The social domain

My understanding of the social domain has been continually evolving across these posts, which must have made things tricky to follow.

The main thrust of the theory – that the leap in development that we observe at 18-24 months is down to improved integration between the social domain and wider cognitive functioning – has remained the same. The name of the social domain, the scope of it, my incredibly weak understanding of ‘wider cognitive functioning’, the degree of informational encapsulation, how I understand the integration taking place and the implications for language processing have all been in flux however.

This rather lengthy post is intended to clarify these areas, and to develop the semantic and pragmatic picture further.

Terminology

I will continue to call the semantic object that I am characterising the ‘social domain’. It’s not a good name, but it’s the best I’ve got. I started out referring to it as a concept called OTHER PEOPLE. A more accurate name for the concept is OTHER PEOPLE AND THE THINGS THEY DO, but even this is wrong, as after integration it becomes US AND THE THINGS WE DO.

‘Social’ just about covers it for me as a descriptor, since actions and outcomes do not exist without an associated human who is there to see them through. As for the object type, well it seems weird to refer to a whole sense (which it effectively is) as a concept. This is why I have gone with ‘domain’.

Turning to ‘wider cognitive functioning’, there has been some development in my position and the language that I’ve used to express it. Under the theory, cognitive development is partly explained by increasing levels of integration among distinct cognitive processes, with these integrations following a fairly predictable timetable. Babies start out with just their sensory impression, which they must organise and then integrate with their emerging motor competence. These two very different forms of representation are then able to speak with a single voice within the baby’s overall consciousness.

Next, they incorporate this with their burgeoning conceptual understanding, adding a whole new dimension to the structure of the their thinking. As their first year comes to an end, and their understandings, desires and expectations insinuate themselves more and more into their movements, the baby’s actions become more goal-oriented. As I’ve said in recent posts, conceptual-motor-sensory representations that relate to goal-oriented behaviour mirror the argument structure around intention and action inherent in the representation of the social domain. They are equivalent enough that the child will start to systematically interpret each in the light of the other, one context of action at a time.

The scope of the social domain

The social domain is a proposed single structure in the brain that composes our understanding in two areas that seem to us to be quite separate – OTHER PEOPLE and THE THINGS THEY DO. It exists in response to anthropogenic sensory stimuli.

The experiences that it records and synthesizes include:

The child’s emotional and sensory impression of interaction with their various contacts – what they look like / smell like / sound like to the child, how it feels when they touch the child, and how it feels when they connect with the child.
- With this, the child comes to understand the identity of their contacts, and what those people mean to them.
- Since the social stimulus includes words, the social domain becomes home to the child’s lexical, phonological and speech-motor knowledge.
The child’s observation and understanding of the goal directed actions of others. For this, they are looking for and linking together the following:
- The earliest ‘tells’ of an intention (e.g., going quiet, looking away, looking at a person, looking at an object, reaching for an object).
- Any subsequent action taken by that individual, and the ‘meaning’ or function of any objects within that course of action.
- Any outcome (and how the individual experiences the outcome)

This means that our understanding of people is embedded in a system of meaning about goal directed action. This system of meaning provides the backdrop for our lexicon.

The social domain as ‘people knowledge’

The social domain can be visualised, ‘understood’ and queried executively in two dimensions, the personal dimension and the contextual dimension.

In the personal dimension, the domain can be seen as our social almanac, recording our history of interaction with our contacts, along with our emotional experience during these interactions. When we bring to mind our full ‘understanding’ of a contact, we access their personal subconcept within the social domain. We are also able to contextualise this impression by relating it to our understanding of people as a whole.

Individual personal subconcepts are built out of direct experience, but in time they will come to be enriched by a understanding of ‘what people usually think and do’ that arises through a process of consolidation among the personal subconcepts. A primary source for this insight is the self-subconcept – ME.

The impression that a child has of a particular contact remains rigidly bound to their experience of them for some time after integration. Think of the child who encounters a favourite teacher in the high street. They are confronted by propositions that contradict their understanding of the teacher as someone who operates in a narrow manner within the school environment. They suddenly discover that their teacher is a person who can operate in a similar manner to their parents. They realise that their subconcept for this teacher is not fit to handle the current situation, and stress hormones are released to push through the required reanalysis, and to keep them safe during this uncertain period. It’s usually too much for the child in the moment, so they will hide behind their parents and be unusually unresponsive to their teacher.

