Interaction theory (IT) is an approach to questions about social cognition, or how one understands other people, that focuses on bodily behaviors and environmental contexts rather than on mental processes.
For TT and ST, the primary way of understanding others is by means of ‘mindreading’ or ‘mentalizing’ – processes that depend on either theoretical inference from folk psychology, or simulation.
Other work in developmental psychology by Daniel Stern, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Peter Hobson, Vasu Reddy, and others, provides important evidence for the role of interaction in social cognition.
Important cues for understanding others are provided by their facial expressions, bodily posture and movements, gestures, actions, and in processes of neonate imitation, proto-conversations, gaze following and affective attunement.
In addition to primary and secondary intersubjectivity, and the contributing dynamics of interaction itself to the social cognitive process,[10] IT proposes that more nuanced and sophisticated understandings of others are based, not primarily on folk psychological theory or the use of simulation, but on the implicit and explicit uses of narrative.
[11][12] IT builds on the notion that the pervasiveness of narratives in most cultures, from the earliest nursery rhymes to the performances of theater, film, and television, expose us to a variety of characters, situations, and reasons for acting in certain ways.