people/objects

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Tue, 19 May 1998 11:16:19 -0700 (PDT)

Bill-- You wrote:

>PS Bill, I get the feeling that you wanted to reserve "interaction" for
>between-people situations, is that so?

I think so. There is the need to capture the difference between people and
not-people, or perhaps in an broader sense, *cognizers/actors/volitizers*,
and not *...*. Not to apologize for, nor to defend dichotomies, here the
dichotomy is just a viable construct, with viability that is a function of
the moment.

I prefer to use interaction for both human-human/living creature and human/non-
living object, but it seems certain that the qualities of interaction differ
across the different kinds of media.

There is pretty good evidence to show that very young infants distinguish
intentional and non-intentional movement by various criteria. What is in
dispute is how early this difference is visible in infant behavior and how
it arises/continues to develop.
mike