Toward an embodied science of intersubjectivity: widening the scope of social understanding research

Intertwining the social and the cognitive loops: socially enactive cognition for human-compatible interactive systems

It is increasingly important for technical systems to be able to interact flexibly, robustly and fluently with humans in real-world scenarios. However, while current AI systems excel at narrow task competencies, they lack crucial interaction abilities for the adaptive and co-constructed social interactions that humans engage in. We argue that a possible avenue to tackle the corresponding computational modelling challenges is to embrace interactive theories of social understanding in humans. We propose the notion of socially enactive cognitive systems that do not rely solely on abstract and (quasi-)complete internal models for separate social perception, reasoning and action. By contrast, socially enactive cognitive agents are supposed to enable a close interlinking of the enactive socio-cognitive processing loops within each agent, and the social-communicative loop between them. We discuss theoretical foundations of this view, identify principles and requirements for according computational approaches, and highlight three examples of our own research that showcase the interaction abilities achievable in this way. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.

Gestalt Perception and the Experience of the Social Space in Autism: A Case Study

Phenomenological approaches suggest that the bodily presence of others has a profound influence on the experience of social spaces. This intimate relationship is particularly evident in mental disorders. Investigations into the nature of intersubjectivity in various pathologies indicate that modifications to the capacity for social perception play a key role in determining the manners in which the social space is experienced and felt. This paper aims to examine the interviewing relation of social perception and the experience of space and its consequences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This is done through a phenomenologically informed analysis of the functioning of social perception in ASD. Our account proposes that the atypical socio-perceptual patterns exhibited by people with autism significantly reduce the capacity to grasp the context of the situation, which facilitates and intensifies negative feelings that are intertwined with the experience of social spaces. This novel understanding draws on the idea that ASD involves a fundamental difficulty to establish a gestalt perception of social scenes. The evidence we discuss suggests that this anomaly in the operation of social perception also modulates the experience of the social space. Failing to perceive the wholeness of the situation means that people with autism often experience the social space as unfamiliar, confusing, uncertain, and unsafe, rather than feeling familiar and understood in the embodied presence of others. As a result, autistic subjects may experience difficulty evaluating the outcomes of hazardous circumstances, which poses a risk to their well-being, particularly in borderline situations. This suggestion is elaborated through the tragic occurrences that led to the killing of Eyad al-Hallaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian with autism.

Social Support and Cognition: A Systematic Review

Although the influence of social support in health is a widely acknowledged factor, there is a significant gap in the understanding of its role on cognition. The purpose of this systematic review was, therefore, to determine the state-of-the-art on the literature testing the association between social support and cognition. Using six databases (WoS, PubMed, ProQuest, PsycINFO, Scopus and EBSCOhost), we identified 22 articles published between 1999 and 2019 involving an empirical quantitative focus which meet the inclusion criteria. Data extraction was performed following PRISMA recommendations. To summarize the extracted data, we used a narrative synthesis approach. Despite limitations, there is overall preliminary evidence of a relevant positive association between social support and cognition. Our results demonstrate there is enough information for an outbreak of experimental research in the area and an expansion of this body of knowledge. We argue that the present evidence lays the foundations for a more comprehensive theoretical model, one that corresponds with the complexity of the topic and possibly considers models derived from social interaction and active inference theories.

Exploring the barriers and gateways to intersubjectivity in dementia care: A meta-ethnography

BACKGROUND

Behaviours that challenge in dementia, often described and diagnosed as behavioural psychological symptoms of dementia, are experienced by 75% of people living with dementia in care homes or hospital environments, with 43% of nurses and care providers reporting these behaviours as moderately or severely distressing to them. During behaviours that challenge moments in dementia, there is the potential for an intersubjective relationship to take place between the people living with dementia and the nurse.

AIMS

This review explores and synthesises literature to consider the presence of intersubjectivity in people living with dementia. If the ability to be intersubjective remains present for people living with dementia, it will consider how its presence can be nurtured to offer a positive intersubjective communication between the person living with dementia and their carer/nurse.

METHODS

The review used meta-ethnography methodology to develop concepts that help us to understand the implications of existing research on the presence of intersubjectivity in people living with dementia, and its relationship to those providing their care. Sixteen electronic databases (including MEDLINE/PubMed, Wiley Online Library and Sage publications) and grey literature such as Alzheimer's Society and Department of Health across journals dating from 2000-2020 were searched. Eight studies were selected and reviewed for quality and relevance for a meta-ethnographic literature synthesis of intersubjectivity in dementia.