Understood in relation to a particular personal subconcept (X), the system of meaning can be queried executively to derive:

A general sense of that individual’s capacity to operate within the world. I will call this PX^G (i.e., a general understanding of capacity in relation to personal subconcept x).
A sense of an individual’s capacity to operate within a given context of action (PX^C).
When we observe a new, improved approach from an individual, we update PX^C to PX^C1. The update may reflect an innovation on the part of the person who demonstrated it, or it may simply be our first exposure to the approach.
Either way, we may want to see someone else’s P^C1 as a potential personal upgrade in capacity, ‘pushing the update’ to our wider functioning, (i.e., accepting a socially-mediated development to our approach within the current context of action).

Ad-hoc personal subconcepts can be generated and used as a basis for comparison. For example an individual’s general capacity to operate within the world can be compared with an average capacity for someone of that age, gender, experience or social background (i.e., PX^G vs. PAH^G).

Other comparisons that can be drawn include a comparison between two individuals’ (person X and person Y) ability to operate within a given context of action (i.e., PX^C vs. PY^C). We can also compare someone else’s capacity with our own (by reference to ME, i.e., PX^C vs. PME^C).

Snapshots can be drawn of our understanding of an individual’s mental environment during goal-directed activity (i.e., at the first inkling of an intention, as they take an action, as they experience an outcome). I will continue to refer to these as ‘second order representations’, but they could just as easily be characterised as PX^SC (a time-bound mental snapshot of personal subconcept x within a given context of action).

I can also make a few predictions as to how the personal strands relate to one another within the overall structure.

Personal subconcepts that relate to people who have a similar manner will be semantically linked.
Personal subconcepts that relate to people who belong to the same ‘category’ of people as each other (e.g., school friends, parents’ friends, younger children) will be semantically linked.
Personal subconcepts that relate to people whom we understand to be acquainted will be semantically linked.
Personal subconcepts that relate to people who are more important to us will be bigger, more central, or more integral to the structure.
People who induce a stress response in us (either because of direct personal threat, or reputational threat) will fill out one ‘side’ of the structure. People that we find warm and easy to connect with or relate to will fill out the other ‘side’ of the structure. As such, there may well be some kind of physical reality to the left-right continuum.

The social domain as ‘action knowledge’

Our understanding of a certain type of goal directed action comes about through an executively willed query of the social domain in the contextual dimension. An example of such a contextual subconcept is GETTING AN OBJECT OUT OF A BOX.

We come to store information about actions and objects elsewhere in the brain too, but the social domain remains as the semantic hub for this kind of information post-integration.

While the arrangement of the social domain across the personal axis is somewhat amorphous, depending as it does on our history of interactions and how those people have made us feel, across the contextual axis there is a common structure that we all share. It simply runs from A to B, with A being the part of the structure that records the first inkling we get of someone’s intention, and B being the part of a structure that records the outcome of the decided course of action.

Actions that look simple enough on the surface must be understood as a sequence of multiple ‘passes’ along the contextual axis of the social domain, with each pass taking place in a more convoluted (or complete) context of action. Imagine for example we are observing someone in thought and action. We know them to be separated from an object that we understand to be required within the current, wider context of action. They have a box in front of them. It is taped shut.

They shake the box to see if an object moves within it. We hear the noise the object makes.
They try to peel off the tape with their fingernail. They do not succeed – it is well stuck down.
They go to the kitchen to get a pair of scissors.
They then open up the scissors and use them to cut the tape.
They open the box and access the object.
They are now able to use this object in respect of the wider context of action.

