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The teleological origins of mentalistic action explanations: A developmental hypothesis
Abstract
In this paper we shall argue that mentalistic action explanations, which form an essential component of a mature theory of mind, are conceptually and developmentally derived from an earlier and purely teleological interpretational system present in infancy. First we summarize our evidence demonstrating teleological action explanations in one‐year‐olds. Then we shall briefly contrast the structure of teleological vs. causal mentalistic action explanations and outline four logical possibilities concerning the nature of the developmental relationship between them. We shall argue for the view that causal mentalistic action explanations are constructed as useful theoretical extensions of the earlier, purely teleological, nonmentalistic interpretational stance.
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Cites
Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind” ?
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/0010-0277(85)90022-8 · Cited by 8,599
An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior
Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944) · The American Journal of Psychology · doi:10.2307/1416950 · Cited by 3,340
Cited by
Rational imitation in preverbal infants
Gergely, G., Bekkering, H., & Király, I. (2002) · Nature · doi:10.1038/415755a · Cited by 1,391
Self-citationDo humans have two systems to track beliefs and belief-like states
Apperly, I. A., & Butterfill, S. A. (2009) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/a0016923 · Cited by 1,261
Are Children “Intuitive Theists”?: Reasoning About Purpose and Design in Nature
Kelemen, D. (2004) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00672.x · Cited by 594
(2013) · doi:10.1109/hri.2013.6483603 · Cited by 595
‘Obsessed with goals’: Functions and mechanisms of teleological interpretation of actions in humans
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2007) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2006.09.007 · Cited by 384
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Metadata
- Authors
- Csibra, G., & Gergely, G.
- Venue
- Developmental Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1998-10
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 255-259
- ISSN
- 1363-755X (ISSN-L)
- 1467-7687
- OpenAlex
- W2088963360
- Cited by
- 255
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 5.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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