CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Our review of some new findings on action perception and joint
action suggests that basic perception–action links are crucial
building blocks for social understanding and social interaction.
It seems that a comprehensive understanding of social interaction
can only be achieved if we continue to investigate how
‘‘lower-level’’ processes related to action understanding and
action coordination enable and complement ‘‘higher-level’’
functions involved in thinking about and communicating with
others (Smith & Semin, 2004).
What else can be learned from the finding that perception and
action are social in nature? The obvious conclusion is that
specific perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes are dedicated
to social interaction. This seems to be the currently
dominant view in the new field of social cognitive neuroscience.
This approach has led to important progress, because it is now
possible to map social behavior to particular cognitive and brain
functions. However, we suggest that a deeper understanding of
the processes supporting social interaction might be achieved if
one takes the more radical stance that the demands of social
interaction have shaped perception, action, and cognition
(Fiske, 1992) through and through (Smith & Semin, 2004).
In particular, reassessing perception, action planning, and
motor control in the light of their potential social roots might
reveal that functions traditionally considered hallmarks of individual
cognition originated through the need to interact with
others. For instance, humans’ ability to perform two tasks at the
same time could be supported by processes that originally enabled
individuals to perform one task while monitoring another
individual’s task performance. Along these lines, Roepstorff and
Frith (2004) have speculated that the homunculus who has
plagued psychology from its beginnings might be exorcized
through a social exegesis. The hidden controller of our actions
might be nothing more than an internalized other giving commands.
Further exploration of how perception, action, and
cognition are grounded in social interaction might have the
potential to turn social cognitive neuroscience into a coherent
framework that is more than the sum of its parts.