Oxytocin and shared intentionality are positively associated with cooperation in children.

While humans cooperate with unrelated individuals to an extent that far outstrips any other species, we also display extreme variation in decisions about whether to cooperate or not. A diversity of cognitive, affective, social, and physiological mechanisms interact to shape these decisions. For example, group membership, shared intentionality talk (i.e. talk about shared goals), and natural initial oxytocin levels are linked to cooperation in adults in an optimal foraging paradigm that is loosely modelled on the iterated prisoner's dilemma. In this 'egg hunt', shared intentionality talk was key to achieving cooperation, and it drove cooperation more between participants who shared the same group membership (and who also had higher initial oxytocin levels). Such complex interactions raise the question of the age at which humans develop the necessary mechanisms to cooperate effectively in the egg hunt game. Here, we tested children in secondary school aged between 10 and 14 years. We found that, as for adults, shared intentionality talk was crucial for successful cooperation. Furthermore, initial oxytocin levels correlated with cooperation through shared intentionality talk. In contrast, group membership did not affect behaviour. Finally, pre- and post-experiment oxytocin levels showed various interactions with group membership and sex. Thus, children's performance was relatively similar to adults while showing some differences with respect to underlying mechanisms. Our study is a rare contribution to further our understanding of the role of oxytocin in early adolescent social behaviour.

Gestural communication in wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi).

Gestures play a central role in the communication systems of several animal families, including primates. In this study, we provide a first assessment of the gestural systems of a Platyrrhine species, Geoffroy's spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). We observed a wild group of 52 spider monkeys and assessed the distribution of visual and tactile gestures in the group, the size of individual repertoires and the intentionality and effectiveness of individuals' gestural production. Our results showed that younger spider monkeys were more likely than older ones to use tactile gestures. In contrast, we found no inter-individual differences in the probability of producing visual gestures. Repertoire size did not vary with age, but the probability of accounting for recipients' attentional state was higher for older monkeys than for younger ones, especially for gestures in the visual modality. Using vocalizations right before the gesture increased the probability of gesturing towards attentive recipients and of receiving a response, although age had no effect on the probability of gestures being responded. Overall, our study provides first evidence of gestural production in a Platyrrhine species, and confirms this taxon as a valid candidate for research on animal communication.

Goal-directed bodily signals in birds and frogs.

Researchers have recently described the wing-fluttering signal of Japanese tits and eyeblink signal of concave-eared torrent frogs as bodily communication that elicits specific responses. I assess the evidence that these may be intentional, goal-directed signals using established criteria for gestural communication.

Vision, body and interpretation in medical imaging diagnostics.

This article explores the profound impact of visualism and visual perception in the context of medical imaging diagnostics. It emphasizes the intricate interplay among vision, embodiment, subjectivity, language, and historicity within the realm of medical science and technology, with a specific focus on image consciousness. The study delves into the role of subjectivity in perception, facilitating the communication of opacity and historicity to the perceiving individual. Additionally, it scrutinizes the image interpretation process, drawing parallels to text interpretation and highlighting the influence of personal biases and individuality in medical practice. By revisiting Husserl's conceptualization of "image consciousness" and introducing the notion of "image theme", the paper seeks to establish a theoretical framework for making sense of images within the context of technological interpretation. A key objective is to enhance the phenomenology of technology through a systematic analysis of medical imaging diagnosis, contributing to an expanded epistemological foundation for medical practice. The article recognizes that the construction of medical knowledge incorporates subjective elements, especially within a historical context. The interpretation of images involves both instrumental and expert interpretation, with human subjectivity playing a crucial role. The article asserts that human creativity and conscious engagement are indispensable in interpreting all medical images.

Pet dogs (Canis familiaris) re-engage humans after joint activity.

