Vasudevi Reddy: "On Feeling and Being Felt: Infants and Other Minds"

Using data from early emotional engagements in infancy, this talk adopts a 'second-person' perspective on infant awareness of mind. The recognition of being felt by others as well as feelings in response to others in direct engagement is argued to be necessary for an 'appropriate' understanding of others (for infants as well as for psychologists!).

Dr. Vasudevi Reddy is a Reader in Developmental and Cultural Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She grew up in India and completed her doctoral work in Edinburgh. She has been interested in everyday emotional engagements such as teasing, clowning, showing-off and feeling shy, and in their importance in both revealing and creating interpersonal awareness. She is currently completing a cross-cultural study of the beginnings of compliance with parental directives in infancy.