of sensory experience. John Campbell's relational theory is a prominent representative of the latter approach, and the main focus of this paper. We argue that Campbell's theory is problematic for a variety of reasons, through which runs a common thread: most of the problems that the theory is faced with arise from the relational view of perception that he endorses, and, more generally, they suggest that perceptual experience is not sufficient for an analysis of joint attention.

Joint attention is an inconspicuous psychological phenomenon occurring when two or more people are jointly attending to an object. On a first view there is little remarkable about it. What makes it philosophical interesting is the fact that there is a general agreement in the relevant literature that it is characterized by a certain openness. This openness is supposed to mean that it must be transparent to all the involved that they are jointly attending. It is this openness that makes the analysis of joint attention such a challenge. The most self-evident attempts to cash out the openness will almost inevitably end up as implausible analyses in terms of common knowledge: X must that know that Y knows that X knows that Y knows and so on with out a genuine possibility of ending the infinite iterations of mutual knowledge ascriptions. One of the most innovative recent proposals to capture this openness without falling into the trap of an analysis in terms of common knowledge stems from John Campbell. In line with his naïve realist picture of perception Campbell argues that we would best analyze joint attention as a three-place-experiential relation. On his account the co-attention of each of the attenders is constituted by the other’s co-attention. Because of this constitutive relation one can only experience being in a joint attention situation, if one really is in a joint attention situation. I begin my thesis with a detailed interpretation of Campbell’s argument before I reject his preclusion of reductive-experiential accounts of joint attention. I proceed to investigate further potential motivations for Campbell’s proposal as much from the Philosophy of Mind as from the Theory of Collective Intentionality. For both fields I can show that they offer no compelling reasons to give a relational account of joint attention. Lastly, I criticize Campbell’s proposal extensively and show that we a.) cannot explain it in a way consistent with its own presuppositions and that it is b.) build at least in part on an implausible phenomenological picture of the experiential warrant joint attentional experiences transmit to the agents. Closing, I offer a short argument for the development of a comprehensive account of joint attention in terms of an assumption-based theory of joint attention.

2020

A prototypical example of “joint attention” involves visual attention in what are referred to as “social communicative routines” (Bruner 1985) – repeated and sometimes prolonged interactions between child and caregiver that are said to scaffold a child’s early language, specifically learning referents for words, along, perhaps, with conversational skills (Tomasello 1988). Joint attention on this account resembles an augmented version of Augustine’s picture – famously criticized by Wittgenstein (see Wittgenstein, Ludwig) – of a hypothetical language-learning child who notices adults’ attention to an object and “grasp[s] that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out” (Wittgenstein 1958). The notion of “joint attention” is meant to add to this picture an interactive coordination – a child’s attention is directed to an object by an adult’s gaze or pointing gesture, and the child attends to the object by recognizing the adult’s intention so to direct...

2015

ABSTRACT—Before social cognition there is joint processing of information about the attention of self and others. This joint attention requires the integrated activation of a dis-tributed cortical network involving the anterior and poste-rior attention systems. In infancy, practice with the integrated activation of this distributed attention network is amajor contributor to the development of social cognition. Thus, the functional neuroanatomies of social cognition and the anterior–posterior attention systems have much in common. These propositions have implications for under-standing joint attention, social cognition, and autism. KEYWORDS—attention; joint attention; cognitive neuro-science; autism; interconnectivity Infants follow the direction of other people’s gaze in the first year of life (Scaife & Bruner, 1975). This seminal observation led to a

Transformacoes Em Psicologia, 2009

Joint attention entail the mutual focus of two human beings on either a common object of interest or on each other. When two persons focus on one another, emotional and mental states can be inferred by means of mirror neurons, dispersed over brain regions involved in emotionality and motor coordination. The mirror neuron system is suggested to have an important role in motor synchronization for shared behavioral goals, as well as imitation of articulation and speech gestures. Joint attention bids associated with a common object of interest can accommodate learning, especially by forming proper learning environments for language acquisition in infants. Attention-regulating areas in the prefrontal cortex have a central role in the initiation of joint attention, and a pattern of specialization has to mature in children, as areas responsible for initiation and maintenance of joint attention migrate towards the frontal poles of the brain.

Homo sapiens possess a unique behavioural system for social action and response, namely, language. Language permits action at a distance by transmitting messages with specifi c meanings from one individual's mind to that of another. It is a peculiar system as compared with other structures in the environment, because the information in language that specifi es meaning is rather abstract and arbitrary. Despite—or perhaps due to—these characteristics, language is the prime medium for 'cultural ratcheting' (Tomasello, 1999) among humans. In cultural ratcheting, behavioural innovations (e.g. tools) spread through a group and are sustained and elaborated upon across generations. For a group to maintain a system of linguistic behaviours, each individual must be able to learn and adapt to the prevailing information structure. Typically, most of the structure of language is learned within a few years of birth, when the human infants are dependent on and in near-constant conta...

Philosophical Psychology, 2022

On a widely held characterization, triadic joint attention is the capacity to perceptually attend to an object or event together with another subject. In the last four decades, research in developmental psychology has provided increasing evidence of the crucial role that this capacity plays in socio-cognitive development, early language acquisition, and the development of perspective-taking. Yet, there is a striking discrepancy between the general agreement that joint attention is critical in various domains, and the lack of theoretical consensus on how to account for it. This paper pursues three interrelated aims: (i) it examines the contrast between reductive and non-reductive views of (triadic) joint attention, by bringing into focus the notion of recursive mindreading; (ii) it assembles, advances, and discusses a number of arguments against reductive views; (iii) finally, in dialogue with some prominent non-reductive views, it concludes by outlining the case for a non-reductive view that gives pride of place to the idea that co-attenders relate to one another as a 'you'.