Developing theories of intention

de Philip David Zelazo, Janet W. Astington, David R. Olson

In this book, leading scholars address difficult but fascinating questions concerning intentionality as it is manifested in a wide variety of contexts, including imitation in infancy, early understanding of mental states, reasoning in nonhuman primates, executive function, language acquisition, and narrative understanding. Collectively, the contributors demonstrate that intentionality is a key issue in the cognitive and social sciences. Moreover, in a way that was anticipated more than a century ago by the seminal work of J. Mark Baldwin, they are beginning to reveal how the control of action is related in development to children's emerging self-consciousness and their increasingly sophisticated appreciation of other people's perspectives.