Developmental Accounts of Intentionality: Toward Integration

A variety of developmental accounts of intentionality, arising from disparate theoretical perspectives, can now be found in the literature. This paper argues that this diversity is undermining the ability of developmental psychologists to construct a coherent developmental account of the capacity and that it would be more productive to pursue an integrated approach. To this end, the dominant theoretical positions on the development of intentionality are reviewed and evaluated: intentionality as goal-directedness, a result of parental scaffolding, an innate capacity for intersubjectivity, and behavioral object-directedness. Particular attention is given to comparing three key features of each position: the definition of intentionality adopted, the types of behaviors considered to be evidence of intentionality, and the proposed developmental sequence. The possibility of constructing an integrated approach based on these components is explored.