In psychology, agency signifies the concept of a person's ability to initiate and control their actions, and the feeling they have of being in charge of their actions. The topic of agency can be divided into two topical domains. The first half of the topic of agency deals with the behavioral sense, or outward expressive evidence thereof. In behavioral psychology, agents are goal-directed entities that can monitor their environment to select and perform efficient means-end actions that are available in a given situation to achieve an intended goal. Behavioral agency, therefore, implies the ability to perceive and change the environment of the agent. Crucially, it also entails intentionality [1] to represent the goal state in the future, equifinal variability [2] [3] to be able to achieve the intended goal state with different actions in different contexts, and rationality of actions in relation to their goal [4] [5] to produce the most efficient action available. Cognitive scientists and Behavioral psychologists have thoroughly investigated agency attribution in humans and non-human animals since social cognitive mechanisms such as communication, social learning, imitation, or theory of mind presuppose the ability to identify agents and differentiate them from inanimate, non-agentive objects. This ability has also been assumed to have a major effect on the inferential and predictive processes of the observers of agents because agentive entities are expected to perform autonomous behavior based on their current and previous knowledge and intentions. [6] On the other hand, inanimate objects are supposed to react to external physical forces. [6]
Although the concepts are often confused with one another, sensitivity to agency and the sense of agency are distinct and separate concepts. The sensitivity to agency can be explained as a cognitive ability to identify agentive entities in the environment, while the sense of agency refers to the exertion of control over the environment and sometimes to self-efficacy, which is an individual's learned belief of how able they are to succeed in specific situations. [7]
The other half of the topic of agency deals with the arguments of determinism typically found in theories of personality and developmental lifespan. This determinism differs from philosophical determinism as it encapsulates forms of deterministic principles found within these psychological theories, such as hedonism, developmental stage theory, the law of non-contradiction, consistency, necessity, and others. Capitalizing on the first half of agency, these principles of determinism are founded on the test-retest/empirical evidence of observable behavior. Founding actors of Psychology (such as Sigmund Freud, and B.F. Skinner) defaulted on deterministic principles in order to form their theories. Much of this is due to the scientific consensus of the era, particularly concerning Newtonian principles of linear time and the attempts made by earlier psychologists to have psychology recognized as a serious science.
Carey and Spelke’s [8] model of domain-specific cognition explained certain perceptual and representational abilities vital to how humans recognize other humans. They attempted to answer the question of how humans understand “the notion that people are sentient beings who choose their actions”. They identified that even infants appear to be born with the ability to recognize human facial features but noted that there is a body of research that has decently refuted the idea that babies use facial representations “to identify people as entities expected to be capable of perceptions and purposive action”. Instead, Carey and Spelke suggested that humans identify other sentient beings through observation of the actions those beings perform instead of identifying them by their appearances.
According to Carey and Spelke, [8] the cognitive models explaining specific perceptual and representational abilities, for instance, the models of agency recognition, can be separated into two different classes: feature-based models and principle-based approaches.
The feature-based models of agency assume that the perception of an observer focuses on featural and behavioral cues that help to identify agents. Previous studies show that even very young human observers are sensitive to
However, none of these cues alone are necessary or sufficient to identify an agent, [4] since unfamiliar, novel entities like animated figures [17] or robots without human features [13] can elicit agency attribution in humans. Therefore, cognitive models belonging to the principle-based approaches [8] were designed to describe how humans perceive agency assuming that the detection of agency is not a precondition, but a consequence of inferential processes about potentially agentive objects.
The theory of teleological stance [18] proposes that from 12 months of age, humans can apply the principle of rational action to determine whether the observed entity is an agent or an inanimate object depending on an agent's rational behavior for its own functioning. The theory assumes that the rationality principle makes observers able to relate the action, the represented goal state, and the current situational constraints to decide whether an object is an agent. [18] For instance, if infants had learned that an abstract, unfamiliar agent (an animated circle on a display) approaches another entity by jumping over an obstacle, when the obstacle had been removed, they expected a new, but highly rational behavior from the agent to approach the other entity via a straight pathway. [18] In contrast, when infants were shown that the unfamiliar entity always made a detour when approaching its goal object exhibiting the non-justifiable behavior of jumping in the absence of an obstacle, they did not expect rational behavior when the situational constraints changed. [4]
These results and later empirical studies [19] [3] [20] [21] underpinned that agency recognition in humans can be explained by principle-based models rather than simple perceptual cues. As Gergely and Csibra concluded, [18] from 12 months of age humans “can take the teleological stance to interpret actions as means to goals, can evaluate the relative efficiency of means by applying the principle of rational action, and can generate systematic inferences to identify relevant aspects of the situation to justify the action as an efficient means even when these aspects are not directly visible to them".
