How Infants Know Minds
eBook - PDF

How Infants Know Minds

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

How Infants Know Minds

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access How Infants Know Minds by Vasudevi Reddy in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & Psychiatry & Mental Health. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Chapter 1. A Puzzle
  8. Chapter 2. Minding the Gap
  9. Chapter 3. Engaging Minds: A Second-Person Approach
  10. Chapter 4. Making Contact: Imitation
  11. Chapter 5. Opening Conversations
  12. Chapter 6. Experiencing Attention
  13. Chapter 7. Feeling Self-Conscious
  14. Chapter 8. Playing with Intentions
  15. Chapter 9. Sharing Funniness
  16. Chapter 10. Faking in Communication
  17. Chapter 11. Other Minds and Other Cultures
  18. Notes
  19. Index