Infants non-inferentially share affective states with their caregivers because they have not yet developed a distinct self-concept: “Newborns do not even have a developed body schema that would allow them to determine where their body ends and the caregiver’s begins” (@2024bucknerDeep, p. 328). Note, however, that the infant can already modify the caregiver’s affect through communication, resulting in a reciprocal coupling.
In his discussion an empiricist approach to artificial intelligence, @2024bucknerDeep uses this as evidence for an empiricist theory of social cognition based on the work of Adam Smith and Sophie De Grouchy.
- Does this imply that animals which are born with more independence (or at least, shorter juvenile stages) than humans are less likely to have empathy or theory-of-mind? If so, how are they able to recognize other agents and members of their own species?
- What is the relationship between mentalizing and imagination?
- Given that such a developmental process seems innate, how can we realistically implement this in designing artificial agents with a faculty for social cognition?
Highlights
- “Newborns do not even have a developed body schema that would allow them to determine where their body ends and the caregiver’s begins—and recent neuroscientific research has even suggested that the infant’s own body map might develop contemporaneously with maps of the bodies of others, which could be relevant to the emergence of imitation (Rochat 2009; Rochat and Botto 2021).” (328)