ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses when and how does collective intentionality develop? This question has come into the focus of research in cognitive development in recent years with the establishment of collective intentionality as a phenomenon to be studied empirically by the cognitive sciences. The chapter reviews empirical milestones in the emergence and early development of different forms of collective intentionality, and discusses potential implications for conceptual analyses and philosophical disputes. Historically, the empirical interest of the cognitive sciences in collective intentionality arose as a consequence of the establishment of collective intentionality as a separate field of study in the classical philosophical literature of the 1980s and 1990s. The cognitive science of collective intentionality and its development is a relatively phenomenon. Empirically, earliest forms of social coordination of attention that have been considered to manifest joint attention emerge from around 9—12 months of age.