It was proposed [22] that the representation of agency can be based on the sensitivity to different abilities observed in agentive entities probably in humans and perhaps in non-human species as well. [23] In humans, the species-specific social environment allows one to identify agents either based on their intentional behavior, on their non-communicative, rational, goal-directed actions, or by recognizing their communicative abilities. [22] Agents identified by their intentional behaviors and goal-directed actions are considered instrumental agents, while agents identified by an action's communicative properties are considered communicative agents. In non-human species, however, besides these types of input information, unfamiliar potential agents can be identified based on their perceptual abilities. [23] These have context-dependent effects on the behavior of the non-human observer even in the absence of a visible goal object that may be required to assess the effectiveness of their goal approach. [23]
According to Gergely, [22] instrumental agents are intentional agents that exhibit actions in order to realize their goal states in the environment. The recognition of instrumental agents has been investigated by numerous experiments in human infants, [3] [20] [21] [24] [25] [26] and also in non-human apes. [27] [28] [29] These studies reveal that when an agent exhibits an instrumental action it is expected by human infants to achieve its goal in an efficient manner, which is rational in terms of efforts in a given context.
On the other hand, it is also expected by infants that an agent should have a clear goal state to be achieved. Gergely [30] said, “Before the end of their first year, infants can track others’ subjective motivations.” This suggests that infants understand that humans and other potential agents act in order to achieve some goal whether the goal is seen or unseen. Gergely [30] went on to postulate that infants judge potentially instrumental actions based on how efficiently that action seems to help propel the potential agent towards forward progress in the goal.
In practice, instrumental agency seems to fluctuate with various conditions, or at least the ability to exercise instrumental agency does. One of these conditions appears to be political/social, indicating that lower access to food or undernutrition has a bidirectional influence on women’s agency in East African countries. [31]
In contrast to instrumental agents, communicative agents [30] are intentional agents whose actions are performed to bring about a specific change in the mental representations of the addressee, for instance by providing new and relevant information. The recognition of communicative agency [32] may allow the observer to predict that communicative information transfer can have a relevant effect on the behavior of the agent, even if the interacting agents and their communicative signals are unfamiliar. [33] Because all communicative agents are, definitionally, intentional agents as well, communicative agents are assumed to be a subset of intentional agents; however, not all intentional agents need to possess communicative capabilities. The idea here is that one's intentionality is what a communicative agent would be communicating to others, thus signifying that the agent is performing actions that act in some ways as a means to an end.
Catt connected communication and intentionality in this way, “Communication is that possibility of experiencing consciousness in which phenomenological intentionality is simultaneously realized and actualized. The abductive result is agency, the distinctive human capacity to illuminate meaning in the embodiment of semiosis.” [34] By this one can understand that in many ways an agent’s ability to communicate is fundamental to their agentive nature, and intentionality is a key component of what a communicative agent communicates. Additionally, an intentional agent's intentions are at least partially achieved through communication.
Communicative agency is also viewed as the rationale behind social and relational communications and shared activities. It is considered "fundamentally interpretive and relational." [35] Games, especially games with a narrative nature, play with one’s definitions and conceptions of communicative agency and strengthen one’s communicative abilities and relationships. [36] Spracklen and Spracklen investigated social bonding over “dark leisure”, including goth musical culture, and they reasoned that creating bonds with others over dark culture is a method of commiserating over shared struggles. [37] Additionally, they argued that dark culture of such a nature is a means to reducing cognitive dissonance between the ideals of what society could be and the state of society in reality. [37]
The construal of navigational agency is based on the assumption that Leslie’s theory [6] on agency implies two different types of distal sensitivity; distal sensitivity in space and distal sensitivity in time. While goal-directed instrumental agents need both of these abilities to represent a goal-state in the future and achieve it in a rational and efficient manner, navigational agents are supposed to have only perceptual abilities, that is a distal sensitivity in space to avoid collision with objects in their environments. A study [23] contrasting the ability of dogs and human infants to attribute agency to unfamiliar self-propelled objects showed that dogs – unlike human infants – may lack the capability to recognize instrumental agents, however, they can identify navigational agents.
The ability to represent the efficiency of goal-directed actions of an instrumental agent may be a phylogenetically ancient core cognitive mechanism [38] that can be found in non-human primates as well. Previous research provided evidence for this assumption showing that this sensitivity affects the expectations of cotton-top tamarins, rhesus macaques, and chimpanzees. [27] [28] [29] Non-human apes are able to make inferences about the goal of an instrumental agent by taking the environmental constraints that can guide the agents’ actions into account. Moreover, it seems that non-human species like dogs can recognize contingent reactivity as an abstract cue of agency, and respond to contingent agents significantly different in contrast to inanimate objects. [39] [40]
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge to discover new knowledge.
Social cognition is a topic within psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions.
In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them. A theory of mind includes the understanding that others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one's own. Possessing a functional theory of mind is crucial for success in everyday human social interactions. People utilize a theory of mind when analyzing, judging, and inferring others' behaviors. The discovery and development of theory of mind primarily came from studies done with animals and infants. Factors including drug and alcohol consumption, language development, cognitive delays, age, and culture can affect a person's capacity to display theory of mind. Having a theory of mind is similar to but not identical with having the capacity for empathy or sympathy.
Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. It is independent of the moral dimension, which is called moral agency.
