Table 1.

Theoretical perspectives relevant to integrative account of social cognition.

Theory	Key assumptions	Level(s) of framework	Underpinning mechanisms	Authoritative references
Theory of mind	• Extra-perceptual mechanisms are required for understanding another’s mental states			• Baron-Cohen (1995) • Gopnik and Wellman (1992)
	• Third-person mindreading— observational rather than interactive form of understanding others	• Sub-personal • Personal	• Inferential simulation • Theoretical inference	• Blakemore and Decety (2001) • Goldman (2006) • Frith and Frith (2007, 2008, 2012)
	• Individualistic cognitive processing			• Saxe et al. (2004)
Interactionism	• Mental states are directly perceivable through a person’s embodiment			• De Jaegher (2009) • De Jaegher et al. (2010)
	• Social cognition at the supra-individual as evolving between interactions	• Sub-personal	• Embodied intentionality
		• Personal • Supra-individual	• Social affordances	• Gallagher (2008) • Gangopadhyay and Schilbach (2012)
	• Cognition and perception are for actively relating to the environment
Dual process theories	• Two distinct types of cognitive processes		• Type 1 cognitive processes— automatic and stimulus driven	• Evans (2008)
	• Type 1 processes are evolutionarily older	• Sub-personal • Personal	• Type 2 cognitive processes—controlled and flexible	• Frith and Frith (2007) • Lieberman (2007)
	• Type 2 processes are evolutionarily recent
Ecological psychology	• Body and environment play a constitutive role in understanding the social world		• Direct perception via dorsal visual system	• Chemero (2003) • Gibson (1979)
	• Perception is not inferential	• Sub-personal	• Kinematic Specific Dynamics	• McArthur and Baron (1983) • Norman (2002)
	• Perception and cognition serve an adaptive function providing an organism with means for direct interaction with the environment	• Personal • Supra-individual	• Perception-action loops	• Runeson and Frykholm (1983) • Valenti and Good (1991)
Enactive cognition	• Perceptions are actively brought forth through engagement with the environment
	• Perception is an active sense-making process that prepares an organism for action	• Sub-personal • Personal • Supra-individual	• Participatory sense-making • Social interaction	• De Jaegher and Di Paolo (2013) • Froese and Ziemke (2009) • Noë (2004)
	• Perception of invariant information relies on specific motor actions
Brunswik’s lens model	• Proximal stimuli are perceivable features of the environment	• Sub-personal	• Probabilistic functionalism	• Brunswik (1956) • Cooksey (1996)
	• Distal features are objective states of the environment, not necessarily perceivable	• Personal • Supra-individual	• Causal ambiguity	• Doherty and Kurz (1996) • Vicente (2003)
Dynamical systems	• Interactions follow dynamic laws that structure and constrain joint perception-action systems in self-organizing patterns	• Sub-personal • Personal • Supra-individual	• Coupling of perception- action systems • Coupling of organism to environment	• Marsh et al. (2009a) • Marsh et al. (2006, 2009b) • Vallacher and Nowak (1997)
	• Dynamic laws are emergent across all size ranges of social units over varying temporal scales			• Richardson et al. (2014)