Embodiment and Human Development

Marshall, Peter

doi:10.1111/cdep.12190

Cited by 32 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…We take a different approach, arguing for an embodied perspective (Gentsch, Weber, Synofzik, Vosgerau, & Schütz-Bosbach, 2016; Marshall, 2016; Wilson, 2001) of the emergence of executive functions. More specifically, we propose that executive functions are grounded in an infant’s developing ability to control and plan motor actions (i.e., prospective motor control).…”

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confidence: 99%

An Embodied Account of Early Executive-Function Development

et al. 2016

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The importance of executive functioning for later life outcomes, along with its potential to be positively affected by intervention programs, motivates the need to find early markers of executive functioning. In this study, 18-month-olds performed three executive-function tasks—involving simple inhibition, working memory, and more complex inhibition—and a motion-capture task assessing prospective motor control during reaching. We demonstrated that prospective motor control, as measured by the peak velocity of the first movement unit, is related to infants’ performance on simple-inhibition and working memory tasks. The current study provides evidence that motor control and executive functioning are intertwined early in life, which suggests an embodied perspective on executive-functioning development. We argue that executive functions and prospective motor control develop from a common source and a single motive: to control action. This is the first demonstration that low-level movement planning is related to higher-order executive control early in life.

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confidence: 99%

An Embodied Account of Early Executive-Function Development

et al. 2016

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“…At its most general, our position is close to what is described as embodied cognition, in which we hope to have gone somewhat against the tide, as noted by (Marshall, ), of computational approaches neglecting the role of bodily action. He notes that computational approaches are gradually improving in terms of acknowledging the links between perception and action in explaining how the world comes to have meaning for the agent.…”

Section: How Does the Resulting Characterization Compare And Contrastmentioning

confidence: 59%

The Development of Size Sequencing Skills: An Empirical and Computational Analysis

McGonigle-Chalmers

Kusel

2019

Monographs Society Res Child

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We explore a long‐observed phenomenon in children's cognitive development known as size seriation. It is not until children are around 7 years of age that they spontaneously use a strict ascending or descending order of magnitude to organize sets of objects differing in size. Incomplete and inaccurate ordering shown by younger children has been thought to be related to their incomplete grasp of the mathematical concept of a unit. Piaget first brought attention to children's difficulties in solving ordering and size‐matching tests, but his tasks and explanations have been progressively neglected due to major theoretical shifts in scholarship on developmental cognition. A cogent alternative to his account has never emerged, leaving size seriation and related abilities as an unexplained case of discontinuity in mental growth. In this monograph, we use a new training methodology, together with computational modeling of the data to offer a new explanation of size seriation development and the emergence of related skills. We describe a connected set of touchscreen tasks that measure the abilities of 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children to (a) learn a linear size sequence of five or seven items and (b) identify unique (unit) values within those same sets, such as second biggest and middle‐sized. Older children required little or no training to succeed in the sequencing tasks, whereas younger children evinced trial‐and‐error performance. Marked age differences were found on ordinal identification tasks using matching‐to‐sample and other methods. Confirming Piaget's findings, these tasks generated learning data with which to develop a computational model of the change. Using variables to represent working and long‐term memory (WM and LTM), the computational model represents the information processing of the younger child in terms of a perception‐action feedback loop, resulting in a heuristic for achieving a correct sequence. To explain why older children do not require training on the size task, it was hypothesized that an increase in WM to a certain threshold level provides the information‐processing capacity to allow the participant to start to detect a minimum interval between each item in the selection. The probabilistic heuristic is thus thought to be replaced during a transitional stage by a serial algorithm that guarantees success. The minimum interval discovery has the effect of controlling search for the next item in a principled monotonic direction. Through a minor additional processing step, this algorithm permits relatively easy identification of ordinal values. The model was tested by simulating the perceptual learning and action selection processes thought to be taking place during trial‐and‐error sequencing. Error distributions were generated across each item in the sequence and these were found to correspond to the error patterns shown by 5‐year‐olds. The algorithm that is thought to emerge from successful learning was also tested. It simulated high levels of success on seriation and also on ordinal identif...

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“…It is through these acts that meaning is projected, and it is these acts that transform the objective world into the world the individual actually experiences. In contrast to the cognitivist perspective, a relational view of embodiment therefore allows consideration of how the world comes to have meaning for the developing individual [Marshall, 2016[Marshall, , 2018. This rejection of the Cartesian split of cognitivism thus allows embodiment to play a key role in an integrative science of mental life that now enables considerations of identity, autonomy, and meaning.…”

Section: Embodimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, it is the activity of the fully embodied individual that allows for the construction of meaning across the lifespan. Furthermore, the thread of embodiment runs not only throughout the individual lifespan, but across phylogenetic time [Marshall, 2016]. As we note below, achieving clarity in the understanding of evolutionary influences on human development can only come through closely considering embodied interrelations between brain, body, and culture.…”

Section: Embodimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metatheory and the Primacy of Conceptual Analysis in Developmental Science

et al. 2018

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The practice of science entails more than just repeated cycles of theory construction, hypothesis generation, and empirical investigation. Broader, metatheoretical levels of conceptualization necessarily condition all aspects of the research process, establishing the very meaning and sensibility of science’s empirical and theoretical activities. When debate arises at these metatheoretical levels, it is the subject of conceptual analysis, not empirical investigation. In this article, we examine the overarching metatheoretical divide that lies at the heart of many key theoretical debates in science: the divide between a Cartesian-Split-Mechanistic research paradigm and a Process-Relational research paradigm. We instantiate this divide in terms of three prominent domains of inquiry within developmental science: the study of epigenesis (including epigenetics); the study of embodiment, specifically embodied cognition; and the study of baselines for human nature and development. We reveal how core issues and theoretical debates within these domains derive from metatheoretical, not theoretical, points of contention.

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Embodiment and Human Development

Cited by 32 publications

References 40 publications

An Embodied Account of Early Executive-Function Development

An Embodied Account of Early Executive-Function Development

The Development of Size Sequencing Skills: An Empirical and Computational Analysis

Metatheory and the Primacy of Conceptual Analysis in Developmental Science

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