Development of Joint Action: Planning

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Objection: ‘Despite the common impression that joint action needs to be dumbed down for infants due to their ‘‘lack of a robust theory of mind’’ ... all the important social-cognitive building blocks for joint action appear to be in place: 1-year-old infants understand quite a bit about others’ goals and intentions and what knowledge they share with others’

\citep[p.~383]{carpenter:2009_howjoint}.

Carpenter conflates goals and intentions, so ignores the key difference between actions and plans.

‘I ... adopt Bratman’s (1992) influential formulation of joint action or shared cooperative activity. Bratman argued that in order for an activity to be considered shared or joint each partner needs to intend to perform the joint action together ‘‘in accordance with and because of meshing subplans’’ (p. 338) and this needs to be common knowledge between the participants’

\citep[p.~381]{carpenter:2009_howjoint}.

Carpenter, 2009

So: the objection I just offered to taking Bratman’s account of shared intention and joint action to characterise the notion of joint action of interest in explaining development was narrowly theoretical.

The objection was that you can’t explain the developmental emergence of mindreading by invoking joint action if your account of joint action implies that abilities to perform joint actions presuppose sophisticated mindreading.

Accepting this theoretical objection would be consistent with accepting Carpenter’s claim. The only consequence is that we would have to reject the conjecture that you can explain the developmental emergence of mindreading by invoking joint action.

challenge

Explain the emergence of sophisticated human activities including referential communication and mindreading.

conjecture

Joint action plays a role in explaining how sophisticated human activities emerge.

objection

Joint action presupposes mindreading at the limits of human abilities.

So I think Carpenter is saying: the objection is correct, and we should reject the conjecture.

‘shared intentional agency [i.e. ‘joint action’] consists, at bottom, in interconnected planning’

Bratman, 2011 p. 11

‘shared intentional agency [i.e. ‘joint action’] consists, at bottom, in interconnected planning agency of the participants’ \citep{Bratman:2011fk}.

Paulus et al, 2016 figure 1

Task: give the tool to another person, who needs to put the spherical end into the box. (Tip: you need to grasp it by the spherical end and pass it so that the other takes the cube-end; they can then insert it optimally.)

Paulus et al, 2016 figure 2B

‘3- and 5-year-old children do not consider another person’s actions in their own action planning (while showing action planning when acting alone on the apparatus).

Seven-year-old children and adults however, demonstrated evidence for joint action planning. ... While adult participants demonstrated the presence of joint action planning from the very first trials onward, this was not the case for the 7-year-old children who improved their performance across trials.’

\citep[p.~1059]{paulus:2016_development}

Paulus et al, 2016 p. 1059

Warneken et al, 2014 figure 1A

‘One child had to insert the turn-tool on the right of the apparatus and then turn so that the metal rod stretching across moved the panel out of the way of the ball. The other person could then insert the push tool on the left, pushing the silver ball into the hole similar to a billiard cue.’ \citep{warneken:2014_young}

Warneken et al, 2014 figure 2

Unidirectional : child A has to select the tool that B doesn’t have.

Bidirectional : child A can select either tool.

‘(a) Unidirectional: The left box will be opened first. Only the left child has a choice. For success, this child has to choose the push tool (lower left: thick handle, long thin top). The partner child has to retrieve the only available turn tool (upper right: thick handle, short thin top).’ \citep{warneken:2014_young}

Warneken et al, 2014 figure 3

BU - first bidirectional then unidirectional.

The three year olds are hopeless in all conditions except the bidirectional condition when they have first had the unimanual condition. So there is no forward planning, but there is some evidence that three-year-olds can take into account what another has done.

‘by age 3 children are able to learn, under certain circumstances, to take account of what a partner is doing in a collaborative problem-solving context. By age 5 they are already quite skillful at attending to and even anticipating a partner’s actions’ \citep[p.~57]{warneken:2014_young}.

What is shared intention?

Functional characterisation:

shared intention serves to (a) coordinate activities, (b) coordinate planning and (c) structure bargaining

Constraint:

Inferential integration... and normative integration (e.g. agglomeration)

Substantial account:

We have a shared intention that we J if

‘1. (a) I intend that we J and (b) you intend that we J

‘2. I intend that we J in accordance with and because of la, lb, and meshing subplans of la and lb; you intend [likewise] …

‘3. 1 and 2 are common knowledge between us’

(Bratman 1993: View 4)

Note that the conditions require not just that we intend the joint action, but that we intend it because of each other's intentions, where this is common knowledge.

Mismatch:

Bratman’s account of joint action

1- to 3-year-olds’ joint action abilities

All the evidence has suggests that there is a mismatch between Bratman’s account of joint action and 1- to 3-year-olds’ joint action abilities.

Let’s consider two more studies on this ...

I started with Carpenter’s objection ...

Carpenter conflates goals and intentions, so ignores the key difference between actions and plans.

Carpenter, 2009

It turns out, I think, that Carpenter is wrong to this extent. Whatever exactly one-year-olds mindreading abilities, they do not seem to be making much use of information about others’ intentions in performing joint actions. And so it is wrong to think of their abilities in terms of Bratman’s account of joint actions.

Inconsistent Triad

1. joint action fosters an understanding of minds;

2. all joint action involves shared intention; and

3. a function of shared intention is to coordinate two or more agents’ plans.