Dog intelligence or dog cognition is the process in dogs of acquiring information and conceptual skills, and storing them in memory, retrieving, combining and comparing them, and using them in new situations.
Situated cognition is a theory that posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts.
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize, understand, and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are, reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old, they play with toys, listen to their parents speak, they watch TV, anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.
The intentional stance is a term coined by philosopher Daniel Dennett for the level of abstraction in which we view the behavior of an entity in terms of mental properties. It is part of a theory of mental content proposed by Dennett, which provides the underpinnings of his later works on free will, consciousness, folk psychology, and evolution.
Here is how it works: first you decide to treat the object whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; then you figure out what beliefs that agent ought to have, given its place in the world and its purpose. Then you figure out what desires it ought to have, on the same considerations, and finally you predict that this rational agent will act to further its goals in the light of its beliefs. A little practical reasoning from the chosen set of beliefs and desires will in most instances yield a decision about what the agent ought to do; that is what you predict the agent will do.
Michael Tomasello is an American developmental and comparative psychologist, as well as a linguist. He is professor of psychology at Duke University.
Gestures in language acquisition are a form of non-verbal communication involving movements of the hands, arms, and/or other parts of the body. Children can use gesture to communicate before they have the ability to use spoken words and phrases. In this way gestures can prepare children to learn a spoken language, creating a bridge from pre-verbal communication to speech. The onset of gesture has also been shown to predict and facilitate children's spoken language acquisition. Once children begin to use spoken words their gestures can be used in conjunction with these words to form phrases and eventually to express thoughts and complement vocalized ideas.
Joint attention or shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gazes at another individual, points to an object and then returns their gaze to the individual. Scaife and Bruner were the first researchers to present a cross-sectional description of children's ability to follow eye gaze in 1975. They found that most eight- to ten-month-old children followed a line of regard, and that all 11- to 14-month-old children did so. This early research showed it was possible for an adult to bring certain objects in the environment to an infant's attention using eye gaze.
The concept of motor cognition grasps the notion that cognition is embodied in action, and that the motor system participates in what is usually considered as mental processing, including those involved in social interaction. The fundamental unit of the motor cognition paradigm is action, defined as the movements produced to satisfy an intention towards a specific motor goal, or in reaction to a meaningful event in the physical and social environments. Motor cognition takes into account the preparation and production of actions, as well as the processes involved in recognizing, predicting, mimicking, and understanding the behavior of other people. This paradigm has received a great deal of attention and empirical support in recent years from a variety of research domains including embodied cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and social psychology.
In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to have the power and resources to fulfill their potential. Social structure consists of those factors of influence that determine or limit agents and their decisions. The influences from structure and agency are debated—it is unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained by social systems.
Embodied cognition is the concept suggesting that many features of cognition are shaped by the state and capacities of the organism. The cognitive features include a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, such as perception biases, memory recall, comprehension and high-level mental constructs and performance on various cognitive tasks. The bodily aspects involve the motor system, the perceptual system, the bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world built the functional structure of organism's brain and body.
An intention is a mental state in which a person commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the content of the intention while the commitment is the attitude towards this content. Other mental states can have action plans as their content, as when one admires a plan, but differ from intentions since they do not involve a practical commitment to realizing this plan. Successful intentions bring about the intended course of action while unsuccessful intentions fail to do so. Intentions, like many other mental states, have intentionality: they represent possible states of affairs.
Theory of mind in animals is an extension to non-human animals of the philosophical and psychological concept of theory of mind (ToM), sometimes known as mentalisation or mind-reading. It involves an inquiry into whether non-human animals have the ability to attribute mental states to themselves and others, including recognition that others have mental states that are different from their own. To investigate this issue experimentally, researchers place non-human animals in situations where their resulting behavior can be interpreted as supporting ToM or not.
Pointing is a gesture specifying a direction from a person's body, usually indicating a location, person, event, thing or idea. It typically is formed by extending the arm, hand, and index finger, although it may be functionally similar to other hand gestures. Types of pointing may be subdivided according to the intention of the person, as well as by the linguistic function it serves.
Intuitive statistics, or folk statistics, is the cognitive phenomenon where organisms use data to make generalizations and predictions about the world. This can be a small amount of sample data or training instances, which in turn contribute to inductive inferences about either population-level properties, future data, or both. Inferences can involve revising hypotheses, or beliefs, in light of probabilistic data that inform and motivate future predictions. The informal tendency for cognitive animals to intuitively generate statistical inferences, when formalized with certain axioms of probability theory, constitutes statistics as an academic discipline.
Fei Xu is an American developmental psychologist and cognitive scientist who is currently a professor of psychology and the director of the Berkeley Early Learning Lab at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on cognitive and language development, from infancy to middle childhood.
Shared intentionality is a concept in psychology that describes the human capacity to engage with the psychological states of others. According to conventional wisdom in cognitive sciences, shared intentionality supports the development of everything from cooperative interactions and knowledge assimilation to moral identity and cultural evolution that provides building societies, being a pre-requisite of social reality formation.