The target article concerns the important distinction between two modes of attention in social learning: (1) attention directed toward the opportunities that afford expedient action (instrumental stance), and (2) attention directed toward the opportunities for action that are considered proper within a given culture (ritual stance). I agree with the idea that social learning involves these distinct modes of attention of individual learners, and that selection processes that shape the two modes of attention are of different nature (cf., Gibson, Reference Gibson and Miller1950). What I find debatable is the following mechanism of activation of stances assumed in the bifocal stance theory: Different saliences of end goals or causal structure trigger different motivational states in the minds of cultural learners – anticipation of social or non-social rewards – that activate one of the two stances and modulate the fidelity of transmitted action (Figures 1 and 3 of target article).
Consider the everyday context of mealtime. Mauss (Reference Mauss1935/1973, p. 84) recounted that the Shah of Persia, the guest of Napoleon III, insisted on eating with his fingers. The Emperor urged him to use a golden fork. “You don't know what a pleasure you are missing,” the Shah replied. The use of hands and fingers is often sufficient for transporting food to the mouth. In some cultures, however, an infant who is finger feeding would show willingness to abandon this effective strategy to transport food directly to the mouth in favor of the mode of feeding using a utensil, at sometime around the second year of life when the infant is still incapable of using the utensil for getting food (Nonaka & Goldfield, Reference Nonaka and Goldfield2018). The following facts may be relevant to the present discussion. First, it is typically the infant who shows willingness to take the spoon in the caregiver's hand used for feeding the infant, prior to parental encouragement (Gesell & Ilg, Reference Gesell and Ilg1937). Second, when the infant secures the spoon during mealtime, she tends to manipulate it in various non-goal-directed ways, waving arms with spoon in hand, scratching a table surface, and so on. Third, instead of inhibiting the infant's improper spoon use, the caregiver tends to organize the environment where such goal-irrelevant activities of the infant are tolerated (e.g., moving a cup with liquid out of reach), and keep feeding the infant while she is playing with the spoon. As the infant orients the spoon to the food, the caregiver would gradually introduce the opportunities for functional feeding encounters (e.g., steadying the dish so as to help the infant to get food on the spoon) (Nonaka & Goldfield, Reference Nonaka and Goldfield2018). Fourth, sometime during the second year of life, the infant tends to persist in using spoon for food getting, in which attention is focused on process over outcome, and she may even return the spilled food to the spoon instead of putting it directly into her mouth. Mealtime behaviors of adults that children can observe are structured around the salient end goal with highly transparent physical–causal structure – the intake of food by bringing food to the mouth. Why would, contrary to the prediction of the bifocal stance theory, the transparent causal structure of mealtime behavior NOT activate the instrumental stance focused on the outcome (i.e., food intake), but instead focus infants' attention on adults' way of doing over the end goal (i.e., ineffective spoon use over effective finger feeding)?
It is interesting that in normal mealtime circumstances infants are, at least initially, not forced to act properly, or have no obvious external rewards for doing so. The question of interest is what motivates children to attend to those affordances of the environment (e.g., properties of the utensil) that are relevant to the specific setting of mealtime. The analysis of the social interaction of infant–caregiver dyads during lunchtime suggested the presence of two distinct streams of reciprocal informational coupling between the caregiver and the novice spoon feeder (Nonaka & Stoffregen, Reference Nonaka and Stoffregen2020): (1) Caregiver attentively adjust the action opportunities available on the table for infants, and infants actively look at the caregiver's hand (or a utensil in hand) acting on the objects in the environment. (2) After infants had actualized one or another affordance of spoon (e.g., ingestion of food or playful behavior), infants looked at the face of the caregiver more often than chance, as if to obtain the information about the “interpersonal self” (Neisser, Reference Neisser1988). These results seem to indicate that infants are concerned about the situation they are engaged in, actively exploring the information about that which matters in the mealtime situation. In addition, the fact that the flow of infant's attention is systematically coupled to the flow of caregiver's action implies that the interpersonal context provides the foothold for the infant's attention, who is actively developing a “nose” for the specific situation of communal practice (cf., Rietveld, Reference Rietveld2008).
It is important to note that social norms are observable events in a populated environment that are as real and publicly verifiable as the sky turning red in the west at sunset. The opportunities are available for developing individuals to attune themselves to the multiple layers of invariants of the populated environment concerning both what they can do and what they should do in a specific situation. At the same time, the context of skill development frequently involves more than one individual, in which learners are exposed to the opportunities of their environment in a specific manner, according to the peculiar concerns shared within their community (Reed, Reference Reed, Wozniak and Fischer1993, Reference Reed1996). Given the rich regularities manifest in the environment in which social learners find themselves, the theory about associations in the mind of learners seems superfluous (e.g., in terms of having an anticipation of social or non-social reward, activated by causal opacity, or salient end goal), for the individual is already immersed in the environment with rich regularities that can be potentially discovered (cf., Gibson, Reference Gibson1966). Rather, fundamental to theories of cultural evolution is the fact that the shared environment is indefinitely rich, in which individuals are provided with opportunities for learning to flexibly tune themselves to specific affordances that are relevant to emerging situations (Nonaka, Reference Nonaka, Wynn, Overmann and Coolidgein press).