Joint intentionality, the mutual understanding of shared goals or actions to partake in a common task, is considered an essential building block of theory of mind in humans. Domesticated dogs are unusually adept at comprehending human social cues and cooperating with humans, making it possible that they possess behavioral signatures of joint intentionality in interactions with humans. Horschler and colleagues (Anim Behav 183: 159-168, 2022) examined joint intentionality in a service dog population, finding that upon interruption of a joint experience, dogs preferentially re-engaged their former partner over a passive bystander, a behavior argued to be a signature of joint intentionality in human children. In the current study, we aimed to replicate and extend these results in pet dogs. One familiar person played with the dog and then abruptly stopped. We examined if dogs would preferentially re-engage the player instead of a familiar bystander who was also present. Consistent with the findings of Horschler and colleagues (Anim Behav 183: 159-168, 2022), pet dogs preferentially gazed toward and offered the toy to the player significantly more than the familiar bystander. However, no difference was observed in physical contact. These findings provide preliminary evidence for behavioral signatures of joint intentionality in pet dogs, but future work is needed to understand whether this phenomenon extends to other contexts.

Understanding Social Robots: Attribution of Intentional Agency to Artificial and Biological Bodies.

Much research in robotic artificial intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life has focused on autonomous agents as an embodied and situated approach to AI. Such systems are commonly viewed as overcoming many of the philosophical problems associated with traditional computationalist AI and cognitive science, such as the grounding problem (Harnad) or the lack of intentionality (Searle), because they have the physical and sensorimotor grounding that traditional AI was argued to lack. Robot lawn mowers and self-driving cars, for example, more or less reliably avoid obstacles, approach charging stations, and so on-and therefore might be considered to have some form of artificial intentionality or intentional directedness. It should be noted, though, that the fact that robots share physical environments with people does not necessarily mean that they are situated in the same perceptual and social world as humans. For people encountering socially interactive systems, such as social robots or automated vehicles, this poses the nontrivial challenge to interpret them as intentional agents to understand and anticipate their behavior but also to keep in mind that the intentionality of artificial bodies is fundamentally different from their natural counterparts. This requires, on one hand, a "suspension of disbelief " but, on the other hand, also a capacity for the "suspension of belief." This dual nature of (attributed) artificial intentionality has been addressed only rather superficially in embodied AI and social robotics research. It is therefore argued that Bourgine and Varela's notion of Artificial Life as the practice of autonomous systems needs to be complemented with a practice of socially interactive autonomous systems, guided by a better understanding of the differences between artificial and biological bodies and their implications in the context of social interactions between people and technology.

Beyond accidents: Young children's forgiveness of third-party intentional transgressors.

To maintain our cooperative relationships, it is critical that we repair these relationships when they are damaged by transgressions. Key to this repair is forgiveness. Previous research suggests that adults and children are more forgiving of remorseful transgressors than of unremorseful ones after accidental transgressions. However, little is known about whether children's forgiveness also takes the transgressors' intentions into account. Using a third-person video paradigm with children in the United States, Study 1 found that 6-year-olds (n = 20; 10 girls; 60% White) were more likely to negatively evaluate an intentional transgressor and give more resources to an accidental transgressor when both transgressors showed remorse, whereas 5-year-olds (n = 20; 10 girls; 80% White) showed this effect only in their resource distribution. Study 2 found that 6-year-olds (n = 18; 7 girls; 83% White) were more likely to positively evaluate and share more resources with a remorseful intentional transgressor than with an unremorseful intentional one. Thus, by school age in the United States, children's forgiveness, at least as bystanders, begins to take into account both the transgressor's intentions and the display of remorse.

Slow motion bias: Exploring the relation between time overestimation and increased perceived intentionality.

Recent research on time perception has revealed that actions which are replayed in slow motion are perceived to take longer and rated to be more intentional (e.g., foul plays). Interestingly, the bias on duration estimations seems to disappear when information on the slow motion factor (i.e., the degree the video was slowed down) was provided. Here, we scrutinize the question whether also the intentionality bias disappears when explicit information about the slow motion factor is provided. To this end, two groups watched the same video clips, all displaying foul situations in a basketball match, in different video speeds. While the uninformed group saw the videos without further information, the informed group received additional information about the current slow motion factor. This study replicated the overestimation of original duration with increasing slow motion and indicated that this effect might be reduced when information about the slow motion factor is provided. However, despite generally lower intentionality ratings in the informed group, video speed information was not able to reduce the rise in intentionality ratings with increasing slow motion. Potential reasons and open questions regarding the nature and mechanisms behind these perceptual temporal biases (e.g., different time processing systems) are discussed.

