Review
Discerning intentions in dynamic human action

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Abstract

When we observe others in motion, we usually care little about the surface behaviors they exhibit. What matters are their underlying intentions. Judgments about intentions and intentionality dictate how we understand and remember others’ actions, how we respond, and what we predict about their future action. A generative knowledge system underlies our skill at discerning intentions, enabling us to comprehend intentions even when action is novel and unfolds in complex ways over time. Recent work spanning many disciplines illuminates some of the processes involved in intention detection. We review these developments and articulate a set of questions cutting across current theoretical dividing lines.

Section snippets

Wherefore intentions?

Imagine for a moment failing to grasp the idea that people act in large part to fulfill intentions arising from their beliefs and desires. As you watch people move about the world, you register their motions yet lack a sense of any purpose to these motions. This means that for you, a doctor's diverse actions of offering advice, administering an injection, and performing out-patient surgery are as different as tooth-brushing is from driving a car, because an intention to heal is all that makes

Intention and intentionality in action processing

When we read or hear stories about others’ actions, our understanding of, and memory for, those actions centers primarily on ideas we've constructed about the actors’ motives and goals 21, 22, 23. Similarly, as we witness others in action, it is almost certain that we don't encode the full detail of their motions in space; we probably encode our interpretation of those motions in terms of the actors’ goals and intentions. In this sense, inferences about intentionality and the content of others’

Discerning intentions: how?

In answer, two clearly defined and opposing positions have been on offer. One approach contends that we divine intentions and intentionality directly as we observe the flow of motion others produce when enacting intentions. Asch favored just such a direct perception account, stemming from his orientation towards Gestalt principles, and others since have echoed these ideas 1, 3, 51, 52. On this view, intentions and intentionality arise as invariants within the structure of action; invariants our

A generative knowledge system

The upshot is that discerning intentions is a complex enterprise; it is knowledge driven as well as rooted in structure detection. In fact, our skills in this arena point to the operation of a generative knowledge system, one that is probably just as rich and complex as the generative system underlying language.

We choose the phrase ‘generative knowledge system’ advisedly. Adults, and even infants, readily discern intentions within novel streams of action. This capacity to deal with novel action

Conclusion

Many times each day we make judgments about others’ intentions as we witness them in action; this is the basis on which we understand, predict, and attempt to influence one another's actions. We discern intentions in others’ action via a complex combination of structure-detection skills and relevant knowledge. Our knowledge in this domain, although largely implicit, is systematic, multi-faceted and generative. Beyond these broad outlines much remains unknown about our intention-discernment

Questions for future research

  • What implications does a propensity to construe others’ behavior with respect to intentions and intentionality have for other aspects of our cognitive functioning?

  • What kinds of disruptions occur in detecting others’ intentions, and what implications do such disruptions have for other aspects of cognitive functioning?

  • In what ways are skills for discerning intentions and intentionality universal, and in what ways might these skills be shaped by culture and experience? Is it useful to speak of a

Acknowledgements

This manuscript was prepared while the first author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; she is grateful for the financial support provided by the William T. Grant Foundation, award #95167795. Writing of this manuscript was also supported by a John Merck Scholars Award and a National Science Foundation New Young Investigator grant to the first author, as well as by a NICHD National Research Service Award to the second author. Our sincere thanks to Diego

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