The target article concerns the important distinction between two modes of attention in social learning: (1) attention directed toward the opportunities that afford expedient action (instrumental stance), and (2) attention directed toward the opportunities for action that are considered proper within a given culture (ritual stance). I agree with the idea that social learning involves these distinct modes of attention of individual learners, and that selection processes that shape the two modes of attention are of different nature (cf., Gibson, Reference Gibson and Miller1950). What I find debatable is the following mechanism of activation of stances assumed in the bifocal stance theory: Different saliences of end goals or causal structure trigger different motivational states in the minds of cultural learners – anticipation of social or non-social rewards – that activate one of the two stances and modulate the fidelity of transmitted action (Figures 1 and 3 of target article).
Consider the everyday context of mealtime. Mauss (Reference Mauss1935/1973, p. 84) recounted that the Shah of Persia, the guest of Napoleon III, insisted on eating with his fingers. The Emperor urged him to use a golden fork. “You don't know what a pleasure you are missing,” the Shah replied. The use of hands and fingers is often sufficient for transporting food to the mouth. In some cultures, however, an infant who is finger feeding would show willingness to abandon this effective strategy to transport food directly to the mouth in favor of the mode of feeding using a utensil, at sometime around the second year of life when the infant is still incapable of using the utensil for getting food (Nonaka & Goldfield, Reference Nonaka and Goldfield2018). The following facts may be relevant to the present discussion. First, it is typically the infant who shows willingness to take the spoon in the caregiver's hand used for feeding the infant, prior to parental encouragement (Gesell & Ilg, Reference Gesell and Ilg1937). Second, when the infant secures the spoon during mealtime, she tends to manipulate it in various non-goal-directed ways, waving arms with spoon in hand, scratching a table surface, and so on. Third, instead of inhibiting the infant's improper spoon use, the caregiver tends to organize the environment where such goal-irrelevant activities of the infant are tolerated (e.g., moving a cup with liquid out of reach), and keep feeding the infant while she is playing with the spoon. As the infant orients the spoon to the food, the caregiver would gradually introduce the opportunities for functional feeding encounters (e.g., steadying the dish so as to help the infant to get food on the spoon) (Nonaka & Goldfield, Reference Nonaka and Goldfield2018). Fourth, sometime during the second year of life, the infant tends to persist in using spoon for food getting, in which attention is focused on process over outcome, and she may even return the spilled food to the spoon instead of putting it directly into her mouth. Mealtime behaviors of adults that children can observe are structured around the salient end goal with highly transparent physical–causal structure – the intake of food by bringing food to the mouth. Why would, contrary to the prediction of the bifocal stance theory, the transparent causal structure of mealtime behavior NOT activate the instrumental stance focused on the outcome (i.e., food intake), but instead focus infants' attention on adults' way of doing over the end goal (i.e., ineffective spoon use over effective finger feeding)?
It is interesting that in normal mealtime circumstances infants are, at least initially, not forced to act properly, or have no obvious external rewards for doing so. The question of interest is what motivates children to attend to those affordances of the environment (e.g., properties of the utensil) that are relevant to the specific setting of mealtime. The analysis of the social interaction of infant–caregiver dyads during lunchtime suggested the presence of two distinct streams of reciprocal informational coupling between the caregiver and the novice spoon feeder (Nonaka & Stoffregen, Reference Nonaka and Stoffregen2020): (1) Caregiver attentively adjust the action opportunities available on the table for infants, and infants actively look at the caregiver's hand (or a utensil in hand) acting on the objects in the environment. (2) After infants had actualized one or another affordance of spoon (e.g., ingestion of food or playful behavior), infants looked at the face of the caregiver more often than chance, as if to obtain the information about the “interpersonal self” (Neisser, Reference Neisser1988). These results seem to indicate that infants are concerned about the situation they are engaged in, actively exploring the information about that which matters in the mealtime situation. In addition, the fact that the flow of infant's attention is systematically coupled to the flow of caregiver's action implies that the interpersonal context provides the foothold for the infant's attention, who is actively developing a “nose” for the specific situation of communal practice (cf., Rietveld, Reference Rietveld2008).
It is important to note that social norms are observable events in a populated environment that are as real and publicly verifiable as the sky turning red in the west at sunset. The opportunities are available for developing individuals to attune themselves to the multiple layers of invariants of the populated environment concerning both what they can do and what they should do in a specific situation. At the same time, the context of skill development frequently involves more than one individual, in which learners are exposed to the opportunities of their environment in a specific manner, according to the peculiar concerns shared within their community (Reed, Reference Reed, Wozniak and Fischer1993, Reference Reed1996). Given the rich regularities manifest in the environment in which social learners find themselves, the theory about associations in the mind of learners seems superfluous (e.g., in terms of having an anticipation of social or non-social reward, activated by causal opacity, or salient end goal), for the individual is already immersed in the environment with rich regularities that can be potentially discovered (cf., Gibson, Reference Gibson1966). Rather, fundamental to theories of cultural evolution is the fact that the shared environment is indefinitely rich, in which individuals are provided with opportunities for learning to flexibly tune themselves to specific affordances that are relevant to emerging situations (Nonaka, Reference Nonaka, Wynn, Overmann and Coolidgein press).
Financial support
This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI (grant numbers JP21H05823, JP21KK0182, and JP22H00988).
Conflict of interest
None.