Thanks Martin.
I am not confused.
I am reminded of when my friend Sasha was arrested for punching a copper at a demonstration in London in 1968. His girlfriend appeared as a witness, and when the judged asked her: "Did you see the defendant punch the officer?" she replied: "No!" so judge dismissed her saying that if she didn't see the offence then she was not a witness. Sasha was innocent of course, but he got 6 months in Brixton.
The question xmca readers can reflect on is this: are Manfred and the other contributors to this Special Issue on emotion ignorant of the widely publicised phenomenon of mirror neurons despite many years of research into the development of emotional expression in infants, or does their failure to witness the action of "mirror neurons" suggest that there are no such entities?
Andy
Martin Packer wrote:
Andy,
I think you're mixing three different kinds of 'mirroring':
1. recognition of one's mirror image, something that develops during the 2nd year of life.
2. mirroring the facial expression of an interactional or conversational partner, something that adults and infants start to do early in the first year of life.
3. neurons that fire either when a person is producing a certain action or when they are perceiving the same action.
Though these have similar names they are quite distinct phenomena, although researchers propose various connections amongst them.
Martin