The Third Entity: Participatory Sense-Making, Agency, and Attentional Dynamics

This paper proposes that the experience of agency and concomitant patterns of attention emerge not only within individuals but between them — in the transient, autonomous dynamics of social interaction known in dance improvisation as the “third entity.” Drawing on the enactive theory of participatory sense-making (PSM), we examine how interactive dynamics shape how we attend to what matters, and how attentional modes may shift in relation to levels of “I,” “we,” and “it” agency. We will also discuss some instances of neurodivergence and psychopathology where PSM dynamics can fail. Integrating cognitive neuroscience on affect-biased attention with ethnographic insights from dance improvisation, we propose a neurophenomenological approach to studying attention as embodied, relational, and affectively charged. We argue that dance improvisation offers a rich, underused laboratory for investigating how attention is dynamically tuned through relational movement. Attention, in this view, is not just selection but participation — a means of moving through and with meaning. Understanding its dynamics will play a central role in advancing transdisciplinary models of mental health grounded in shared sense-making.