Each of these steps represents at least one pass through the social domain. The inferred experienced outcome at point B is reinterpreted as a new inferred intention at point A. This new intention will itself link with another, more compounded outcome. At each ‘return’, the context of action can be narrowed, and it can be opened out with the introduction of adjunct contexts of action. When the ‘scene’ is over, the representation of the activity has been fully expressed

The representation can be understood then as a coil of representations, which represents a sequence of goal directed actions in ever-more complete contexts of action. The experience described above serves to build up our understanding within the GETTING AN OBJECT OUT OF A BOX context of action. As complex as this particular representation ended up becoming, it is semantically equivalent to our representation of the simple act of taking a hidden object out of a container.

When we come to be faced with an analogous challenge in the future, we will query our ‘action knowledge’ within that context of action, and find that it has been enriched by the echo of this representation, enabling us to build upon the insights and the connections that we were drawing at the time of the original experience.

Considering the social domain in its contextual dimension has been fruitful. It has led me into the following areas of thought:

As all intentions happen before their linked outcomes, stimulation of the social domain across the contextual axis is akin to the tick of an internal clock.
Perfectionists find it challenging to settle for an outcome that deviates from the one they have visualised. While this doesn’t seem very insightful in and of itself, it is important that we consider the role of the social domain in the instigation of these types of character traits.
People who have OCD seem to be giving the waves of activation across the contextual axis of the social domain an unhelpful level of significance (e.g., developing in themselves a requirement to repeat an action exactly four times).
People with ASD may have difficulty with the process of reinterpreting an inferred experienced outcome as an inferred intention to act in a certain manner within a developed context of action.
I am now understanding certain types of ‘stimming’ behaviour as a form of self-stimulatory generalised activation of the social domain, from cause to effect, from A to B, across the contextual axis.
The ASMR response seems as though it could be related to the achievement and enjoyment of a slow, generalised wave of activation from A to B.
The social domain is where music approaches meaning, with rhythm being one type of pulse of activation across the contextual axis of the social domain, and a simple musical phrase being another.
A magician’s job is to contradict the understanding of goal-directed action that is embodied in the social domain.

How informationally encapsulated is a baby’s social domain?

I started off with a presumption of total encapsulation, but I’ve since softened my stance, because the theory needs to account for the mechanism commonly known as the ‘mirror neuron’.

Babies copy observed movements (of the hands and arms, of the articulators) via a relay that connects the social domain with their motor centres. The represented movements of others in the social domain correspond closely enough with the format of their own motor plans to enable the former to inform the latter. They build motor competence with these movements via the ‘mirror neuron’ mechanism, but prior to integration, the movements that ensue are not backed by the baby’s own conceptual understanding, nor by their understanding of the goal-oriented behaviour of their activity partner.

The relays start out fuzzy and faint, giving the earliest socially-willed movements a jerky quality. This abates as the pathways to motor enrolment become more firmly established.

Integration of the social domain – what actually happens?

I stated above that the goal-oriented conceptual-motor-sensory representation, which increasingly characterises the baby’s thinking as they pass their first birthday, effectively mirrors the argument structure around intention and action that is inherent in the representation of the social domain. The child finds these representations to be equivalent enough to allow them to systematically interpret each in the light of the other, tackling the task one context of action at a time.

This means that each time the child performs an action, they evaluate their competence and their motivation within this against their understanding of ‘what people would do in a similar context of action and why’ (i.e., with the background signal from the social domain as it relates to the current context of action – PB^C). The process is mostly complete in a matter of weeks, rather than months, and it usually takes place at some point between 18 and 24 months.

The outcome is that the self-subconcept ME is substantially formed in the social domain. This is the child’s self-image – composed of their evaluations of the fitness of their conceptual knowledge and motor competence against their understanding of how and why people generally operate in respect of all of the contexts of action that they are aware of.

Outside of the social domain, representations relating to goal-directed action are reformatted and constrained in such a manner as to enable an ongoing smooth dialogue with the social domain. I have referred to this elsewhere as the ‘downward pressure’ effect. It is this relationship which falls away in Alzheimer’s, and which is subverted in Wernicke’s aphasia.

ME promotes personal achievements, cognitive achievements, and socially-mediated cognitive development

Distinct personal achievements (e.g., completing a puzzle, alone) and other cognitive achievements (e.g., becoming more efficient or proficient in a given action, or linking two distantly-related concepts together in a fruitful manner) are presented to ME, which is updated to reflect the child’s enhanced ability to act within the world. Updates to ME which reflect personal growth and achievement are rewarded hormonally with a feeling of joy.