Brentano's psychology and Kazimierz Twardowski School: implications for the empirical study of psychological phenomena today.

The article presents the most important and almost forgotten theses of Franz Brentano's empirical psychology, which have significance for conceptualization and the method of psychological research. The psychology programme, introduced as early as 1874, remains on the fringes of mainstream empirical psychology, but it was the starting point for Kazimierz Twardowski and his students. The continuation and development of Brentano's thought in the twentieth century can significantly enrich and broaden psychology's theoretical and empirical perspective. This applies primarily to reductionism and the social dimension of mental phenomena.

Gaze deflection reveals how gaze cueing is tuned to extract the mind behind the eyes.

Suppose you are surreptitiously looking at someone, and then when they catch you staring at them, you immediately turn away. This is a social phenomenon that almost everyone experiences occasionally. In such experiences-which we will call gaze deflection-the "deflected" gaze is not directed at anything in particular but simply away from the other person. As such, this is a rare instance where we may turn to look in a direction without intending to look there specifically. Here we show that gaze cues are markedly less effective at orienting an observer's attention when they are seen as deflected in this way-even controlling for low-level visual properties. We conclude that gaze cueing is a sophisticated mental phenomenon: It is not merely driven by perceived eye or head motions but is rather well tuned to extract the "mind" behind the eyes.

Analysis of Meditation vs. Sensory Engaged Brain States Using Shannon Entropy and Pearson's First Skewness Coefficient Extracted from EEG Data.

It has been proposed that meditative states show different brain dynamics than other more engaged states. It is known that when people sit with closed eyes instead of open eyes, they have different brain dynamics, which may be associated with a combination of deprived sensory input and more relaxed inner psychophysiological and cognitive states. Here, we study such states based on a previously established experimental methodology, with the aid of an electro-encephalography (EEG) array with 128 electrodes. We derived the Shannon Entropy (H) and Pearson's 1st Skewness Coefficient (PSk) from the power spectrum for the modalities of meditation and video watching, including 20 participants, 11 meditators and 9 non-meditators. The discriminating performance of the indices H and PSk was evaluated using Student's t-test. The results demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the mean H and PSk values during meditation and video watch modes. We show that the H index is useful to discriminate between Meditator and Non-Meditator participants during meditation over both the prefrontal and occipital areas, while the PSk index is useful to discriminate Meditators from Non-Meditators based on the prefrontal areas for both meditation and video modes. Moreover, we observe episodes of anti-correlation between the prefrontal and occipital areas during meditation, while there is no evidence for such anticorrelation periods during video watching. We outline directions of future studies incorporating further statistical indices for the characterization of brain states.

Couple relational ethics: From theory to lived practice.

Distressed couples often become polarized and caught up in power struggles, with competing claims and perspectives. When escalated, partners may become reactive and unkind. The competitive-individualistic worldview of the Euro-American culture feeds polarization between partners. This article explores relational views of the self and relational ethics developed in philosophy, psychology, feminist theory, neurobiology, and couple and family therapy that counter this individualistic view. A major focus is on the ways in which partners impact each other's identity and well-being for better or worse, and the ethical responsibility this entails. The discussion addresses couple relational ethics within the larger sociocultural context that privileges power and competition. The paper offers applications to couple relationships and couple therapy, with interventions to promote mutual responsibility, fairness, dialogue, and care-helping partners to identify their higher values and interact with greater intentionality. A case example is offered to illustrate therapeutic techniques to enhance relational ethics in couples.

Testing the automaticity features of the affect misattribution procedure: The roles of awareness and intentionality.

