Interpretation and manipulation in human plans

An analysis of children's interpretations of a complex episode of social interaction is used to illustrate three features of human plans which distinguish them from robot plans and which form a basis for a theory of the development of social action. The features are: (1) Human plans are social; (2) human plans operate on interpretations; and (3) human plans are used, not just executed. Elementary school and college subjects were shown a skit in which one character deceives another. Many of the younger subjects considered the interaction to be cooperative, whereas older subjects understood that the deceiver was manipulating the victim's cooperative interpretation. A model of interacting human plans is incorporated in a notation system which is used for displaying the structure of the alternative interpretations and their mutual embed‐dings. The notation contains a key concept, mutual knowledge (or belief), which incorporates the essentially social feature of human plans. Implications of the model of human ...

[1]  L. Vygotsky.  Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes: Harvard University Press , 1978 .

[2]  G. Miller,et al.  Plans and the structure of behavior , 1960 .

[3]  Denis Newman,et al.  Cultural Practices and Piagetian Theory: The Impact of a Cross-Cultural Research Program , 1983 .

[4]  Earl David Sacerdoti,et al.  A Structure for Plans and Behavior , 1977 .

[5]  J. Piaget.  The Psychology Of Intelligence , 1951 .

[6]  J. Katz,et al.  Propositional Structure And Illocutionary Force , 1977 .

[7]  D. Flapan.  Children's understanding of social interaction , 1968 .

[8]  Carolyn Uhlinger Shantz.  The development of social cognition , 1975 .

[9]  G. Miller,et al.  Nondynamic aspects of personality. , 1960 .

[10]  G. Miller,et al.  Plans and the structure of behavior , 1960 .

[11]  Bertram C. Bruce,et al.  Analysis of Interacting Plans as a Guide to the Understanding of Story Structure. Technical Report No. 130. , 1979 .

[12]  John R. Searle,et al.  Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language , 1970 .

[13]  Bertram C. Bruce,et al.  Interacting plans , 1978, SGAR.

[14]  Philip R. Cohen.  On knowing what to say: planning speech acts. , 1978 .

[15]  Denis Newman,et al.  Learning to draw a picture: The social context of an individual activity∗ , 1980 .

[16]  H. Garfinkel.  Studies in Ethnomethodology , 1968 .

[17]  John H. Flavell,et al.  The development of role-taking and communication skills in children , 1968 .

[18]  E. Durkheim,et al.  Rules of Sociological Method , 1964 .

[19]  Gerald Jay Sussman,et al.  A Computer Model of Skill Acquisition , 1975 .

[20]  J. Austin.  How to do things with words , 1962 .

[21]  C. Raymond Perrault,et al.  Elements of a Plan-Based Theory of Speech Acts , 1979, Cogn. Sci..