cannot replace the learning opportunity provided by shared social experi-
ences. This is particularly evident when considering the developmental origins
of social cognition. Infants do not develop a social understanding by merely
engaging in social "voyeurism," observing and actively monitoring people
behaving around them. Rather than as voyeurs, they learn by engaging in
reciprocal exchanges with others. Some 50 years ago, René Spitz made this
point clear with tragic footage of infants from crowded orphanages. De-
prived of one-to-one contacts with caretakers, these infants showed perva-
sive behavioral stereotypes, rocking their head back and forth as if negating
any contact with the outside world. These infants fell back within themselves
rather than opening up to the world of people. Unresponsive to social
solicitations, they lost the little social learning opportunity left to them.

In general, social cognition can be construed as the process by which
individuals develop the ability to monitor, control, and predict the behavior of others.
This ability entails various degrees of understanding, from the perceptual
discrimination of feature characteristics and emotional expressions, to the
complex represention of intentions and beliefs as determinants of behavior
(theories of mind). In this chapter, we present our view on the early
ontogeny of social cognition. This view tries to capture important transitions
in the development of social cognitive abilities between birth and 12 months
of age. Three developmental periods are described with a particular empha-
sis on two key transitions by 2 and 9 months postnatal age. We review recent
empirical findings supporting our contention that these transitions corre-
spond to radical changes or revolutions in the way infants interact with and
understand others (for a summary, see Table 1.1 in the conclusion of the
chapter). At birth and in the course of the first 6 weeks, infants manifest an
essentially innate sensitivity to social stimuli. During this period (the new-
born period), neonates display social attunement. We qualify their stance
towards people as attentional, with no signs of intersubjectivity. By the second
month, infants are presented as manifesting the first signs of shared
experience (primary intersubjectivity). This manifestation coincides with
the emergence of a novel sense of self as agent in the environment. This
represents a first key transition in early social cognitive development (2-
month revolution), marked by the emergence of a sense of shared experience
(intersubjectivity) and reciprocity with others, as part of a new general stance
taken by the infant, the contemplative stance. Based on recent empirical
findings, we try to demonstrate that the early intersubjectivity manifested by
young infants in a dyadic context (primary intersubjectivity), and social
cognition in general, changes in significant ways between 2 and 6 months,
announcing the well-documented social cognitive abilities that emerge by
the end of the first year in a triadic context (9-month revolution) and the
emergence of secondary intersubjectivity. Overall, we discuss social cognitive
development in the first year as the transition from a tight coupling between

-4-