Resumo (PT):
Abstract (EN):
The perennial question of how we understand others’ emotions
and mental states has undertaken an “interactive turn,”
emphasizing the crucial role of low-level bodily coupling
and second-personal engagements with others as opposed
to the individualistic procedure of mental state attribution or
“mindreading.” This raises the important question of what
counts as foundational for socio-emotional understanding:
high-level mentalistic abilities, low-level bodily coupling, or
an integrative combination of both? Recent findings on facebased
emotion-recognition in individuals with Möbius syndrome
(MS) – a rare form of congenital facial paralysis which
prevents facial mimicry – cast doubt on the idea that bodily
coupling is the foundational component for socio-emotional
understanding. Here we argue that the MS case does not pose
a threat to the idea that low-level bodily coupling processes
are foundational for social cognition. Rather, despite their lack
of automatic facial mirroring, MS patients might benefit from
sparedmultisensory integration processing which allows them
to establish alternative channels of bodily coupling via different
sensory modalities. We contrast MS- and autistic persons’
lack of automatic facial mimicry and argue that this comparison
might help us to shed light on the constitutive and
foundational role of low-level bodily coupling for socioemotional
understanding.
Idioma:
Inglês
Tipo (Avaliação Docente):
Científica