“Teasing: Provocation and Culture in Infancy”

Vasudevi Reddy
Ομότιμη Καθηγήτρια Αναπτυξιακής και Διαπολιτισμικής Ψυχολογίας, Πανεπιστήμιο του Portsmouth, Αγγλία.

Vasu Reddy has been interested in the origins and development of social cognition, mainly in young infants for three decades now, and has been exploring the role of emotional engagement in social understanding. She focuses on everyday, ordinary engagements (such as teasing and joking and showing-off or feeling shy) which often tend to get ignored in mainstream theories. Her interest in engagement as the route to understanding has led her to questions about the nature and influence of culture on social understanding. Her book How Infants Know Minds published by Harvard University Press in 2008 argues for a second-person approach to knowing minds, a dialogical and emotion-based route to an old problem. She was Director of the Centre for Situated Action and Communication (now the Centre for Interaction, Development and Diversity) and Emeritus Professor of Developmental and Cultural Psychology at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.