Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition

February 19, 2021 Jeremiah Hendren

Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition

Tomasello, Michael, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, and Henrike Moll
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28, no. 5 (2005): 675-691.
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x05000129

Human beings are the world’s experts at mind reading. As compared with other species, humans are much more skillful at discerning what others are perceiving, intending, desiring, knowing, and believing. Although the pinnacle of mind reading is understanding beliefs—as beliefs are indisputably mental and normative—the foundational skill is understanding intentions. Understanding intentions is foundational because it provides the interpretive matrix for deciding precisely what it is that someone is doing in the first place. Thus, the exact same physical movement may be seen as giving an object, sharing it, loaning it, moving it, getting rid of it, returning it, trading it, selling it, and on and on—depending on the goals and intentions of the actor. And whereas understanding beliefs does not emerge until around age 4 in human ontogeny, understanding intentions begins to emerge at around a child’s first birthday.

Michael Tomasello et al.

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