The affect misattribution procedure (AMP) is a measure of implicit evaluations, designed to index the automatic retrieval of evaluative knowledge. The AMP effect consists in participants evaluating neutral target stimuli positively when preceded by positive primes and negatively when preceded by negative primes. After multiple prior tests of intentionality, Hughes et al. (Behav Res Methods 55(4):1558-1586, 2023) examined the role of awareness in the AMP and found that AMP effects were larger when participants indicated that their response was influenced by the prime than when they did not. Here we report seven experiments (six preregistered; N = 2350) in which we vary the methodological features of the AMP to better understand this awareness effect. In Experiments 1-4, we establish variability in the magnitude of the awareness effect in response to variations in the AMP procedure. By introducing further modifications to the AMP procedure, Experiments 5-7 suggest an alternative explanation of the awareness effect, namely that awareness can be the outcome, rather than the cause, of evaluative congruency between primes and responses: Awareness effects emerged even when awareness could not have contributed to AMP effects, including when participants judged influence awareness for third parties or primes were presented post hoc. Finally, increasing the evaluative strength of the primes increased participants' tendency to misattribute AMP effects to the influence of target stimuli. Together, the present findings suggest that AMP effects can create awareness effects rather than vice versa and support the AMP's construct validity as a measure of unintentional evaluations of which participants are also potentially unaware.

Philosophical underpinnings of intersubjectivity and its significance to phenomenological research: A discussion paper.

Intersubjectivity is the proposition that human experience occurs in a world of shared and embodied understandings, mediated by culture and language. Nursing is fundamentally relational, and nursing research stems from an exchange between participants and researchers and indeed around the transaction of the patient and the nurse in the intersubjective space of clinical settings. Through the philosophical standpoints of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Gadamer we examine these differing philosophical constructs of intersubjectivity and the contribution of these positions to phenomenological nursing inquiry. Particular framings of intersubjectivity should influence the way researchers interact with their participants and data so that the chosen philosophy sits coherently within a research plan and methodology. This exploration of philosophical standpoints is extended through examples of, and reflections upon, the authors' experiences of intersubjectivity in our published phenomenological nursing studies and through dynamic interactions that characterise interpretive activities within a research team.

An intentional cohesion call in male chimpanzees of Budongo Forest.

Many social animals travel in cohesive groups but some species, including chimpanzees, form flexible fission-fusion systems where individuals have some control over group cohesion and proximity to others. Here, we explored how male chimpanzees of the Sonso community of Budongo Forest, Uganda, use communication signals during resting, a context where the likelihood of group fission is high due to forthcoming travel. We focused on a context-specific vocalisation, the 'rest hoo', to investigate its function and determine whether it is produced intentionally. We found that this call was typically given towards the end of typical silent resting bouts, i.e., the period when individuals need to decide whether to continue travelling after a brief stop-over or to start a prolonged resting bout. Subjects rested longer after producing 'rest hoos' and their resting time increased with the number of calls produced. They also rested longer if their calls were answered. Furthermore, focal subjects' resting time was prolonged after hearing others' 'rest hoos'. Subjects called more when with top proximity partners and in small parties and rested longer if a top proximity partner called. We also found an interaction effect between rank and grooming activity, with high-ranking males with a high grooming index calling less frequently than other males, suggesting that vocal communication may serve as a cohesion strategy alternative to tactile-based bonding. We discuss these different patterns and conclude that chimpanzee 'rest hoos' meet key criteria for intentional signalling. We suggest that 'rest hoos' are produced to prolong resting bouts with desired partners, which may function to increase social cohesion.

Intentional gestural communication amongst red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus).

Apes, human's closest living relatives, are renowned for their intentional and highly flexible use of gestural communication. In stark contrast, evidence for flexible and intentional gestural communication in monkeys is scarce. Here, we investigated the intentionality and flexibility of spontaneous gesture use in red-capped mangabeys (Cercocebus torquatus). We applied established methods used in ape gesture research to analyse whether the body acts produced by a total of 17 individuals living in three different groups in captivity qualified as intentionally produced gesture instances. Results showed that signallers showed all hallmarks of intentionality during the production of 20 out of a total of 21 different types of body acts. These were only produced in the presence of other individuals, and the monkeys showed audience checking, sensitivity to the attentional states of recipients, adjustment of signal modality, and response waiting relative to their production. Moreover, in case of communication failure, the monkeys showed goal persistence, and regarding the production contexts they showed some signs of means-ends dissociation. Therefore, these monkeys are capable of flexible and intentional gestural communication and use this to communicate with conspecifics. Our results corroborate recent findings showing that intentional gestural communication was already present in the monkey lineage of catarrhine primates. We discuss our results in light of the comparative approach towards human language evolution and highlight our finding that these monkeys also showed flexible and intentional use of four 'free' manual gesture types.

Infants' intention-based evaluations of distributive actions.