Where the quality of a child’s actions or thought does not compare favourably with their pre-established image of how they anticipate themselves operating within the context of action, ME is downgraded, with this being marked hormonally with a feeling that we could describe as sadness, or loss.

At some point after integration, maybe immediately, the child starts to recognise when other people are downgrading or upgrading their assessment of the child’s ability to operate within the world.

Imagine two children in shared activity – child X (male) and child Y (female). X indicates or performs a course of understanding or action which he believes to be novel or progressive, in respect of the context of action. X searches Y for validation of his innovation. He is looking for confirmation that Y’s PX^C and PX^G have expanded (perhaps Y will look impressed, or she might adopt the course of action or understanding herself). If X gets this confirmation, his opinion of his own capacity to operate within the world has been validated by his perception of Y’s opinion of his capacity to operate within the world. If the social context permits it, a hormonal reward will be delivered to X, who experiences it as pride.

If X acts or speaks in a way that he comes to understand has led to a downgrade in Y’s PX^CandG, a feeling of shame may follow. If X compares his ability to operate within a given context with Y’s, and finds his PME^C to be weaker than his PY^C, a similar feeling may follow. If children U, V and W also note the contrast, then the feeling will be all the stronger.

As such, the hormonal response that reinforces activity that leads the child towards moments of social closeness and warmth (i.e., oxytocin) and the hormonal response that affords speedy reappraisal in moments of socially mediated danger (i.e., cortisol), can be leveraged by cognitive events in our own brains and by inferred cognitive events in the brains of others.

I refer obliquely above to the idea of the ‘social context’ having a deciding say in whether a hormonal response is delivered. To be a little more specific, it seems that we (executively) assess the context of action and interaction, noting how important it is, how ‘real’ it is, how personally valuable we find it to be, its risk/reward balance, and its social risk/reward balance. The outcome of this assessment then filters the level of hormonal response. This is where I gesture weakly towards the amygdalae.

For example, in the case of shame, where social threat is not detected (e.g., the child demonstrated a misapprehension, but did so in a classroom full of other learners who have demonstrated similar misapprehensions in the past), the hormonal response that we interpret as shame will not follow.

Expressive language as ostensive action

Language differs from other forms of action only in that it is always ostensive. (Other forms of action can be ostensive too, but mature language always is). Under the theory, our utterances are motivated by a need or a desire to alter our conversation partner’s mental state. When the full nature of this need or desire is conveyed to a listener, alongside the message the utterance delivers, they can start to get smart with their interpretations.

The theory posits an implicit form of language awareness that we use to enhance our social cognition. This awareness goes way beyond any understanding of language that me might hope to achieve via ‘conscious’ thought.

Imagine a five-year-old child. He is starting to step out of the immediate context of action and interpretation in the things he does and says. In response to his needs and his desires, he motivates possible developments in the mental states of his action and interaction partner, and utters the words (or acts in a way) that signals the desired semantic destination to them.

He is also becoming more self-aware, monitoring his goals in action and interaction, and generalising and theorising about the different strategies he uses. He is building his theory of action still, but now it is about communicative, or ostensive action.

This information is held at ME (in concert with the executive resource), where it is organised and systematised. Once the clamour for the insight inherent in these new contexts of action is great enough, it will be made available to the other personal subconcepts in the social domain. This is another ‘one-and-done’ integration, and the second big step up in the child’s cognition, which happens at the age of 7 or 8.

Suddenly the child is taking snapshots of their action / interaction partner’s mental environment that include higher aspects of their thinking, incorporating an understanding of ‘why people motivate desired mental states for others in interaction’, and ‘how they go about doing so’. With this insight, the child can more accurately anticipate the intended mental states that their activity / interaction partner is motivating for them.

Mature expressive language under the theory

Ostensive acts of communication involve a speaking child (X) motivating and projecting a desired mental environment for their conversation partner (Y), as it relates to the current context of interpretation. The executive query can be termed as PY^DSC, i.e. an output from X’s personal subconcept Y which is a desired mental snapshot for Y within the current context of action and interpretation.

