Is Cognition Enough to Explain Cognitive Development?

Smith, Linda B.; Sheya, Adam

doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2010.01091.x

Cited by 37 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Yet not only does movement have a powerful effect on learning at the beginning of life, but it continues to impact the way we experience the world throughout development and into adulthood. In a recent review, Smith and Sheya (2010) discuss the important theoretical shift toward considering cognition as arising from sensory and motor experiences (i.e., as being “embodied”), rather than as an abstract entity entirely divorced from sensorimotor experience. Others have focused on embodiment as a way to address a new type of question about development and learning—when and how learners sometimes pull away from the actions that instantiate a particular concept to establish an abstract representation of that concept (Novack & Congdon, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The topic of embodied cognition has received a great deal of attention within psychological and neuroscience literatures in the last two decades. Theories of embodiment have impacted research across disciplines, ranging from development to social psychology to cognitive neuroscience (Barsalou, 1999; Beer, 1995; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Niedenthal, 2007; Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Gallese, & Fogassi, 1996; Smith & Sheya, 2010). Although the term is invoked to describe several subtly different claims (see Wilson, 2002), embodied cognition is based on the idea that our representations of a concept, object, or event often involve perceptual, somatosensory, and motoric re‐experiencing (collectively referred to as “embodiment”) of the relevant event in one’s self (Niedenthal, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Embodied Learning Across the Life Span

Kontra

Goldin‐Meadow

Beilock

2012

Topics in Cognitive Science

143

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Developmental psychologists have long recognized the extraordinary influence of action on learning (Piaget 1952; Held & Hein, 1963). Action experiences begin to shape our perception of the world during infancy (e.g., as infants gain an understanding of others’ goal-directed actions; Woodward, 2009) and these effects persist into adulthood (e.g., as adults learn about complex concepts in the physical sciences; Kontra et al., 2012). Theories of embodied cognition provide a structure within which we can investigate the mechanisms underlying action’s impact on thinking and reasoning. We argue that theories of embodiment can shed light on the role of action experience in early learning contexts, and further that these theories hold promise for using action to scaffold learning in more formal educational settings later in development.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied Learning Across the Life Span

Kontra

Goldin‐Meadow

Beilock

2012

Topics in Cognitive Science

143

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“…Or are they observed because these experimental assessments tap some underlying “pure” aspect of cognition that is independent of naturalistic orienting? This question, which is relatively under-addressed in the literature (although see Aslin, 2009; de Barbaro, Chiba, & Deak, 2011; Hunnius, 2007; Rose, Feldman, & Jankowski, 2011b; Smith & Sheya, 2012), is the focus of the present article.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Individual Differences in Infant Oculomotor Behavior During the Viewing of Complex Naturalistic Scenes

Wass

Smith

2014

Infancy

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Little research hitherto has examined how individual differences in attention, as assessed using standard experimental paradigms, relate to individual differences in how attention is spontaneously allocated in more naturalistic contexts. Here, we analyzed the time intervals between refoveating eye movements (fixation durations) while typically developing 11-month-old infants viewed a 90-min battery ranging from complex dynamic to noncomplex static materials. The same infants also completed experimental assessments of cognitive control, psychomotor reaction times (RT), processing speed (indexed via peak look during habituation), and arousal (indexed via tonic pupil size). High test–retest reliability was found for fixation duration, across testing sessions and across types of viewing material. Increased cognitive control and increased arousal were associated with reduced variability in fixation duration. For fixations to dynamic stimuli, in which a large proportion of saccades may be exogenously cued, we found that psychomotor RT measures were most predictive of mean fixation duration; for fixations to static stimuli, in contrast, in which there is less exogenous attentional capture, we found that psychomotor RT did not predict performance, but that measures of cognitive control and arousal did. The implications of these findings for understanding the development of attentional control in naturalistic settings are discussed.

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“…Independent sitting is also linked to the attainment of object manipulation skill (Adolph & Berger, 2011), and is thought to provide variable opportunities for the child to visually orient to and regard the object being manipulated (Soska et al, 2010). Moreover, once sitting and reaching begin to co-occur, this linkage affects the development of language and cognition (Iverson, 2010;Smith & Sheya, 2010) as well as the emergence of crawling and walking (Corbetta & Bojczyk, 2002;Goldfield, 1989). Thus, the motor skill of sitting has been implicated as one of the factors important to the progression of overall skill in the motor domain, and thus has been quantified using both behavioral and kinematic techniques.…”

Section: Reaching and Sitting Developmentmentioning

confidence: 95%