Jonathan Delafield-Butt is Professor of Child Neurodevelopment and Autism and Director of the award-winning cross-disciplinary Laboratory for Innovation in Autism at the University of Strathclyde.  His research and scholarship examine the origins of psychological experience, with attention to the early development of intentionality, and its contribution to embodied foundations of psychological development, learning, and health.

 

ABSTRACT

All human cooperative activity is placed within temporal sequences of action and attention that enable the coordination of interests, feelings, and intentions.  Narrative, the creation of imaginative projects through movement and voice, is fundamental to the organisation human cognition.  It coordinates interests, emotions, and intentions while embedding meaning within an architecture of sequenced motor acts. Although essential to human intelligence, its origins in ontogenesis remain unclear. This presentation traces narrative’s emergence to the innate sensorimotor intelligence of the human body. Self-aware action is first evident in second trimester foetal movement. After birth, single motor intentions organise into projects with social value, sequenced in time to generate complex, distal purposes that enable collaborative play and cultural practices. From early movement to adult conversation, a four-part narrative form of introduction, development, climax, resolution guides joint action, and remains invariant across development. In autism, disruptions to narrative organisation can limit social participation; therapeutic mirroring can restore shared understanding. Recognising narrative as an embodied, pre-linguistic foundation of intelligence has broad implications for therapy, education, and cognitive science. Understanding how narrative shapes joint action provides insight into the generative processes of communication, and provides a central organising principle of joint agent action.