Child X stages this desired mental environment alongside his actual current (assumed) mental environment for Y (PY^SC). He then navigates the semantic journey between the two representations. This results in the activation of lexical items and their associated speech motor representations. Another piece of apparatus, which is located outside of the social domain, and which has a sense of scope for the utterance at hand, apprehends these activated lexical items and builds a phrase out of them.

This function is available to the child immediately after the integration of the social domain with wider cognitive functioning at around 18-24 months, but it will take them years to get to grips with it. As stated above, they monitor the way in which they go about their communicative goals as well, deriving a system of knowledge about communicative actions which they use to update their other personal subconcepts, at around the age of 7 or 8.

Mature language processing under the theory

At the age of 7 or 8, listening child Y is able to snapshot speaking child X’s mental environment at a high enough resolution to enable her to inspect the desired mental snapshots for her that X is ‘working towards’, or ‘getting at’. She is now ready to use her understanding of a speaker’s informative intention to guide her interpretation.

While listening to X speaking, Y makes a running guess at what X wants her to understand from his utterance (i.e., Y’s PX^SC contains X’s PY^DSC). Y’s theorising about X’s informational intentions for her is partly informed by the new system of knowledge about communicative actions (which is filtered down through her understanding of X).
She then uses this as a reference point to guide an iterative process of utterance interpretation, where she will give the third order representation (Y’s understanding of X’s anticipation of Y’s reaction) sway over her overall mental environment.
- Specifically, Y posits an array of presumed mental states that she can imagine X motivating and intending for her.
- Y ‘competes’ these against one another (based on a quick reckoning of the balance of cognitive effects that each possible intended interpretation would derive against the processing cost involved in getting there), enriching all of the representations as they go (as appropriate).
- She attributes the victorious representation to X. It is X’s representation of Y’s mental environment after X’s words (and any extralinguistic information) have had their effect.
- Then Y uses this double-attributed mental state to guide her unfolding response to X’s communicative action, updating her thoughts and understandings accordingly.

This iterative process results in interpretations whose referents are fully defined and identified, and where all possible inferences are noted and tested. Under the theory, utterance interpretation is not about ‘listening to words’. Instead, it is seen as a recursive process of attributing and assessing mental states, where we understand each other by constructing and evaluating layered mental representations of each other’s anticipated responses. This recursive mental modelling enables nuanced, efficient communication.

With this upgrade to an anticipatory modelling approach to utterance interpretation, the child’s interpretations shift from the mechanical to the dynamic. They are now operating on the same discourse level as the adults around them.

Mastery over context and voice

Initially, after integration at 18-24 months, context is just something that arises during mental and physical activity. As far as the child is concerned, it cannot be directed or focused. The fixed nature of the context of interpretation leads to the child’s personal interpretations being mechanical and literal.

In time, they find themselves modulating the context of interpretation to one degree or another. As they experiment, they monitor how they went about shifting the context, and whether or not their listeners came along for the ride. They are building a theory of communicative actions. The child comes come to discover that carefully chosen words can be intended to direct a listener’s mental environment down any avenue that exists within the shared context of interpretation.

When their implicit language awareness is strong enough, they ‘take the plunge’ and relate this system of knowledge about communicative actions to their personal subconcepts. Now both communicative parties are attributing to each other a full understanding of ostensive action. The child enters a communicative pact that results in anything that both they and a communication partner know to exist within the shared context of interpretation being potentially invoked alongside the shifting interpretation.

With this, the child has progressed from a personal ‘at-hand context’ constraint, to a collaborative ‘at-will context’ approach.

In the same way as they can invoke a shift in the context, the child can invoke a shift in voice, by choosing a form of expression that cannot reasonably be attributed to them. They may also provide extralinguistic cues. In these cases, a character is invoked alongside the context, and the representation attributed to them. The child invites the listener to consider how it must be to go about ones day in such a way.

A whole world of contextual deftness and attributional nuance awaits the child.

A final nugget about context

The manner in which our second order representations cohere is the shared context of interpretation. The manner in which our first order representations cohere is the shared context of action.