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Mirror Neurons and Social Cognition
Author(s) -
Spaulding Shan
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12017
Subject(s) - mirroring , social cognition , mirror neuron , cognition , motor cognition , cognitive science , psychology , embodied cognition , socially distributed cognition , cognitive psychology , epistemology , social psychology , neuroscience , philosophy
Mirror neurons are widely regarded as an important key to social cognition. Despite such wide agreement, there is very little consensus on how or why they are important. The goal of this article is to explicate clearly the exact role mirror neurons play in social cognition. I aim to answer two questions about the relationship between mirroring and social cognition: What kind of social understanding is involved with mirroring? How is mirroring related to that understanding? I argue that philosophical and empirical considerations lead us to accord a fairly minimal role for mirror neurons in social cognition.