Recent research revealed that infants attend to agents' intentions when they evaluate helping actions. The current study investigated whether infants also consider agents' intentions when they evaluate distributive actions. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants were first shown two failed attempts to perform a distribution. In the "failed equal distribution," the distributor first tried to reach one of the recipients to deliver an apple, failed, and then attempted to reach the other possible recipient to deliver a different apple and also failed. In the "failed unequal distribution," a different distributor always tried unsuccessfully to reach the same beneficiary. Then, in the test phase, infants were presented with the two distributors side by side, and infants' spontaneous preferential looking and reaching actions were recorded. We found a reliable preference for the equal distributor in both the visual and manual responses. Experiments 2 and 3 helped to rule out alternative explanations based on perceptual cues and affiliative biases. Overall, these findings suggest that infants' ability to evaluate distributive actions relies not only on the outcomes but also on the distributors' intentions.

Reversible-figure perception: Why is voluntary control limited?

Observers can voluntarily avoid reversals of an ambiguous, reversible figure, extending the duration of an intended percept. This is usually attributed to high-level, top-down attentional processes. However, voluntary control is limited. Reversals occur despite attempts to avoid them. In two experiments, observers demonstrated significant, but limited, voluntary control over Necker cube perception. Cube size and cube completeness, variables associated with stimulus-driven processes involving neural adaptation, influenced the frequency of reversals regardless of observers' intentions. Results are consistent with the hybrid hypothesis that both top-down and bottom-up processes contribute to Necker-cube perception and support the hypothesis that the contribution of bottom-up processes is responsible for the limitation on voluntary control.

Individual differences in mental imagery in different modalities and levels of intentionality.

Mental imagery is a highly common component of everyday cognitive functioning. While substantial progress is being made in clarifying this fundamental human function, much is still unclear or unknown. A more comprehensive account of mental imagery aspects would be gained by examining individual differences in age, sex, and background experience in an activity and their association with imagery in different modalities and intentionality levels. The current online study combined multiple imagery self-report measures in a sample (n = 279) with a substantial age range (18-65 years), aiming to identify whether age, sex, or background experience in sports, music, or video games were associated with aspects of imagery in the visual, auditory, or motor stimulus modality and voluntary or involuntary intentionality level. The findings show weak positive associations between age and increased vividness of voluntary auditory imagery and decreased involuntary musical imagery frequency, weak associations between being female and more vivid visual imagery, and relations of greater music and video game experience with higher involuntary musical imagery frequency. Moreover, all imagery stimulus modalities were associated with each other, for both intentionality levels, except involuntary musical imagery frequency, which was only related to higher voluntary auditory imagery vividness. These results replicate previous research but also contribute new insights, showing that individual differences in age, sex, and background experience are associated with various aspects of imagery such as modality, intentionality, vividness, and frequency. The study's findings can inform the growing domain of applications of mental imagery to clinical and pedagogical settings.

Seeing minds - a signal detection study of agency attribution along the autism-psychosis continuum.

INTRODUCTION: Diametrically aberrant mentalising biases, namely hypermentalising in psychosis and hypomentalising in autism, are postulated by some theoretical models. To test this hypothesis, we measured psychotic-like experiences, autistic traits and mentalising biases in a visual chasing paradigm. METHODS: Participants from the general population (N = 300) and psychotic patients (N=26) judged the absence or presence of a chase during five-second long displays of seemingly randomly moving dots. Hypermentalising is seeing a chase where there is none, whereas hypomentalising is missing to see a chase. RESULTS: Psychotic-like experiences were associated with hypermentalising. Autistic traits were not associated with hypomentalising, but with a reduced ability to discriminate chasing from non-chasing trials. Given the high correlation (τ = .41) between autistic traits and psychotic-like experiences, we controlled for concomitant symptom severity on agency detection. We found that all but those with many autistic and psychotic traits showed hypomentalising, suggesting an additive effect of traits on mentalising. In the second study, we found no hypermentalising in patients with psychosis, who performed also similarly to a matched control group. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that hypermentalising is a cognitive bias restricted to subclinical psychotic-like experiences. There was no support for a diametrically opposite mentalising bias along the autism-psychosis continuum.