Most psychologists claim that we begin to develop a “theory of mind”—some basic ideas about other people’s minds—at age two or three, by inference, deduction, and logical reasoning.
But does this mean that small babies are unaware of minds? That they see other people simply as another (rather dynamic and noisy) kind of object? This is a common view in developmental psychology. Yet, as this book explains, there is compelling evidence that babies in the first year of life can tease, pretend, feel self-conscious, and joke with people. Using observations from infants’ everyday interactions with their families, Vasudevi Reddy argues that such early emotional engagements show infants’ growing awareness of other people’s attention, expectations, and intentions.
Reddy deals with the persistent problem of “other minds” by proposing a “second-person” solution: we know other minds if we can respond to them. And we respond most richly in engagement with them. She challenges psychology’s traditional “detached” stance toward understanding people, arguing that the most fundamental way of knowing minds—both for babies and for adults—is through engagement with them. According to this argument the starting point for understanding other minds is not isolation and ignorance but emotional relation.
Vasudevi Reddy is Professor of Developmental and Cultural Psychology at the University of Portsmouth.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. A Puzzle
2. Minding the Gap
3. A Second-Person Approach
4. Neonatal Imitation: First Contact
5. Early Conversations
6. Feeling Attention
7. Self-Consciousness
8. Playing with Intentions
9. Sharing Funniness
10. Early Deceiving: Lying, Faking, and Pretending
11. Other Minds and Other Cultures
Notes
Index
What People are Saying About This
It's a book by a sensitive writer who offers many striking insights about children growing up - insights that combine a deep humanity with real psychological and philosophical acumen. There are precious ideas here, well worth sharing with behavioral science, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines.
Jerome Bruner
It's a book by a sensitive writer who offers many striking insights about children growing up - insights that combine a deep humanity with real psychological and philosophical acumen. There are precious ideas here, well worth sharing with behavioral science, philosophy, anthropology, and related disciplines. --(Jerome Bruner, New York University)
Karen Wynn
This book is terrific—both an intellectual feat, and a delight. It makes a bold and creative claim, pulls together a wide range of evidence from lab science and everyday experience, and gives us something genuinely new and exciting. It could change all our ideas—parents' and researchers—about what is going on in babies' minds. --(Karen Wynn, Yale University)