CONCLUSION

The meta-ethnography concluded that people living with dementia continue to have the capacity to be intersubjective on an emotional level. Nurses and other care providers need to acknowledge the presence of "personhood" and "personness" in people living with dementia to nurture positive intersubjective care relationships. The meta-ethnography has also been reviewed for reporting clarity against the EQUATOR checklist in the form of the eMERGe guideline (France et al., 2019).

Prospective organization of neonatal arm movements: A motor foundation of embodied agency, disrupted in premature birth

Prospective motor control moves the body into the future, from where one is to where one wants to be. It is a hallmark of intentionality. But its origin in development is uncertain. In this study, we tested whether or not the arm movements of newborn infants were prospectively controlled. We measured the spatiotemporal organization of 480 full-term neonatal arm movements and 384 arm movements of prematurely born infants at-risk for neurodevelopmental disorder. We found 75% of healthy term-birth neonatal movements and 68% of prematurely born infant movements conformed to the τG -coupling model of prospective sensorimotor control. Prospective coupling values were significantly reduced in the latter (p = .010, r = .087). In both cases prospectively controlled movements were tightly organized by fixed-duration units with a base duration of 218 ms and additional temporal units of 145 ms. Yet distances remained constant. Thus, we demonstrate for the first time a precise prospective spatiotemporal organization of neonatal arm movements and demonstrate that at-risk infants exhibit reduced sensorimotor control. Prospective motor control is a hallmark of primary sensorimotor intentionality and gives a strong embodied foundation to conscious motor agency.

Groups and Emotional Arousal Mediate Neural Synchrony and Perceived Ritual Efficacy

We present the first neurophysiological signatures showing distinctive effects of group social context and emotional arousal on cultural perceptions, such as the efficacy of religious rituals. Using a novel protocol, EEG data were simultaneously recorded from ethnic Chinese religious believers in group and individual settings as they rated the perceived efficacy of low, medium, and high arousal spirit-medium rituals presented as video clips. Neural oscillatory patterns were then analyzed for these perceptual judgements, categorized as low, medium, and high efficacy. The results revealed distinct neural signatures and behavioral patterns between the experimental conditions. Arousal levels predicted ratings of ritual efficacy. Increased efficacy was marked by suppressed alpha and beta power, regardless of group or individual setting. In groups, efficacy ratings converged. Individual setting showed increased within-participant phase synchronization in alpha and beta bands, while group setting enhanced between-participant theta phase synchronization. This reflected group participants' orientation toward a common perspective and social coordination. These findings suggest that co-presence in groups leads to a social-tuning effect supported by between-participant theta phase synchrony. Together these neural synchrony patterns reveal how collective rituals have both individual and communal dimensions. The emotionality of spirit-medium rituals drives individual perceptions of efficacy, while co-presence in groups signals the significance of an event and socially tunes enhanced agreement in perceptual ratings. In other words, mass gatherings may foster social cohesion without necessarily requiring group-size scaling limitations of direct face-to-face interaction. This could have implications for the scaling computability of synchrony in large groups as well as for humanistic studies in areas such as symbolic interactionism.

Landscape and Health: Connecting Psychology, Aesthetics, and Philosophy through the Concept of Affordance

In this paper we address a frontier topic in the humanities, namely how the cultural and natural construction that we call landscape affects well-being and health. Following an updated review of evidence-based literature in the fields of medicine, psychology, and architecture, we propose a new theoretical framework called "processual landscape," which is able to explain both the health-landscape and the medical agency-structure binomial pairs. We provide a twofold analysis of landscape, from both the cultural and naturalist points of view: in order to take into account its relationship with health, the definition of landscape as a cultural product needs to be broadened through naturalization, grounding it in the scientific domain. Landscape cannot be distinguished from the ecological environment. For this reason, we naturalize the idea of landscape through the notion of affordance and Gibson's ecological psychology. In doing so, we stress the role of agency in the theory of perception and the health-landscape relationship. Since it is the result of continuous and co-creational interaction between the cultural agent, the biological agent and the affordances offered to the landscape perceiver, the processual landscape is, in our opinion, the most comprehensive framework for explaining the health-landscape relationship. The consequences of our framework are not only theoretical, but ethical also: insofar as health is greatly affected by landscape, this construction represents something more than just part of our heritage or a place to be preserved for the aesthetic pleasure it provides. Rather, we can talk about the right to landscape as something intrinsically linked to the well-being of present and future generations.